"Prisoners of the American Dream" is a two-pronged attack by Mike Davis on the general reactionary tendencies of the 1980s.
The first half of the book is a history of American unions and their relations to attempts to produce an actual progressive, leftist "Labor Party" on American soil. Davis does this in a very in-depth, well-sourced manner which will satisfy even a specialist in the subject. He explains the failures of creating a socialist alternative in the United States as a by no means pre-ordained result, but rather the consequence of contingent factors, among which are the intransigent conservatism and reformism of much of the union leadership (in particular the AFL), the general conservative party machine nature of the Democratic Party, and interethnic rivalries among the workers. This history of the left and the unions goes on until about the Eisenhower administration, then stops as Davis picks up his second line of attack in the second part of the book. One warning though: Davis seems to presume that the reader is already well-versed in the history of American unionism and in American socio-political terminology in general, making it quite difficult at times to follow for the (foreign) layman. The book could have been better with a good explanatory register of names.
The second half of the book is basically an attack on the neoliberal resurgence under Reagan and the complicity of the rightist Democratic Party to the same. Davis is clearly quite outraged at the general conservatism of what is supposed to be America's more progressive political party, and spends many pages outlining the failures of the Democratic leaders. He underlines his arguments with many a spiffy statistic for this purpose. However, much time has already passed since 1987, and his rather superficial and one-sided attack on everything to the right of Jesse Jackson is preaching to the choir. Most useful in this part is the epilogue, where he makes a series of political predictions about both parties based on his analysis, many of which have since turned out to be surprisingly correct. Yet one can skip the whole second part of the book without any real problem.
Generally the book is well-reasoned but relatively dry and dense. It could have done with a bit more livening up at times, and Davis tends to repeat himself just a little too much. Recommended to socialists of all stripes interested in the history of (radical) unions in America.
