'May Day is about affirmation, the love of life, and the start of spring, so it has to be about the beginning of the end of the capitalist system of exploitation, oppression, war, and overall misery, toil, and moil.' So writes celebrated historian Peter Linebaugh in an essential compendium of reflections on the reviled, glorious and voltaic occasion of the first of May. The Incomplete, True, Authentic, and Wonderful History of May Day is a forceful reminder of the potentialities of the future, for the coming of a time when the powerful will fall and the commons restored.