Leopold doesn’t technically explain exactly how to go into the business of making a million dollars an hour, or even the $842,788 an hour average the top ten hedge fund managers made in 2010. The closest this book comes to financial self-help is Leopold’s fascinating chapter on Jim Cramer, wherein the hedge fund manager and CNBC personality repeatedly hammers home the importance of breaking the law. But for all the wage-earning suckers who hadn’t figured out that critical “bottom line” of success in 21st century America yet, that’s a pretty good place to start.

When Philip Dray came by to discuss his book project on the entire sweep of American labor history, I thought he was out of his mind. I knew that he was an accomplished author who had written an award winning-book on lynchings (“At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America”).