In 1943, 87% of Americans disapproved of him and Time magazine drew him as a dangerous volcano. Decades later, he was eulogized for making half a million coal miners the best-paid industrial workers on earth. How did one man become both public enemy number one and a founding father of the modern American middle class?

This deep dive traces John L. Lewis from a Welsh-immigrant company town in Iowa to four decades atop the United Mine Workers. We unpack how a miner with no high school diploma built a ruthless, centralized labor empire, broke with the AFL to launch the CIO, and repeatedly faced down presidents and corporate monopolies, even when it turned the entire nation against him.

• How the 1919 federal injunction taught Lewis he could shut down mines but never out-muscle the state, reshaping his strategy
• The sound-truck  ...