Today, the idea of socialism is peculiarly alive, especially among young people in the United States, in a way it has not been for decades. Socialists today must build their own, unaffiliated version of how to achieve a more just world, from the bottom up. It is my hope that Romance of American Communism, telling the story of how it was done some sixty or seventy years ago, can act as a guide to those similarly stirred today.