"An important new addition to the literature on work, class, and economic and social history."—Choice. February, 2000.
"An ambitious book. . . .well presented and documented. . . ."—Michael Huberman, Dept. of History, University of Montreal. Industrial and Labor Relations Review. July, 2000.
"The inversion of the textual and the structural is the predominant tendency of the powerful school of social history and historical sociology whose impressive dimensions and stimulating factiousness can be appreciated in Steinberg's excellent bibliography. Fighting Words reveals its author to be one of the most accomplished students of this academy."—Michael Dintenfass, Journal of Modern History, Vol. 72, No. 4. December 2000
"Sophisticated. . . The author argues his case with passion."—Miles Taylor, English Historical Review, Vol. 116, February 2001
"In the end, this is a deeply satisfying book. The arid and antiquated debates between materialist and idealist approaches disappear in a perspective that examines how material conditions and their discursive representations interact in a dynamic system of social life. The social life is brought alive in the concrete, historically embedded history of that time and place. What more could one ask?"—William A. Gamson, Contemporary Sociology, Vol. 30, No. 4
"Steinberg effectively carries out the broadest task that he sets for himself in this perceptive and carefully researched book: to show the ways in which material and discursive processes work together in the shaping of consciousness."—Philip Harling, American Journal of Sociology
"Marc Steinberg has written a splendid and important book. It is rich, argumentative, and necessary. . . Steinberg has opened a door to a new landscape of questions, where social movement scholars will wander in future with excitement and with new puzzles."—Colin Barker, Mobilization, Fall 2001
"Fighting Words represents an original and important contribution to debates about class in the nineteenth century and to the theoretical debates currently raging between those with materialist and linguistic perspectives."—Anna Clark, University of North Carolina, Charlotte
