| List of Illustrations | |
| Preface | |
| Acknowledgments | |
| Pt. I | The Rise of the Movies: Political Filmmaking and the Working Class | 1 |
| Introduction | 3 |
| 1 | Going to the Movies: Leisure, Class, and Danger in the Early Twentieth Century | 11 |
| 2 | Visualizing the Working Class: Cinema and Politics before Hollywood | 34 |
| 3 | The Good, the Bad, and the Violent: Class Conflict and the Labor-Capital Genre | 56 |
| 4 | Making a Pleasure of Agitation: The Rise of the Worker Film Movement | 86 |
| Pt. II | The Rise of Hollywood: From Working Class to Middle Class | 113 |
| 5 | When Russia Invaded America: Hollywood, War, and the Movies | 115 |
| 6 | Struggles for the Screen: The Revival of the Worker Film Movement | 143 |
| 7 | Fantasy and Politics: Moviegoing and Movies in the 1920s | 173 |
| 8 | Lights Out: The Decline of Labor Filmmaking and the Triumph of Hollywood | 212 |
| Epilogue: The Movies Talk But What Do They Say? | 240 |
| Select Filmography | 259 |
| Sources and Methods for Writing Film History | 263 |
| Abbreviations | 277 |
| Notes | 279 |
| Index | 353 |
