In The World in a City: Multiethnic Radicalism in Early Twentieth-Century Los Angeles, David M. Struthers examines how Los Angeles’ political Left engaged with a “constellation of ideologies oriented towards ameliorating social and class-based concerns” (3). In the years leading up to World War I, Struthers argues, sustained activism helped foster multiracial cooperation in organizations ranging from the International Workers of the World (IWW) and the Partido Liberal Mexicano (PLM) to the Los Angeles branches of the Socialist Party.

Los Angeles’ racial, political, and ethnic diversity created a “cosmopolitan environment in which discussions about the strength of international solidarity opened real actionable choices” (5). Alongside the IWW, the PLM, and the Socialist Party, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and anarchism each drew membership in the region. Each had very different positions on the efficacy of political participation in redressing inequality. Struthers sees this as an intersectional process that occasionally was able to challenge white racism in the community. A culture of affinity created by radicals, he argues, operated in opposition to both racism and capitalism.

Chapters focus on different elements within this multiethnic radicalism. Chapters One and Two examine the connections between the urban and rural economies in California and the mobility of the region's labor force. Uneven geographical development of capitalism meant that many laborers moved between jobs in urban and jobs in rural parts of the state. Within Los Angeles itself, these laborers formed multiracial working-class neighborhoods that eventually became strongholds of radical politics and labor organization. A vibrant global print culture wove together Los Angeles-based activists with radicals in the rest of the southwest, in Mexico, and abroad. Multiple anarchist and socialist publications, printed in languages ranging from English and Spanish to Yiddish, helped solidify and reinforce radical politics in the region.

One of the most valuable issues tackled by Struthers is the complex role played by race in multiethnic radicalism. As he points out, some organizations embraced racial diversity, while others opted for racial exclusion. The Socialist Party in Los Angeles, for example, had two hundred members in ten local branches by 1902. Most were created along racial, ethnic, national, and linguistic lines. The different branches worked collaboratively to pursue party goals and even socialized with one another. Mexican and Italian anarchists in Los Angeles similarly found common ground, even sharing events at the International Workers’ Home they founded. In 1907, a Mexican branch of the Socialist Party formed. It was the “first time a nonwhite group created an institutional home in a white-led leftist organization” in Los Angeles (85). Other organizations, however, were less successful at forging multiethnic alliances. Struthers examines attempts to organize Mexican and Japanese workers in the agricultural fields of Oxnard, north of Los Angeles. Although the campaign initially met with some success, it was quickly undone when the national AFL agreed to recognize only the Mexican union. This is a repeated theme in The World in a City: even in radical and anarchist organizations, Chinese, Japanese, and South Asian workers were seldom welcomed with open arms. African Americans were usually left out of any radical organizing. This did not go unnoticed: African American socialist and activist George Washington Woodbey spoke frankly of the difficulties in getting organizations of any kind to take seriously the plight of the black worker in Los Angeles. Ultimately, Struthers notes, the limits of internationalist ideals were racial. Gender receives shorter shrift than race in Struthers's analysis. He does mention some of the handful of female socialist and anarchist organizers in the area. Organizations such as the IWW and PLM may simply not have appealed to women in the same ways they appealed to men. Struthers also notes that the hypermasculinity of many of the radical organizations covered here, particularly the IWW, often kept female activists on the sidelines, save in their roles as wives and mothers.

Later chapters focus on the PLM and the reverberations of the Mexican Revolution in Los Angeles. The arrests of PLM leaders such as Enrique and Ricardo Flores Magón weakened the movement. The passage of the Espionage Act in 1917 and Sedition Act in 1918 during World War I similarly weakened the IWW. In the end, Struthers concludes, radical movements in the United States could not effectively counter the power of the state.

The phenomenal spatial and economic growth of Los Angeles in the 1920s, along with a generational shift as many first-generation activists aged, realigned radical politics in the region. In Boyle Heights, the Yiddish and Italian wings of the anarchist movement remained active. In spite of its suppression during the war, the IWW still organized in fits and starts in the 1920s. It ultimately split in 1923 over its connections to the Soviet state. However, many Los Angeles radicals shifted to the Communist Party, founded in the United States only in 1919. The Communist Party, Struthers writes, proved better able to harness discontent as the boom of the 1920s gave way to the Great Depression of the 1930s. Ultimately, Los Angeles radicals had no single organization or tactic in this era. Instead, Struthers argues, it was the willingness of people to join together in a wide array of activism that characterized Los Angeles’ early twentieth-century radicalism.

The idea of a radical culture of affinity in Los Angeles is an intriguing one. It would have been interesting to see Struthers follow that radical affinity through to the 1940s and 1950s to see how long, and in what form, it survived. The framing of radical politics here, which draws heavily on the history of anarchism, leads to somewhat of a flattening of the political center and political right in Los Angeles. The state, capital, and land monopoly stand in for what was at the time an equally complex grouping of Progressives, centrist Republicans, Democrats, and conservatives in the city. A more throughout exploration of Los Angeles Progressives, in particular, and of their sometimes friendly, sometimes fraught relationship with radicals, would have deepened the reader's understanding of this era. Nonetheless, The World in a City: Multiethnic Radicalism in Early Twentieth-Century Los Angeles adds considerably to our understanding of Los Angeles’ politics during the first three decades of the twentieth century.