Kuhn argues persuasively that the riot sparked a vast national political shift driven by a widening divide between the working class and the educated elite that has led to the era of the Trump presidency.

Just after the 2016 election, [Kuhn] wrote a New York Times op-ed headlined 'Sorry, Liberals. Bigotry Didn’t Elect Donald Trump.' Now he has synthesized his message with a lesson from history: The Hardhat Riot a riveting account of the May 1970 explosion of New York’s blue-collar workers who confronted an antiwar rally designed to shut down Wall Street after President Nixon sent American troops into Cambodia.

The Hardhat Riot...vividly evokes an especially ugly moment half a century ago, when the misbegotten Vietnam War and a malformed notion of patriotism combined volatilely.

Just after the 2016 election, [Kuhn] wrote a New York Times op-ed headlined 'Sorry, Liberals. Bigotry Didn’t Elect Donald Trump.' Now he has synthesized his message with a lesson from history: The Hardhat Riot a riveting account of the May 1970 explosion of New York’s blue-collar workers who confronted an antiwar rally designed to shut down Wall Street after President Nixon sent American troops into Cambodia.

Kuhn’s revealing new book, The Hardhat Riot, does two things remarkably well. It reconstructs a detailed, compelling, and coherent narrative of the riot, assembled from what must have seemed a morass of contradictory sources.

Throughout the narrative, the author wrestles with conflicting ideologies of patriotism, especially as symbolized by the American flag. In a trenchant epilogue, Kuhn connects dots from the events of that summer to the presidencies of Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump.