>These people did not fight any holy crusade for their principles and, despite their accomplishments, will not be remembered by history (except perhaps to be im

>These people did not fight any holy crusade for their principles and, despite their accomplishments, will not be remembered by history (except perhaps to be immortalized by their old buttons and bumper stickers in a hallway in Mountain View). One genre of history book that fascinated me was what I call the "ordinary biography". Biographies written about people who lived interesting lives, but never really did anything that would put them in a history textbook. I'd really like to see more of these. The example that comes to mind is a book I once saw about a communist labor organizer in the 30's. Not a particularly famous one, just a guy (or was it a woman?) who went around helping workers form unions. It sounded interesting but I passed, and now I can't remember the title.