This book will give you a new appreciation for both Debs and the American socialist movement. I did get a little bogged down with labor history because I've read so much less about that. This volume covers a lot of gound.

There have been great politicians and great speakers, but people like Debs (or Bernie Sanders)who live their beliefs and politics so earnestly are a marvel, an inspiration. They don't just tell people to vote or do the work,  they are in the trenches and sent to jail, along with their fellow workers. 

People from Wilson and Roosevelt to today have called socialism un-American, but Debsian socialism fit as well or better than anything else with American religion and patriotism on the political scene. One funny or disheartening thing is that they in 1920 seemed to have as hard a time as we do now advocating for the rights of workers in a conservative society. We haven't learned too much, sadly. The same divisions between radical and political factions then as now persist.

A quote during one of Debs' more frustrated moment also is fitting today (trump, biden, etc):

"The people can have anything they want. The trouble is they do not want anything. At least they vote that way on election day."