In 1943, 87% of Americans disapproved of him and Time magazine drew him as a dangerous volcano. Decades later, he was eulogized for making half a million coal miners the best-paid industrial workers on earth. How did one man become both public enemy number one and a founding father of the modern American middle class?

This deep dive traces John L. Lewis from a Welsh-immigrant company town in Iowa to four decades atop the United Mine Workers. We unpack how a miner with no high school diploma built a ruthless, centralized labor empire, broke with the AFL to launch the CIO, and repeatedly faced down presidents and corporate monopolies, even when it turned the entire nation against him.

• How the 1919 federal injunction taught Lewis he could shut down mines but never out-muscle the state, reshaping his strategy
• The sound-truck campaign that piggybacked on FDR’s popularity, plus the $500,000 in union funds he gave the 1936 campaign
• The Flint sit-down strike mechanics that neutralized GM’s ability to bring in replacement workers or armed guards
• His baffling 1940 break with FDR for Wendell Willkie, and the wartime 1943 coal strike that drew an 87% disapproval rating
• The 1950 welfare and retirement fund, financed by a royalty on every ton of coal, that built hospitals across Appalachia