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Some two thousand women participated in the Long March, but their experience of this seminal event in the history of Communist China is rarely represented. In Choosing Revolution, Helen Praeger Young presents her interviews with twenty-two veterans of the Red Army's legendary 6,000-mile "retreat to victory" before the advancing Nationalist Army.
 
Enormously rich in detail, Young's Choosing Revolution reveals the complex interplay between women's experiences and the official, almost mythic version of the Long March. In addition to their riveting stories of the march itself, Young's subjects reveal much about what it meant in China to grow up female and, in many cases, poor during the first decades of the twentieth century. In speaking about the work they did and how they adapted to the demands of being a soldier, these women--both educated individuals who were well-known leaders and illiterate peasants--reveal the Long March as only one of many segments of the revolutionary paths they chose.
 
Against a background of diverse perspectives on the Long March, Young presents the experiences of four women in detail: one who brought her infant daughter with her on the Long March, one who gave birth during the march, one who was a child participant, and one who attended medical school during the march. Young also includes the stories of three women who did not finish the Long March. Her unique record of ordinary women in revolutionary circumstances reveals the tenacity and resilience that led these individuals far beyond the limits of most Chinese women's lives.
 

In 1894, hundreds of unemployed workers demonstrated in Washington, D.C., to demand jobs and relief. This march, by what came to be called Coxey’s Army, took inspiration from the ideas of businessman and activist Jacob Coxey and redefined how Americans argued about jobs and the power of government.

Wesley R. Bishop explores how Coxey and his allies organized the first national protest to bring citizens to Washington, D.C. Though the march failed in its immediate goals, for the next forty years its ideas influenced America’s political parties. The demonstration pioneered marching for economic justice while its push for federal public works projects and government responsibility for unemployment helped shaped the New Deal. But in the years after the march, racism and other types of exclusion muddied hopes and tainted demands for democratic and economic fairness.

Eye-opening and insightful, The Long March of Coxey’s Army examines the influence and aftermath of an important historical event.

This special issue of Radical History Review (RHR) offers not only a self-portrait of the journal but also a retrospective of radical history as a movement, an ideology, and a transformative force in historical scholarship. In an engaging combination of interviews, articles, and round-table discussions, this issue highlights the relentless challenge that radical history has posed to liberal and conservative paradigms.
Recognizing the creative power of pluralism, the RHR editors have marshalled a diverse troop of historical scholars in this issue. In “Forum on Radical History,” sixteen historians discuss how the notion of radicalism has affected the way they write, teach, and live, and in "A Conversation about the Radical History Review," past and present members of the editorial board zero in on the journal itself and the political and academic context in which it was born. Offering a more personal perspective, Mike Wallace, Pulitzer Prize winner and radical history founder, shares his thoughts on RHR and the movement. Other articles in this special issue tackle the state of radicalism today, analyzing the academic labor movement, the significance of physical space in Pinochet’s reign of terror, and the enduring symbolism of a particular statue in Prague.
This retrospective issue celebrates the journal’s past, but it also reflects on the present and looks forward to a future in which radicalism will continue to shape the landscape of historical and political discourse.

Contributors. Tani E. Barlow, Dan Bender, Paul Buhle, Gabriela Cano, Anna Clark, Martin Duberman, Ellen Carol DuBois, Ian Christopher Fletcher, Rob Gregg, Harry D. Harootunian, Winston James, Nikki R. Keddie, Dave Kinkela, Staughton Lynd, Teresa Meade, Joanne Pope Melish, Ellen Noonan, Enrique C. Ochoa, Gary Y. Okihiro, Cynthia Paces, Max Page, Vijay Prashad, David Price, David Roediger, Andor Skotnes, Mike Wallace