Winner of the 2012 Wayland Hand Prize for outstanding book in folklore and history, History and Folklore Section, American Folklore Society
'[ P]raiseworthy in the judges view is the authors integration of multiple methodologies including oral history, ethnographic analysis, rhetorical criticism, and social evaluation to offer a cohesive and persuasive argument for the symbol-building functions of historical events that groups embrace to achieve a cooperative society out of conflict.'
'[ Rachelle H. Saltzman's] book will help restore volunteers to a more central place in the story of the General Strike, and indeed in British social history more broadly.' Georgina Brewis, Contemporary British History, May 2013
'The book succeeds in drawing on memoirs, newspaper articles and a great many marvellous interviews to capture the motivations and experiences of the many thousands of men and women who volunteered to keep basic services running. The strike emerges not as a great national festival but as a ritual enactment of the politics of class.' Susan Pedersen, London Review of Books, August 2013
'...Saltzman... draws most extensively on original fieldwork carried out in 19856 and involving contact with over three hundred respondents .... In the picture which she builds up from these, it is with the recent experience of First World War that the idea of service to the nation is inseparably associated.' Kevin Morgan, History Workshop Journal, February 2013 -- .
