Thomas Frank, author of What’s the Matter with Kansas? and other books, discusses Staley: The Fight for a New American Labor in today’s Tilting the Yard column (subscription required) in the Wall Street Journal.

“Labor battles are often moments of shocking economic clarity, when bland corporate optimism gives way to ugly reality. I first learned this 15 years ago, when workers at the A.E. Staley corn-processing plant in Decatur, Ill., were locked out by management. I lived in Chicago at the time and, along with a colleague, wrote an essay on the Decatur ‘war zone’ for the Chicago Reader.

All the details of that old story all came back to me last week, when Steven Ashby and C.J. Hawking, authors of Staley, a recent book on the struggle, spoke at a bookstore in Washington, where I live today.”