"What does a young Chinese woman working in a battery-charging plant have to do with the Peterloo massacre, or Bolivian tin miners with early 20th-century German socialism, or Nigerian slum-dwellers with the Paris Commune? A lot, argues Mason's brilliantly conceived and beautifully written book. Each chapter begins with contemporary reportage and then delves into the past, drawing surprising and illuminating parallels. Mason has found a way to make his book vividly accessible without compromising its intellectual force." The Guardian