Industrial relations, occupational health Books

Book SynopsisAdam Reich and Peter Bearman examine how Walmart workers make sense of their jobs in order to consider the nature of contemporary low-wage work, as well as the obstacles and opportunities such workplaces present for social and economic justice. Working for Respect makes important contributions to debates on labor and inequality.Trade ReviewI am obsessed with this book! The prose is riveting. The blend of disparate methods is spectacular. The sheer adventure of student organizers fanning out across the country in a manner reminiscent of Freedom Summer will keep you turning the pages. Taken together, the portrait wrought is simply devastating. Walmart not only demands your labor and your loyalty, it claims your pride and strips you of dignity. -- Kathryn Edin, coauthor of $2 a Day: The Art of Living on Virtually Nothing in AmericaWalmart—the largest U.S. employer—is a symbol for high inequality in America. Its many shop-floor employees are paid as little as possible and have never shared in the huge success and profits of the company. Why can’t Walmart workers get a bigger share of the pie they helped create? This book, based on extensive interviews with Walmart workers, helps us understand why a job at Walmart might be the least bad option for many, how workers make sense of their job, and the challenges of organizing work at Walmart. Working for Respect is essential reading for a rich sociological understanding of the struggles of low-paid workers pitted against all-powerful corporations in America today. -- Emmanuel Saez, University of California, BerkeleyHow do people find and flex their own power to improve their workplaces? What lessons can all of us learn from dogged and creative efforts to organize workers at Walmart, the biggest private employer in the world? What kinds of relationships between organizers and their communities are most likely to lead to organizing breakthroughs? Working for Respect is a gripping read—a thoughtful, perceptive, and accessible work that takes a multi-layered approach, from in-depth interviews with Walmart workers to brain scans to a crash course in front-line organizing and beyond. This is a book for students of organizing, for academics interested in helping to counter rampant economic inequality, and for anyone who cares about winning material gains and respect for all workers in the age of Trump. -- Anna Galland, Executive Director, MoveOn.orgWorking for Respect is an extraordinary book, both in its deft and original intertwining of multiple research methods and in the insights it generates. -- Erik Olin Wright, author of Envisioning Real UtopiasWorking for Respect is at once a brilliant analysis of the lives of Walmart workers and an original effort to bridge the tension between scholarly work and activism. Along the way, Reich and Bearman raise the bar for mixed-method research in the social sciences. -- Mitchell Duneier, Maurice P. During Professor of Sociology, Princeton UniversityWorking for Respect is an engaging read that bristles with fresh insights into both the experience of low-wage service sector work and the dilemmas facing the labor movement. It offers an ethnography of what the authors dub 'Walmartism' as well as an argument about the ways in which social ties centered on trust have the potential to jumpstart social change. A must-read for any sociologist of labor. -- Ruth Milkman, CUNY Graduate CenterWith Working for Respect, Adam Reich and Peter Bearman issue a rare invitation. To go with them to Walmart, to listen with them to the workers and to the managers who roam the stores, to take in the culture of low-wage work in America, and also to listen to the students who participated in what became the Summer for Respect. This is a gripping book about the relationship between social ties and social change, remarkable for its intelligence and the subtlety of its distinctions. We learn that in the end it is trust rather than good feeling that inspires collective action for social change. -- Carol Gilligan, author of In a Different VoiceWhile Walmart plays enormous economic, symbolic, and employment roles nationwide, the interplay of these dynamics has not been fully explored. Working for Respect makes great progress in understanding Walmart as a social institution and therefore in understanding work at Walmart as a unique bellwether of contemporary work. -- Andrew Perrin, University of North CarolinaThe use of interview excerpts amplifies the voices of low-wage workers not often heard in public discourse. This is an insightful examination of the inner workings of the 'country's largest corporate employer.' * Publishers Weekly (starred review) *No one has analyzed the experiences and aspirations of Walmart workers as thoughtfully as Adam Reich and Peter Bearman do in their captivating new book. * American Prospect *What differentiates and recommends it for close reading are the anecdotes and perspectives of workers who face down enormous personal and social challenges and barriers, only to have their goals to contribute and thrive in American society tempered or more often dashed by what they (and the authors) see as corporate measures of compliance, coercion, and control. * Choice *The labor movement still has life, and Reich and Bearman provide a valuable reminder regarding where we need to look to find it. * Social Forces *A vital perspective. Analytically exhilarating. Fascinating. * Contemporary Sociology *A compelling case study of one of the most important labor organizing efforts in twenty‐first‐century America. . . . Working for Respect will pique the interest of scholars, students, and activists keyed into the economic contradictions of late neoliberalism and searching for both explanations and practical solutions. * British Journal of Sociology *Adam Reich and Peter Bearman provide insight for both the conditions and experiences of working at a place like Walmart, as well as the relationship between community engagement and feelings of social solidarity. * Sociological Forum *Table of ContentsList of FiguresAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: The Real, Real Walmart1. Pathways2. The Shop Floor3. The Structure of Domination and Control4. Making Contact5. Social Ties and Social Change6. OUR Walmart on the Line7. Our WalmartAppendix: The Neural Signatures of Group LifeNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisLainey Newman and Theda Skocpol provide timely insight into the relationship between the decline of unions and the shift of working-class voters away from Democrats.Trade ReviewWhen workers decades ago spoke the words, 'This is a union town!' they were describing not just a statistical fact but, more importantly, a lived and embedded reality. Unions, as Lainey Newman and Theda Skocpol write, represented 'a dense social web of interconnected workers, family members and neighbors.' Rust Belt Union Blues is an immensely important book, both for politics and for the social sciences. Politically, it explains why many white workers strayed from their old Democratic loyalties not because their views changed radically but because of transformations in their reference points and the ways they answered the need for community. Rust Belt Union Blues also calls on social scientists to enrich and go beyond survey research by paying far more attention to the networks people build and the lives they live. This book deserves wide readership—and may it encourage more volumes like it. -- E.J. Dionne Jr., author of Why the Right Went Wrong, coauthor of 100% DemocracyIn recent decades many working-class voters have turned away from the Democratic Party, especially in the country's former industrial regions. Rust Belt Union Blues shows how the decline of labor unions contributed to this trend. Unions historically built solidarity around shared values in working-class communities; the erosion of union strength has weakened these communities and this solidarity, profoundly changing working-class life. Rust Belt Union Blues is fascinating and important reading for anyone interested in the past, present, and future of working-class politics in America. -- Jeffry Frieden, author of Global Capitalism: Its Fall and Rise in the Twentieth Century and Its Stumbles in the Twenty-FirstHow refreshing to read a challenging account of how and why the Democratic Party lost a major constituency that attends to the people themselves, their communities, their organizations, and their struggles to make meaning of a politics that ceased to see them, hear them, or value them—to even respect them. For once, the authors enable us to hear the voices of human beings—not data points, utility functions, ideological categories, or labels. This work challenges us to focus on what a real constituency is—not a 'base' to be managed, but people who learn to stand together, work together, decide together, and act together. -- Marshall Ganz, Harvard Kennedy SchoolRead this book to better understand the roots of today’s political polarization. Newman and Skocpol document local unions’ historical role in the social life of manufacturing communities and show how deindustrialization and the disappearance of local unions helped turn these communities from blue to red. -- Frank Levy, MITA more granular look at the pre-Biden Democrats’ abandonment of working-class America...that illuminates the decline of an economic, social, and political world that once bolstered progressive and Democratic prospects. * American Prospect *Newman and Skocpol’s diagnosis of the causes and basic solution to the problem of working-class dealignment in the rust belt is right on the mark. * Jacobin *Table of ContentsPrefaceAcknowledgmentsList of Figures and Tables1. Understanding Social and Political Change in the Rust Belt2. The Social Underpinnings of the “Union Man”3. The Economic Breakdown of Big Labor from Without and Within4. Union Membership Transformed5. From Union Blue to Trump Red6. On Union Decline and the Potential for ResurgenceAppendix A. Voting Patterns in Western PennsylvaniaAppendix B. Sample Interview QuestionsAppendix C. Photographs in IBEW and USW NewslettersAppendix D. Local Union Mentions in IBEW and USW NewslettersNotesGlossaryIndex

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Essential for any study of the 1937 sit-down strike in Flint... Communists and socialists were the shop floor cadre of the CIO drive, and it seems appropriate that a radical close to those events be one of the historians." -- Nelson Lichenstein, author of Labor's War at Home: The CIO in World War II

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"The pick of a growing crop of studies on the American working class."--The Nation"An important work, the best of several recent volumes on the Knights."--American Historical ReviewTable of ContentsPreface xi 1 Working-Class Radicalism in the Gilded Age: Defining a Political Culture 3 2 The Uses of Political Power: The Knights of Labor and the State 18 3 When Cleon Comes to Rule: Popular Organization and Political Development. Part 1: Rochester, New Hampshire 38 4 When Cleon Comes to Rule: Popular Organization and Political Development. Part 2: Rutland, Vermont 66 5 City-Building and Social Reform: Urban Workers within the Two-Party System, Kansas City, Kansas 112 6 Together but Unequal: Southern Knights and the Dilemmas of Race and Politics, Richmond, Virginia 149 7 Bullets and Ballots: Worker Mobilization and the Path to Municipal Socialism, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 178 8 Labor, Party Politics, and American Exceptionalism 219 Selected Bibliography: Primary Sources 234 Index 239

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Book Synopsis Examining the impact of American Cold War politics on disparate local arenas,Labor''s Cold Warreveals that anticommunist challenges reshaped local political cultures and set the stage for new rounds of political debate. The contributors demonstrate that the anticommunist movement was more diverse, more pervasive, and more sharply and creatively contested than historians have realized. Yet workers and their allies defended ongoing progressive politics at the local level. Examples include fights for fair employment and public housing; the expansion of New Deal-style regional development; the abolition of racial and ethnic discrimination policies; and workplace policies from the right to organize to a voice in wage and price controls. Local political stories from New Mexico, California, occupied Japan, Milwaukee, Detroit, St. Louis, and Schenectedy provide important alternative perspectives on the transformative power of anticommunism in the postwar period and contribTrade Review "Labor's Cold War provides a valuable and timely historical reinterpretation that goes to the roots of the Cold War as it affected the American labour movement and its allies."--Labour/Le Travail "The emphasis on the interconnections between local and national themes makes this book a genuinely unique and compelling addition to labor literature. As such, it removes issues related to labor and the left from the internecine workplace and union struggles and moves them to the more interesting arena of local social and economic policies."--Stephen Meyer, author of Stalin over Wisconsin: The Making and Unmaking of Militant Unionism, 1900-1950Table of ContentsContributors include Kenneth Burt, Robert W. Cherny, Rosemary Feurer, Eric Fure-Slocum, Christopher Gerteis, Lisa Kannenberg, David Lewis-Colman, James J. Lorence, Shelton Stromquist, and Seth Wigderson

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Book SynopsisFrom the union''s formation in 1937 until the 1960s, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) was the largest and most influential teachers'' union in the country. John F. Lyons examines the role of public schoolteachers and the CTU in shaping the policies and practices of public education in Chicago. Examining teachers'' unions and public education from the bottom up, Lyons shows how the CTU and its members sought rigorous reforms. A combination of political action, public relations campaigns, and community alliances helped the CTU to achieve better salaries and benefits, increased school budgets, reformed curricula, and greater equality for women within the public education system. But its agenda was also constrained by internal divisions over race and gender and by ongoing external disputes with the school administration, politicians, and business and civic organizations. Detailed and informed by rich interviews, Teachers and Reform: Chicago Public Education, 1929-1970 teTrade Review"Lyons's monograph is clearly written, impeccably organized, and . . . cogently argued. Grounded in an impressive array of archival, print, and oral sources, Teachers and Reform is an important contribution to the field."--Journal of Illinois History"This powerful book is a detailed account of 40 years in the history of Chicago schools. . . . Recommended."--Choice“Extremely useful for labor historians interested in the institutional development of the nation’s first and most prominent teachers’ union. . . . Lyons's book offers a roadmap to how one city got us here, laying out, in as clear a manner as possible, the dense thicket of issues at stake and at play in the teacher union movement.”--H-Urban“This book is one the best histories of public-sector unionism yet. It is an excellent study of teachers’ unions in Chicago and also a fine piece of local political history, with interesting interpolations of race, gender, and education policy issues as well.”--American Historical Review"In his engaging case study ... Lyons captures the seedy side of school politics and the ambiguous, often disappointing role that unions have played in educational reform."--The Journal of American History"A masterful scholarly study of Chicago teacher unionism."--Labour/Le Travail"A straightforward, well-written study of education in a major U.S. city."--H-Education"Teachers and Reform provides an excellent narrative of teachers' unionization in Chicago from 1929-70. Lyons makes effective connections between city politics and the rise of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) and between the rise of black political consciousness and the crisis of the CTU."--James R. Barrett, author of William Z. Foster and the Tragedy of American Radicalism "A welcome contribution to the historical literature on teachers' unions that speaks also to contemporary teacher unionism. The focus on the Chicago Teachers Union and its major early leader, John Fewkes, during and after the Depression corrects an imbalance in the literature that has favored the Chicago Teachers Federation and Margaret Haley. Lyons's thorough analysis of the CTU raises important questions about the contours of union conservatism and its interaction with race and collective bargaining."--Wayne J. Urban, associate director and professor, Education Policy Center, University of AlabamaTable of ContentsAcknowledgments ix List of Abbreviations xiii Introduction 1 1. The Formation of the Chicago Teachers Union, 1929-1937 9 2. Struggling for an Identity, 1937-1941 49 3. World War II, Accommodation, and the Struggle for Equal Pay, 1941-1947 81 4. The Cold War in the Chicago Public Schools, 1947-1957 107 5. The Campaign for Collective Bargaining Rights and the Civil Rights Movement, 1957-1966 133 6. Teacher Power and Black Power Reform the Public Education System, 1966-1970 171 Conclusion 207 Notes 217 Index 271

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Book SynopsisAn American labor leader's eyewitness perspective on the rise of Nazi power in Weimar-era BerlinTrade Review“[Plotkin] is an astute observer and captures everchanging moods.”--Jewish Book World"A harrowing picture of Berlin ravaged by the Depression, the Weimar Republic's last months and the onset of Nazism. . . . A rich subtle and extremely readable account of a crucial moment in German history."--European Journal of American Studies."A rare jewel. . . . An extremely valuable source for comparative labour historians and for historians of the Weimar Republic and of National Socialism."--Revue Francaise D'etudes Americaines"Once I started reading this work, I could not put it down. Plotkin's diary is a remarkable analysis 'from the bottom up' of German society, working-class institution, and politics in the period of transition from the Weimar Republic to the rise of Hitler. A very important book."--Fraser Ottanelli, University of South Florida"Plotkin's writing is lively and conveys a vivid portrayal of German political and economic life on the eve of the Nazi takeover. It also provides an excellent sense of the impact of the Great Depression on German society. A valuable contribution to German history, labor history, and Jewish history."--Vicki Caron, author of Uneasy Asylum: France and the Jewish Refugee Crisis, 1933-1942"We have almost no eyewitness accounts of this period from nonjournalist observers and certainly none from the perspective of an American working-class observer. This work adds significantly to our knowledge on the history of internationalist trade unionism in the U.S. during the 1920s and 1930s, which is under-researched for this period. Highly recommended."--Dorothee Schneider, coauthor of "My Life in Germany before and after January 30, 1933": Refugee Memoirs and ExperiencesTable of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Abbreviations xi Introduction xiii Catherine Collomp and Bruno GroppoAbraham Plotkin's Diary October-November 1932 3 December 1932 31 January 1933 85 February 1933 137Abraham Plotkin The Destruction of the Labor Movement in Germany 175 Brief Chronology of Political Events in Germany, 1930-33 197 Index 201Illustrations follow page 136

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Book SynopsisAmid America's sugar industry, a bitter debate over imperialism and immigrationTrade ReviewWinner of the Richard L. Wentworth/Illinois Award in American History, 2010. "A compelling account of the deeply interconnected worlds created by the emergence of a new cash crop."--American Historical Review“Mapes has uncovered patterns of global trade and labor markets that have had a profound impact on American society from the turn of the twentieth century up to the present day.”--Michigan Historical Review "A very nuanced yet powerful examination of the triumph of industrialism over agricultural America."--The Annals of Iowa“Mapes tells the understudied sugar beet industry’s fascinating story, and links events in Michigan between 1899 and 1940 to the broader national and global considerations. . . . Recommended.”--Choice"A fascinating work that provides important information about the history of agriculture and the construction of the term 'factories in the field' and its connections with the American empire. This book should become a mainstay among works in ethnic studies, agricultural labor, corporate power, and the state."--Gilbert G. Gonzalez, author of Culture of Empire: American Writers, Mexico, and Mexican Immigrants, 1880-1930"Fascinating and beautifully crafted, Sweet Tyranny places growers, workers, and processors at the center of national debates over immigration, imperialism, protectionism, child labor, and a living wage."--Cindy Hahamovitch, author of The Fruits of Their Labor: Atlantic Coast Farmworkers and the Making of Migrant Poverty, 1870-1945

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Book SynopsisA broad, historical appraisal of the evolution of work safety and health regulation in the U.S.Trade Review"A first-rate political and legal history. . . . Recommended."--Choice"A wonderfully interesting book. Making Capitalism Safe is full of new information on the woefully overlooked and understudied state-level industrial safety apparatus of the twentieth-century United States. This study will be required reading for scholars in fields ranging from business and political history to law, political science, and more."--John Fabian Witt, author of The Accidental Republic: Crippled Workingmen, Destitute Widows, and the Remaking of American LawTable of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Introduction 1 1. From Common Law to Factory Laws 11 2. The Administrative Transformation of Work Safety and Health Law 31 3. Selling the Safety Spirit 52 4. The First Safety Codes 68 5. The Club of the Law 85 6. Politics and Work Safety Education in the Interwar Economy 103 7. The Technocrats Take Command 119 8. The Limits of Law Enforcement 136 9. The Troubled Campaign against Occupational Disease 152 Epilogue: The Road to OSHA 172 Appendix 183 Notes 187 Bibliography 243 Index 265Illustrations follow page 84

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Book SynopsisA nuanced assessment of citizenship and labor in the Progressive EraTrade Review"This is an important work, one of the most important recent books, not only in labor history, but in social theory. Filled with insights and surprising twists, it repays a careful reading and rereading. It is a model study; I have added it to my graduate reading lists and urge everyone to do the same."--Labor History"Recommended."--Choice "Currarino's book will enable readers to understand the transformations that took place during the Gilded Age, not only in the minds of workers but in American society as a whole. Altogether, the book is an impressive accomplishment."--Business History Review "This splendidly researched cultural and intellectual history of the 'labor question' during the Gilded Age offers a masterful explanation of the move from a producerist to a consumerist understanding of citizenship and labor. The Labor Question in America will be widely read by students and scholars of the labor movement, the development of twentieth-century liberalism, and the history of the Gilded Age."--Lawrence M. Lipin, author of Workers and the Wild: Conservation, Consumerism, and Labor in Oregon, 1910-30"Rosanne Currarino has provided a nuanced, deeply informed reading of the complex intellectual and cultural currents that shaped the labor question in the late nineteenth century. This is quite simply a marvelously informative book."--The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era"More a cultural history of the debates over the role of labor in American life than a history of labor activities themselves. This book packs a surprisingly large volume of historical content and sophisticated argument into a slim volume."--History Teacher "This book is a valuable contribution to the history of the Gilded Age, as it provides scholars of the period with a concise intellectual history to better position studies of workers themselves."--Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas"A compelling case that economic democracy requires the full participation of the American working class in the economic life of the nation as both workers and consumers."--H-Net Reviews "Currarino has identified a vital shift in the debate over the meaning of democracy in a nation where such a large portion of its citizens were dependent upon others for their livelihoods."--American Historical Review

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Book SynopsisApplying feminist thinking to labor studies in a global contextTrade Review"Making Feminist Politics is empirically rich and analytically nuanced. I do not know of another book with this breadth of focus. Ranging from the family to global governance and from internal politics in an international union to coalition-building at the World Social Forum, this is fascinating material."--Catherine Eschle, coauthor of Making Feminist Sense of the Global Justice Movement"This is a book that has been needed for a long time. Rarely have I seen an analysis of women's roles in contemporary union organizing placed in an international context."--Nancy A. Naples, author of Feminism and Method: Ethnography, Discourse Analysis, and Activist Research"A compelling hundred-plus year history of organizing by union women within and across unions and borders."--Labor Studies JournalTable of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Abbreviations ix 1. Feminist Politics and Transnational Labor Movements 1 2. Sexual Politics, Activism, and Everyday Life 24 3. Sexual Politics, Labor, and the Family 47 4. Political Spaces: Centers, Conferences, and Campaigns 67 5. Feminist Politics in International Labor 87 6. Women's Activism in the International Metalworkers' Federation 108 7. Another World Is Possible for Women, If ... 125 8. Conclusion: The Future of Feminist Politics in Global Union Movements 139 Notes 147 References 153 Index 177

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Book SynopsisExposing the corporate structures behind exploitative migrant labour programsTrade ReviewBest Book Award for 2011-2012, United Association for Labor Education (UALE), 2013. "Immanuel Ness's Guest Workers and Resistance to U.S. Corporate Despotism offers an important intervention in the immigration debate by offering a much-needed, critical examination of the existing US guest worker programs. . . . A timely and important read for migration scholars and students alike."--Social Forces"Relevant to anyone with an interest in the labour movement today."--Socialism and Democracy"The topics of guest worker programs, internal and international labor migration, and worker organizing are fundamental to understanding today's economy and labor market. Immanuel Ness's argument that business is actively involved in creating the notion of labor shortages while pushing programs to meet their interests is a crucial addition to the immigration policy debate."--Stephanie Luce, author of Fighting for a Living Wage"Incisive, scholarly yet accessible, but always uncompromising, this invaluable new contribution to migration studies exposes ways in which conservative and Republican officials, trade unions, corporations, and federal government policies collude and conspire against labor and, indeed, human rights."--Saër Maty Bâ, author of Film and Migration: Africa in Global ContextsTable of ContentsPreface and Acknowledgements 1. Introduction: Guest Workers of the World; 2. Migration and Class Struggle; 3. Political Economy of Migrant Labor in US History: Fabricating a Migration Policy for Business; 4. India's Global and Internal Labor Migration and Resistance: A Case Study of Hyderabad; 5. Temporary Labor Migration and U.S. and Foreign-born Worker Resistance; 6. The Migration of Low-Wage Jamaican Guest Workers; 7. Who Can Organize? Trade Unions, Worker Insurgency, Labor Power Bibliography; Index

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Book SynopsisOrganizing the "unorganizable"Trade Review"Lisa Phillips has written a first-rate account exploring the history of District 65 (originally Wholesale and Dry Good Workers, or WDGW). From the union's early days during the Depression in the 1930s, District 65 sought to navigate the complexities of American politics and provide a voice for low wage workers. Activists and students of labor history and politics should definitely read this book!"--American Historical Review"An interesting case study of Local 65 in New York from the Depression years through the 1960s. This 'renegade union' attempted to organize and improve the lives of low-wage workers (often African American and Jewish men and women). The book is meticulously researched, offers a unique case study, and is very well worth a close reading."--The Historian"A Renegade Union presents a much needed perspective on an array of topics that have received scant attention by scholars. With great flair and insightful details Philips places the history of District 65 and several other radical unions at the center of this analysis of the Civil Right Movement. . . . lucidly written and path-breaking. . . . Phillips makes a valuable contribution to the growing literature on labor organizing, civil rights campaigns, and community activism."--The Journal of African American History"The book is meticulously researched, offers a unique case study, and is very well worth a close reading."--The Historian"Phillips has presented a crucial study on how left-wing unionism not only survived the Cold War but also rebuilt momentum during the 1960s and 1970s to maintain their relevance in an increasingly hostile economic environment."--The Journal of American History"A Renegade Union deepens our understanding of how left-led unions in the mid-twentieth century distinguished themselves from other unions, and helps us see the possibilities for social movement unionism. Lisa Phillips's well-told story of District 65 will be welcomed by labor historians, civil rights scholars, labor activists, and interested general readers."--Rosemary Feurer, author of Radical Unionism in the Midwest, 1900–1950Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix List of Acronyms xiii Introduction 1 1. Community-Based, "Catch-All" Organizing on New York's Lower East Side 15 2. Getting beyond Racial, Ethnic, Religious, and Skill-Based Divisions 42 3. "Like a Scab over an Infected Sore": Full and Fair Employment during and after World War II 66 4. Attached from the Right and the Left: Community-Organizing, Civic Unionism during the Early Years of the Cold War 91 5. A Third Labor Federation? The Distributive, Processing, and Office Workers of America (DPO) 114 6. Community Organizing under the AFL-CIO Umbrella 137 Conclusion 167 Abbreviated Chronology 187 Notes 189 Index 221

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Book SynopsisExplores the history of actors' unionism in the United States from the late nineteenth century to the onset of the Great Depression.Trade Review"The book entertains as much as it educates. . . . a superlative read."--Journal of American Studies"By tracing the contentious relationship between theatre managers and actors in the early 1900s, examining the performative elements of the actors’ strike in 1919, and investigating the failure of the AEA to claim a stake in Hollywood, Holmes plots an engaging historical analysis that offers thorough detail and compelling examples."--Journal of American Culture"Sean P. Holmes spins a lively, well-researched yarn about how actors decided to take matters into their own hands, giving birth to the union that survives today: Actors' Equity Association (AEA). . . . a clear and smart study."--Labour/Le Travail“With his attention to actors as both producers and embodiments of what they produce, the unique gender dynamics of theater as workplace, and the structure of the theater industry, Holmes has done a great job of writing the history of a union that challenges conventional labor history understandings of unionism and extends the scope of American theater history.”--Journal of American History"Sean P. Holmes has given us a thoughtful, lively, clearly written, and cogently argued book about AEA's early years. . . . This admirable book begins to fill a vacuum in scholarship on the AEA and should inspire more work that accounts for what AEA meant--and means--to the American stage."--Theatre Survey"The stage has long been recognized as a site of consumption and of battles over the moral order. But Sean P. Holmes reminds us that it was also a workplace. . . . A substantial contribution to the historiography of the Progressive Era and the 1920s."--H-Net Reviews"A very rich study. . . . For labor educators and union organizers, Holmes' excellent book could be used to begin new conversations about how to connect creativity to labor action."--Labor Studies Journal"A compelling story that needs to be told. This history of unionization within the theatrical profession provides crucial insights into theater management and the industrialization of the entertainment industry."--Gillian M. Rodger, author of Champagne Charlie and Pretty Jemima: Variety Theater in the Nineteenth Century "With active and engaging prose, this volume traces the history of the Actors' Equity Association from late-nineteenth century transformations in the theatrical industry. An excellent contribution to theater history, labor studies, American cultural studies, and gender studies."--Kathryn J. Oberdeck, author of The Evangelist and the Impresario: Religion, Entertainment, and Cultural Politics in America, 1884-1914

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Book SynopsisSeeking to historicize today's "Great Recession," this volume includes essays that uses examples from North America, South America, Europe, Asia, and Australia to situate the current economic crisis and its impact on workers in the context of previous abrupt shifts in the modern-day capitalist marketplace.Trade ReviewILHA Book of the Year Award, International Labor History Association, 2014. "Workers in Hard Times: A Long View of Economic Crises examines the history of economic depressions, recessions, and crises in North America, New Zealand, Australia, parts of Europe and Asia, and worker responses to them. At its core lie the issues of agency and structure, culture and conditioning. The well-written essays will appeal to those interested in past and present responses to economic troubles and ways out of the current global recession." --Neville Kirk, author of Labour and the Politics of Empire: Britain and Australia 1900 to the Present"The essays serve as important reminders of how interconnected world economic conditions have always been, and of how much more interconnected they are now."--Journal of American History"This book could have been another collection of essays in which academics principally talk to each other, but it is instead accessible to both academic and non-academic audiences. Hopefully, interested readers yearning for social and economic justice will peruse its pages and maybe even be inspired to unfurl a red flag."--Canadian Historical Review"The quality of writing is high. I recommend the book highly to all interested in the topic indicated in its title."--Labor Studies Journal"This is the rare edited collection that makes readers wish they were at the original conference at which the papers first appeared. . . . Present there and in this volume are some of the biggest names in labor and industrial history."--The Journal of American History"Recommended."--ChoiceTable of ContentsContributors Sven Beckert, Sean Cadigan, Leon Fink, Alvin Finkel, Wendy Goldman, Gaetan Heroux, Joseph A. McCartin, David Montgomery, Edward Montgomery, Melanie Nolan, Bryan D. Palmer, Scott Reynolds Nelson, Joan Sangster, Judith Stein, Hilary Wainright, and Lu Zhang.

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Book SynopsisDuring the struggle for the eight-hour workday and a shorter workweek, Chicago emerged as an important battleground for workers in 'the entire civilized world' to redeem time from the workplace in order to devote it to education, civic duty, health, family, and leisure. William A. Mirola explores how the city''s eight-hour movement intersected with a Protestant religious culture that supported long hours to keep workers from idleness, intemperance, and secular leisure activities. Analyzing how both workers and clergy rewove working-class religious cultures and ideologies into strategic and rhetorical frames, Mirola shows how every faith-based appeal contested whose religious meanings would define labor conditions and conflicts. As he notes, the ongoing worker-employer tension transformed both how clergy spoke about the eight-hour movement and what they were willing to do, until intensified worker protest and employer intransigence spurred Protestant clerTrade Review"Mirola is able to articulate a nuanced, almost dialectical appreciation for the relationship between religion and social movements even when the churches and the labor movement activists were nearly always moving in opposite directions."--Middle West Review"Mirola offers a clearly argued and well-researched piece of scholarship. . . . Valuable for understanding turn-of-the-century Chicago."--H-Net Reviews"A careful examination of alliance-building between labor activists and Protestant clergy… Mirola does a fine job of keeping the perspectives of workers, clergy, and industrialists all in the mix--a balancing act that makes the book far more than a case study of the Social Gospel Movement."--American Historical Review "As a thorough analysis of rhetoric, Redeeming Time is superb. . . . Redeeming Time is an important addition to the rapidly growing historical conversation on religion and the working classes in the United States."--Fides et Historia"The fields of labor and religious history have converged in a new body of work that explores the spiritual dimensions of America's working people. William A. Mirola's Redeeming Time is an important and unique contribution to this emergent literature."--The Journal of American History"Redeeming Time: Protestantism and Chicago's Eight-Hour Movement, 1866-1912. . . departs from existing literature on religion and social movements by focusing on the potential risks and drawbacks of religious involvement in social movements."--American Journal of Sociology"Mirola creatively challenges what we thought we knew about religion's role in one of the most important dramas unfolding in the Gilded Age--the struggle to limit the workday. His theoretical approach to the uses of religious rhetoric should be required reading for students of reform."--Ken Fones-Wolf, author of Glass Towns: Industry, Labor, and Political Economy in Appalachia, 1890–1930s"While much has been written about religious institutions and the labor movement the analysis has rarely been done critically and too often from an instrumental perspective. Redeeming Time: Protestantism and Chicago’s Eight-Hour Movement, 1866-1912 however is the rare book that provides students of labor history a precise sense of how and why the church was reacting to worker struggles. In William A. Mirola's persuasive telling we realize that in the fight for the shorter work day the church never substantively tried to influence employers to humanize the work place. Instead it was economic, political, and mass worker resistance that accomplished what appeals to a Christian community could not."--Robert Bruno, author of Justified by Work: Identity and the Meaning of Faith in Chicago’s Working-Class Churches

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewDavid Montgomery Award, Organization of American Historians (OAH), 2016. "Elizabeth and Ken Fones-Wolf have produced the best book yet written on southern religious culture and its fateful intersection with the American labor movement during the crucial years when the twentieth-century fate of organized labor hung in the balance. This book is a treasure." --Joseph A. McCartin, author of Collision Course: Ronald Reagan, the Air Traffic Controllers, and the Strike that Changed America"A stunning social history of working-class southerners in the postwar South. . . . Highly recommended."--Choice"Struggle for the Soul of the Postwar South, is a brilliant addition to this increasingly robust body of scholarship...The Fones-Wolfs' book will be of obvious interest to labor and religious historians, but it also deserves al a wide audience among the "new" historians of capitalism."--The Journal of Southern Religion"Elizabeth and Ken Fones-Wolf provide an outstanding account of the role of religion in the Congress of Industrial Organization's (CIO) campaign to organize industrial workers in the South after World War II… By weaving together the strands of American labor and religious history, the Fones-Wolfs have done the signal service of requiring students of both to take them up."--American Historical Review"Elizabeth and Ken Fones-Wolf have written an engaging book that explores the post-World War II labour movement in the US south through the lens of religious culture… A major intervention in southern and labour history, this book promises to influence how historians understand and analyze the intersections of religion and class in social justice movements and in the lives of working people."--Labour/Le Travail"Elizabeth Fones-Wolf and Ken Fones-Wolf have written a nuanced, well-argued monograph on the role of religion in Operation Dixie, the attempt by the Congress of Industrial Organization (CIO) to organize southern workers after World War II… An illuminating study for a variety of historians."--Journal of American History"Grounded in a wealth of archival sources, ranging from oral and local histories to the records of churches and unions, the Fones-Wolfs' multifaceted text is a brilliant and timely intervention in the scholarship, and a pleasure to read."-- Register of the Kentucky Historical Society"The Fones-Wolfs' masterful analysis is essential reading for understanding the dynamics of these conflicts."--North Carolina Historical Review "Struggle for the Soul of the Postwar South is a unique take on an all-too-familiar story."--Journal of Religion "A landmark study. The authors use this insightful and often surprising history to shed new light on the failure of Operation Dixie between 1946 and 1953. In doing so, they deepen our understanding of the relationship between evangelical Christianity and southern labor history, as well as between religion and working-class conservatism, race relations, and anti-unionism."--Jarod Roll, author of Spirit of Rebellion: Labor and Religion in the New Cotton South "The authors have accomplished the rare feat of gracefully combining labor, social, and religious history into a seamless whole, and in the process explaining a story and a tragedy has cried out for such an explanation. This will be essential reading for those interested in southern, labor, and American religious history, and for those who want to think hard about how religious traditions interact with movements for social justice."--Paul Harvey, co-author of The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewHerbert G. Gutman Award, Labor and Working-Class History Association (LAWCHA), 2009. "Through portraits of industrial accidents, political funerals, and burial rituals, this compelling reinterpretation of working-class culture and the making of labor solidarity highlights how bodies in their gendered, class, and ethnic valences matter--in death as well as life."--Eileen Boris, Hull Professor of Feminist Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara"A tantalizing and well-researched glimpse into the rituals of death for workers whose lives held little value outside their own communities in industrializing America."--Annals of Iowa"Rosenow is to be congratulated on his mastery of diverse literatures and his rigorous argument. Death and Dying in the Working Class, 1865-1920 demonstrates that wageworker's rituals--and the industrial violence that engendered them--were foundational to the formation of working-class identities and organizations."--American Historical Review"In his thoughtfully conceived and clearly developed study, Michael K. Rosenow shows that in death as in life, American workers existed on anything but a level playing field."--The Journal of American History"For scholars seeking insight into the formation of class identity among the industrial workforce and an intellectually creative use of methodologies to examine the links between religion, ethnicity, and class, Rosenow's study provides an evocative study of social transformation as well as introducing a rich field for further research."--H-Net"This award-winning book (it won the Herbert G. Gutman Prize from the Labor and Working Class History Association) helps us understand the complex ways the working class has responded to death on the job and expands our notions of American ways of caring for—and about—the dead."--Journal of Social History"Rosenow's book offers rich insight into how the working class of the early twentieth century approached death within their historical and situational context."--Working USA"Engaging, thoughtful, and very readable . . . It adds to our knowledge of how Americans responded to the changes brought by industrialization in the second half of the nineteenth century."--Robert V. Wells, author of Life Flows On in Endless Song: Folk Songs and American History "Rosenow usefully extends a now-rich literature on American memorial practices to the northern industrial working classes from the Civil War to World War I. . . . This pioneering study deserves wide attention."--Leon Fink, author of Sweatshops at Sea: Merchant Seamen in the World's First Globalized Industry, from 1812 to the Present

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"An illuminating and persuasive retelling of the Civil War from the bottom up." --Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society"Mark A. Lause's deeply researched study of labor during the Civil War is an ambitious effort to change how we understand the significance of the Civil War and the history of the American labor movement, together."--Journal of American History"Historian Lause (Univ. of Cincinnati) significantly helps expand knowledge of the US labor movement in the period up to, during, and immediately after the Civil War. Highly recommended,"--Choice"Lause's book presents an impressive array of original scholarship. The immense detail he provides on little-known aspects of the Civil War-era labour movement will prove especially valuable as a resource to future researchers… by joining the history of the labour movement and the history of the war, Lause has filled a long-neglected gap in the literature on the mid-19th-century United States."--Labour/ Le Travail"An excellent synthesis of the daily struggles of working people during the war."--Journal of Southern History"Free Labor: The Civil War and the Making of an American Working Class stands as a major achievement, filling a huge gap in the literature and revising our understanding of nineteenth-century labor history and the history of the Civil War."--H-Net Reviews"Mark Lause has written a deeply researched and broad-ranging exploration of Civil War labor history for the twentieth-first century. . . . This is an important study that labor historians will build on for years to come."--North Carolina Historical Review"A major contribution in tying together the disparate labor movements throughout the United States in the Civil War years and in showing the continued strength of antebellum labor radicalism tied to abolition."--Gerald Friedman, author of Reigniting the Labor Movement: Restoring Means to Ends in a Democratic Labor Movement "Lause's study grapples with an almost infinite number of organizations, crafts, tactics, and settings. He focuses not only upon widely known leaders and theoreticians, but resurrects ordinary workers who struggled on the battlefield and the picket line. His ability to follow individuals from union organizations to the battlefield frankly made my jaw drop."--Adam Tuchinsky, author of Horace Greeley's New-York Tribune: Civil War Era-Socialism and the Crisis of Free Labor "In his book Free Labor, Mark Lause has answered so many questions about how the trade union movement and free labor advocates participated in the American Civil War and navigated its sea changes. He demonstrates how in the words of one Iowa harnessmaker, the war 'was a great labor movement.' As the history of ideology, Lause shows how the malleable idea of free labor served as the aspiration of slaves and other workers as well. As social history, the book serves as an important bridge to connect the extensive literature on laborers in the early American republic to that on post-war railroad unions. Lause shows how trade union proponents in skilled trades went to war in leadership positions and battle in the Federal Union army. At home, during the war, working men and women continued to press for shorter working hours and wages to keep up with the rising prices that the war produced. He identifies how working people fared and pushed for reforms during the four critical war years. By analyzing the digitized newspaper collections, Lause has found the many lost pockets of strike activity, such as the great slave strike, and he documents which strikes won and which lost. From the navy yards to the print shops, collective action continued during the war. This book contains treasures." --Lea S. VanderVelde, author of Redemption Songs: Suing for Freedom before Dred Scott

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Zimmer has produced a powerful text that brings to life numerous forgotten rebels and significantly expands our understanding of anti-statist social movements in the first half of the twentieth century… This immaculately researched and carefully composed monograph thus sets a new bar for the study of anarchism."--Anarchist Studies"Most students of US radicalism have long assumed that anarchism was brought to the US in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by immigrants from eastern and southern Europe. Zimmer demonstrates that the real story is more complicated. Recommended."--Choice"Zimmer's archival research is impressive… a fascinating examination of the interplay of individuals of various ethnicities… involved with anarchism and its sympathizers in San Francisco."--International Review of Social History"Well researched and eloquent."--Jewish Book Council"This is likely to be an essential work on immigrant anarchism for years to come."--H-Net Reviews"Drawing on an impressive and unprecedented array of Yiddish- and Italian-language sources, Zimmer details both the ideological connections and ethnocultural obstacles that supported and separated anarchist communities. . . . Zimmer's research and scope is encyclopedic. . . . Zimmer's fine book is indispensable."--The Journal of American History"Immigrants against the State breaks new ground in anarchist history and offers a timely contribution to the knowledge of immigrant radicalism, past and present. It is essential reading for students and scholars of radical and immigration history, and for anyone interested in exploring immigrant lives marked by a transnational collective identity that embraced diversity regardless of the national, ethnic and racial divides.--Labour History"A vitally important transnational work that makes significant interventions into the historiography of immigration, anarchism, labor and the working class, and late-nineteenth to early twentieth-century politics."--American Historical Review "An extraordinarily well-documented and stimulating read."--Italian American Review "A beautiful, exceptionally well-researched work of transnational history."--Canadian Journal of History "Admirably, the author uses Italian- and Yiddish-language sources to produce one of the most extensive accounts of anarchism in twentieth-century America. One of the best histories of anarchism in the United States."--Tony Michels, author of A Fire in Their Hearts: Yiddish Socialists in New York "I have been waiting for a book like this for a long time, one that tells of the multiethnic and transnational world of early twentieth-century anarchism, not just from the perspective of the notorious figures, but from the grass roots. Zimmer is both a highly gifted storyteller and a meticulous, careful researcher whose account follows this history through a truly astonishing range of sources in Yiddish, Italian, Spanish, German, and English, from archives across the globe. This is the new generation of transnational working-class history at its very best."--Jennifer Guglielmo, author of Living the Revolution: Italian Women's Resistance and Radicalism in New York City, 1880–1945 "A century ago, anarchists were everywhere, a movement in constant movement. Having mastered the languages of the two largest groups of immigrant anarchists in the United States, Kenyon Zimmer paints intimate portraits of their Yiddish- and Italian-speaking worlds. The book will be required reading for all scholars of immigrant radicalism. More broadly, anyone interested in the complex intersections of class, mobility, and culture in our own times will find much to ponder in the cosmopolitanism and internationalism immigrants created as they responded to the violent nationalist politics of their own times."--Donna R. Gabaccia, author of Immigration and American Diversity: A Social and Cultural History

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"In Chinese in the Woods, historian Sue Fawn Chung fills a notable gap in western history… This book is meticulously researched and combines an impressive array of both secondary and primary sources, including an innovative incorporation of archeological data… Chinese in the Woods could well prove a gold mine of statistical and historical data."--H-Net Reviews"Chinese in the Woods is an informative piece of work, exploring a new area in the study of Chinese immigrants in the West."--Western Historical Quarterly"This is an extremely important study about an important and understudied topic."--Reviews in American History"A significant contribution to the study of the American West. It also tells us a lot about the lumber industry in California and Nevada--the business, labor, production, and technical aspects--which make for a fascinating subject."--Evelyn Hu-DeHart, editor of Across the Pacific: Asian Americans and Globalization"Chinese in the Woods is a meticulously researched and important contribution to the history of labor in the American West and the critical Chinese played in the lumber trade."--Pacific Historical Review"This research challenges some of the stereotypes of Chinese loggers as "cheap" and docile in the period of merging unionism, anti-Chinese movements, and immigration restrictions. Recommended."--Choice"An impressive testimonial to Chung's meticulous research and fine scholarship… A very worthwhile addition to your library."--Asian American Comparative Collection Newsletter"Chinese in the Woods is a compelling treatment of the little-known Chinese labor experiences in the logging and lumbering industry and how these workers engaged with the wider community."--American Historical Review "Men and timber but much more! Chung's original work opens new vistas on the experience of Chinese and the building of the West. It is a story of labor but also of ethnic experience, trans-Pacific relations, business, and 19th century technologies. A great read!"--Gordon H. Chang, co-editor of Chinese American Voices: From the Gold Rush to the Present "A richly contextualized and meticulously researched account of a little known yet important group of Chinese immigrant workers, illuminating not only their fascinating experiences but also their role in developing the U.S. economy."--Yong Chen, author of Chinese San Francisco 1850-1943: A Transpacific Community

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewHonorable mention, David Montgomery Award, Organization of American Historians (OAH), 2016 "Novel and compelling. . . . Sheds new light on the overlooked historical experiences of rural-industrial workers."--Journal of Southern History"Smokestacks in the Hills contributes to our understanding of Appalachia and how it diverged from many of the traditional norms of American labor history."--Journal of Appalachian Studies"Martin's historical analysis of working life in Hancock County provides a perspective that is both relevant and illuminating."--Labour "Lou Martin has produced a deeply researched and expertly crafted history of rural workers in an Appalachian county, a study that reveals how experiences on the countryside shaped class identities and social relations in industrial workplaces. Martin's sensitive portrait of West Virginia potters and steel workers goes a long way toward correcting the big city bias in our labor and industrial history, and it helps us understand why values like independence and self help shaped how rural folk asserted their own preferences when faced with national forces in the form of corporate welfare programs, CIO unions, New Deal programs, and the impacts of deindustrialization. Smokestacks in the Hills is a pathbreaking book."--James Green, author of The Devil Is Here in These Hills: West Virginia's Coal Miners and Their Battle for Freedom"Smokestacks in the Hills: Rural-Industrial Workers in West Virginia is excellent scholarship that will be of lasting value to labor historians as well as business leaders interested in how past entrepreneurs were able to develop, in rural settings, nationally prominent manufacturing facilities in the steel and pottery industries and to do so in a manner that allowed for more local control of both the marketplace and the communities surrounding the industrial development… Much more than just a traditional labor history tome. Although this is a scholarly work of considerable repute, it is easy to read and is worth the attention of business leaders interested in the development of a distinctive economy in West Virginia."--The State Journal, Charleston, WV"Smokestacks in the Hills stands as an excellent corrective to more urban-oriented studies and represents a strong addition to the literature of American working-class history."--West Virginia History"Martin's Smokestacks in the Hills historicizes and raises important questions about class solidarity, agency, and power, especially when rooted in localized institutions and cultural norms. The significance of the book is in Martin's primary focus on a sometimes unexplored layer of analysis--the importance of place--to scholarship grappling with class identity and its expression through class-based organizations."--Business History Review"Martin artfully weaves discussions of the technical aspects of pottery and tinplate production with a broader reading of gender and politics at the workplace."--Journal of Social History "Lucidly written with equal attention to the big picture and the small, demographic/economic statistics and the diverse voices of workers recounting their experiences and what they make of them, Smokestacks in the Hills is both an elegy for a brief moment of rural industrial stability and a cogent analysis of the strengths and limits of a working-class culture of 'making do.' A wonderful book--a sad story that somehow heartens."--Jack Metzgar, author of Striking Steel: Solidarity Remembered "Martin's wonderful book alerts all twentieth-century U.S. labor historians that we are telling only half the story if we ignore rural industrial workers and their local orientations forged through connections to land, place, family, and community."--Lisa M. Fine, author of The Story of Reo Joe: Work, Kin, and Community in Autotown, U.S.A. "An interesting explanation for the conservatism and occasionally antiunion sentiments of a group of industrial workers that contrasts with the philosophies and sentiments most commonly chronicled among urban workers."--Brooks Blevins, author of Ghost of the Ozarks: Murder and Memory in the Upland South

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Book SynopsisDuring the 1950s and 1960s, labor leaders Harold Gibbons and Ernest Calloway championed a new kind of labor movement that regarded workers as total persons interested in both workplace affairs and the exercise of effective citizenship in their communities. Working through Teamsters Local 688 and viewing the city of St. Louis as their laboratory, this remarkable interracial duo forged a dynamic political alliance that placed their citizen members on the front lines of epic battles for urban revitalization, improved public services, and the advancement of racial and economic justice. Parallel to their political partnership, Gibbons functioned as a top Teamsters Union leader and Calloway as an influential figure in St. Louis''s civil rights movement. Their pioneering efforts not only altered St. Louis''s social and political landscape but also raised fundamental questions about the fate of the post-industrial city, the meaning of citizenship, and the role of unions in shaping AmericaTrade Review"A captivating must-read for historians of postwar labor and civil rights movements as well as for present-day union officials and community organizers."--Journal of Southern History"Advocates of a powerful vision of what unions could and should do, Ernest Calloway and Harold Gibbons of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters pioneered a “total person unionism” that engaged rank-and-file energies in the workplace and broader community. In this important and highly readable joint biography, Robert Bussel breaks new ground that helps us rethink the politics of postwar labor at the local level.--Eric Arnesen, editor of The Black Worker: Race, Labor, and Civil Rights since Emancipation "The collaborative work of Calloway and Gibbons provides insight into labor at its post war best, and the path we must reclaim today. Total Person Unionism is a wonderful effort to reclaim that ground not only for historians but for all of us committed to economic justice and democracy today."--Larry Cohen, former president, Communications Workers of America"Bussel's careful and caring effort with Gibbons and Calloway deserves a much larger audience than labor historians alone; Fighting for Total Person Unionism is a must read for union leadership and staff and, especially, labor educators."--Labor Studies Journal"Robert Bussel makes a signal contribution to this emerging historiography in his dual biography of Harold Gibbons and Ernest Calloway, St. Louis labor leaders, one white and one black, who struggled against employer power, organized crime, and the city's culture of white supremacy."-Missouri Historical Review"As Robert Bussel's important recent book Fighting for Total Person Unionism: Harold Gibbons, Ernest Calloway, and Working-Class Citizenship (2015) reminds us, this tradition carried into postwar St. Louis where the Teamsters developed an innovative community steward program."--Dissent"Bussel paints a vivid portrait of two very complex--and often contradictory--union leaders. Fighting For Total Unionism: Harold Gibbons, Ernest Calloway, and Working Class Citizenship holds many important lessons for unionists today, and deserves to be read widely."--People's World"Bussel makes an important contribution to scholarship on the intersections of the labor and civil rights movements-- it challenges a postwar labor declension narrative by showcasing how progressive unionism transcended narrow conceptualization."--Pacific Historical Review"The book is a significant contribution to the history of the postwar labor movement."--Journal of American History "Bussel does a remarkable job researching and reporting on these men and their union, and his language is likely meant to inspire readers with the promise of old ideas that might have fresh relevance for the challenges of today."--Labour/Le Travail "Bussel's Fighting for Total Person Unionism is a fine addition to the growing scholarly and historical literature on St. Louis as well as the historiography of labor and civil rights history."--American Historical Review "Fighting for Total Person Unionism is a thoroughly researched, elegantly constructed, and marvelously engaging study of two long-time labor activists. But it’s more than that, really. Through the braided story of Harold Gibbons and Ernest Calloway, Bob Bussel recreates the social vision that animated much of the post-World War II labor movement--and reminds us how much we’ve lost in our age of rampant individualism."--Kevin Boyle, author of Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights and Murder in the Jazz Age "The collaborative work of Calloway and Gibbons provides insight into labor at its post war best, and the path we must reclaim today. Total Person Unionism is a wonderful effort to reclaim that ground not only for historians but for all of us committed to economic justice and democracy today."--Larry Cohen, former president, Communications Workers of America "Bussel is offering us a unique perspective on the nation's largest union in an era when it was at its peak of influence. He also asserts that the careers of these two men offer important lessons to organized labor today, of tactics and approaches that would help the movement regain its lost relevance."--David Witwer, author of Shadow of the Racketeer: Scandal in Organized Labor

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewHerbert G. Gutman Prize, Labor and Working-Class History Association (LAWCHA), 2011 "Remes is among the vanguard of the new disaster historians, motivated by the twenty-first century wave of disasters to search out antecedents that help us understand the formation of a modern state that 'manages' (or does not manage) disasters like Hurricane Katrina. . . . A tour de force of method for the new disaster history, and hopefully a portent of things to come in this emerging field."--American Historical Review"Remes' impressive research demonstrates throughout that even though the actions of working-class people drew on tight social bonds and a deep reservoir of local knowledge, their behavior was often illegible to the ascendant class of relief managers and government experts."--Journal of American History"Disaster Citizenship is an impressive accomplishment that offers a great deal to those interested in social history, the history of the working class, the history of progressivism, urban history, state building in the Progressive Era, the US-Canada borderlands, and comparative approaches to the study of history."--H-Net Review"Jacob A. C. Remes has shed new light over a broad terrain of Progressive Era historiography through this richly researched, sensitive, transnational comparison of the 1914 Salem, Massachusetts fire and the 1917 Halifax, Nova Scotia explosion."--New England Quarterly"An excellent historical study rooted in high quality research. Remes' management of the two case studies successfully supports his central arguments relating to the state, the people, and ways of forming citizenship at times of crisis and relief, and his methodologies encourage us to look at disasters, both past and present, in new ways."--Labour/Le Travail"Remes's excellent and engaging book contributes to long-running debates about the nature of working-class life, to more recent discussions of transnational progressive reform and state-society relations and to current conversations--both popular and scholarly--about events such as Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy."--Labor: Studies in Working Class History"This is a thoughtful, robust work of history, exactly the kind of study that we need to revitalize the history of working people."--Canadian Historical Review"A striking juxtaposition of the hierarchical order of experts and vernacular order created by victims themselves, Remes's finely grained comparison of two major turn-of-the-century disasters in Halifax and Salem represents a major contribution to our understanding of the dynamics and effects of spontaneous order in a crisis. Meticulously researched, gripping, and important."--James C. Scott, author of Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed "In his meticulously researched and intelligently argued book, Disaster Citizenship, Jacob Remes has advanced and perfected the kind of deep social history pioneered by Herbert Gutman and Linda Gordon in their studies of working people’s lives. More than any other historian writing in this tradition, Remes has revealed the power of the informal networks and solidarities that existed in poorer communities, particularly during disasters, and he has highlighted the ways agents of state intervention failed to understand these strengths and their democratic significance. Scholars will find in this excellent study a model of transnational history and other readers, especially officials in charge of disaster relief, will discover a new way of thinking about the people they are attempting to 'rescue.'"--James Green, author of The Devil Is Here in These Hills: West Virginia’s Coal Miners and Their Battle for Freedom "Disaster Citizenship provides a rich, original, and sensitive account of responses to two urban catastrophes, the Great Salem Fire (1914) and the 1917 Halifax explosion. Remes sets a new standard for transnational continental history as the everyday solidarity of working people is contrasted with the progressive state, civic institutions, and emergent welfare professionals."--Suzanne Morton, author of Wisdom, Justice, and Charity: Canadian Social Welfare through the Life of Jane B Wisdom, 1884–1975

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Book Synopsis The Pew and the Picket Line collects works from a new generation of scholars working at the nexus where religious history and working-class history converge. Focusing on Christianity and its unique purchase in America, the contributors use in-depth local histories to illustrate how Americans male and female, rural and urban, and from a range of ethnic backgrounds dwelt in a space between the church and the shop floor. Their vivid essays show Pentecostal miners preaching prosperity while seeking miracles in the depths of the earth, while aboveground black sharecroppers and white Protestants establish credit unions to pursue a joint vision of cooperative capitalism. Innovative and essential, The Pew and the Picket Line reframes venerable debates as it maps the dynamic contours of a landscape sculpted by the powerful forces of Christianity and capitalism. Contributors: Christopher D. Cantwell, Heath W. Carter, Janine Giordano Drake, Ken Fones-Wolf, Erik Gellman, Alison Collis GreeneTrade Review"This is an important collection of essays that for all its many strengths certainly represents only the beginning of what in the coming years promises to be a flood of books on labor and religion."--Labor: Studies in Working-Class History"Taken as a whole, the articles provide a rich sense of possibilities inherent in the cross-fertilization of labor and religious histories. For the social and cultural historian as well, this is a collection well worth reading."--Journal of American History"The Pew and the Picket Line is an example of a collection done right. With an outstanding introductory essay on the historiography of religion and labor by Cantwell, Carter, and Drake, along with cutting-edge research throughout the rest of the book, this collection should be essential reading for historians of American religion and labor."--Annals of Iowa“With this diverse collection of essays, Cantwell, Carter, and Drake admirably succeed in merging the histories of religion and the working class. Without exception the work is sharply focused and impeccably researched.”—History News Network"Together, the excellent scholars highlight the exciting possibilities and future studies of the histories of religions and labor in the US. This book covers wide ground temporally, geographically, methodologically, and theoretically. For the study of both US Christianities and US Capitalisms, this is a must read... Highly recommended."--Choice"The Pew and the Picket Line is a useful addition to the recent literature that seeks to examine the historical interplay of religion and labor. What distinguishes this book from some others in the field is its focus on the working class itself--those in the pew--rather than leadership. The contributors' willingness to engage seriously with the religious beliefs of their subjects is to be commended, as well as their attention to race, gender, ethnicity, class, place, and denomination."--Labour/ Le Travail"Readers of all stripes will be pleased with the collection assembled by Cantwell, Carter, and Drake. Its essays are a valuable addition to the canon."--Fides et Historia"These essays are a welcome addition to a burgeoning field of research. They are a wonderful starting point for examining that what happens between the pew and the picket line often occurs more so in the hearts of believers than in the precepts of religious leaders." --Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society "This is a terrific collection. In treating the religious commitments of American working people seriously, it offers a more holistic perspective of these men and women that reflects their very humanity." --Nick Salvatore, author of Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist "Fully attentive to the historical scholarship and political theory upon which the volume’s scholarship builds, Cantwell, Carter, and Drake also take the necessary steps in their historiographical introduction to reopen all questions about how work, race, gender, ethnicity, region, and religion have intersected in the American past, and to suggest provocative new ones. The richly textured historical case studies that follow more than fulfill the agenda the editors set. This is a superb work of collective history by some of the most creative younger historians working on the subject today."--Robert Orsi, author of The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community in Italian Harlem, 1880–1950 "The coeditors have assembled a tremendous and diverse team for this volume. Each essay is by itself a significant contribution, and some provide brilliant and pioneering analysis and the introduction is definitely the best historiographical overview, survey, and analysis of scholarship in the field that I have ever read. It sets the standard for the next generation of scholarship."--Paul Harvey, coauthor of The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America "Navigating a wide spectrum of time and workspaces, racial and ethnic expressions, and blue-collar gospels, this brilliantly conceived and superbly executed volume demands that historians shift their gaze from the much examined corporate to under-scrutinized labor side of modern American Christianity and capitalism. Fifty years after its delivery, Herbert Gutman's plea for historians to take seriously the authentic and empowering qualities of working-class belief has finally been addressed, head on, with critical empathy and care, in an accessible manner. This is a timely and significant scholarly intervention." --Darren Dochuk, author of From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain-folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Fischer expands our perspective of anti-communism temporally, shifting it to these late nineteenth-century roots, and deepens our understanding of it to contain clearly, and from its earliest origins, a laissez faire, open shop agenda. . . . This book will be welcomed and appreciated by those interested not only in the history of communism but also in understanding the limits of American politics in the twentieth century."--American Communist History "Fischer's sweep is broad; his results are impressive. Recommended."--Choice"Refreshingly original."--New York Review of Books"Fischer has produced a very original, well-researched and well-written account of how a relatively small but highly influential group of interlocking elites, including political and military intelligence officials, wealthy businessmen, members of 'patriotic' societies, and other conservatives, worked successfully to keep alive highly exaggerated fears of communism that had caused a national panic during the 1919-20 'red scare.'"--Robert Justin Goldstein, author of Political Repression in Modern America"Spider Web turns out to be a well-researched and thoughtful interdisciplinary work that intertwiningly uses perspectives of history, political science, sociology, and media studies. . . . Fischer's research is extensive, and in many aspects pioneering. Not only does he sum up the previous findings on American anticommunism, but also adds new information and, more importantly, provides new analytical perspectives."--Americana"Nick Fischer makes a major contribution to the growing literature on American antisubversive organizations. Spider Web establishes, through rigorous and original research, that anticommunism was intimately connected with private and public networks that promoted antilabor laws, eugenics, and immigration restriction."--Phillip Deery, author of Red Apple: Communism and McCarthyism in Cold War New York

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Book SynopsisRuth Milkman''s groundbreaking research in women''s labor history has contributed important perspectives on work and unionism in the United States. On Gender, Labor, and Inequality presents four decades of Milkman''s essential writings, tracing the parallel evolutions of her ideas and the field she helped define. Milkman''s introduction frames a career-spanning scholarly project: her interrogation of historical and contemporary intersections of class and gender inequalities in the workplace, and the efforts to challenge those inequalities. Early chapters focus on her pioneering work on women''s labor during the Great Depression and the World War II years. In the book''s second half, Milkman turns to the past fifty years, a period that saw a dramatic decline in gender inequality even as growing class imbalances created greater-than-ever class disparity among women. She concludes with a previously unpublished essay comparing the impact of the Great Depression and the Great ReceTrade Review"Milkman's book is a must read, not only to remind those of us influenced by her excellent work how significant her scholarship was and is, but also for new scholars who can trace the intellectual evolution of a labor studies author whose writing has always been grounded in painstaking empirical research, and simultaneously dedicated to analyzing the origins and operation of social inequality, even as specific topics, theories, and approaches have shifted over time."--Labour/ Le Travail"Milkman's collection will well serve scholars of the Great Plains with its comprehensive coverage, from a 1976 study of Great Depression female workers to an essay written for this volume that reprises the same questions for the 2008 Great Recession. The 11 essays constitute a history of women's relationships to both the workforce and unions across the twentieth century. . . . Milkman's decades of study provide a solid foundation for new work in Great Plains labor history."--Great Plains Quarterly "A fascinating and timely set of articles. . . What Milkman's four decades of illuminating scholarship reveals is both the uphill battle the movement will face precisely because many of these fast-growing occupations have been sex-typed as 'women's work.' But there is hope in these chapters too."--Dissent "This volume illuminates mechanisms of gendered inequality in the work force, illustrating how class inequality and gendered inequality are inextricably linked. Students and scholars of gendered dynamics of labor and society will appreciate the breadth and abundance of macrosociological research as well as Milkman's accessible and effective writing style."--Labor: Studies in Working-Class History"What a pleasure to have in a single volume these brilliant, eye-opening essays by Ruth Milkman. It's all here--her stunning 1970s rethinking of Marx and sex-segregated labor markets to her recent revelatory studies of the stark class divides separating women today. Each essay is a gem, rigorous analytically and elegant in formation. A remarkable, intellectual game-changer of a collection."--Dorothy Sue Cobble, co-author of Feminism Unfinished: A Short, Surprising History of American Women's Movements"Throughout her distinguished career as a scholar-activist, Ruth Milkman has focused attention on the struggles of wage-earning women. An antidote to Lean In, her collection of essays explains why the fight for gender equality in a capitalist society typically only benefits elite women. When feminism focuses on the needs of working-class women, everyone wins."--Christine Williams, author of Inside Toyland: Working, Shopping, and Social Inequality

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Pehl is to be commended for his multivalent work, and for the important contributions he makes to both The Working Class in American History series and to the study of America's religious history."--Anglican Theological Review"The value of Pehl's wonderful book is that it helps us reimagine the currents of faith that ebb and flow in American society and interact with changing political and economic circumstances. This is a book that belongs on the shelves of historians." --American Historical Review"Pehl's work makes a number of important contributions to our thinking about religion within labor history. . . . He expertly weaves together the thoughts of religious leaders and rank-and-file workers and shows the intersections of these processes among Protestants and Catholics, and African American and white workers."--Journal of American History"The Making of Working Class Religion is an important read for both scholars of labor and scholars of religion as a methodological model for advancing the study of religion, labor, and class. . . . Pehl's book teaches its readers--whether they be scholars, labor organizers, or graduate or undergraduate students--how to recover and interpret critically and empathetically, the religious worlds of working-class people."--Labour/Le Travail"This book is well-written, concise, and highly recommended to all audiences."--The Michigan Historical Review"Highly Recommended."--Choice"Matthew Pehl's subtle and stunning book describes the remarkable moments when working class identities and religion remarkably converged in America's quintessential manufacturing city--Detroit--first from the 1920s to the 1940s, then as they fractured amidst the racial, ethnic, gender, and political shifts after World War II. Pehl incisively describes the possibilities and tensions, and achievements and failures, that encouraged and undermined bonds between religion and the working classes in an uneasily complex American city. A terrific achievement and enthralling read."--Jon Butler, author of Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People"A signal contribution to the resurgence of historical interest in the religious worlds of working class men and women. Pehl shows how 'work' had religious significance in Detroit's working class neighborhoods and in doing so he helps restore the realities and exigencies of daily toil to American religious history. The Making of Working Class Religion is also an exciting religious history of modern Detroit. With its huge cast of historical actors--Detroit's white and black, Protestant and Catholic workers, Elijah Muhammad, Reinhold Niebuhr, Father Charles Coughlin, and many others--the book goes a long way towards establishing the city's importance as a place of religious innovation and public engagement. This is dynamic and powerful history."--Robert Orsi, author of The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community in Italian Harlem, 1880-1950

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Book SynopsisLabor studies scholars and working-class historians have long worked at the crossroads of academia and activism. The essays in this collection examine the challenges and opportunities for engaged scholarship in the United States and abroad. A diverse roster of contributors discuss how participation in current labor and social struggles guides their campus and community organizing, public history initiatives, teaching, mentoring, and other activities. They also explore the role of research and scholarship in social change, while acknowledging that intellectual labor complements but never replaces collective action and movement building. Contributors: Kristen Anderson, Daniel E. Atkinson, James R. Barrett, Susan Roth Breitzer, Susan Chandler, Sam Davies, Dennis Deslippe, Eric Fure-Slocum, Colin Gordon, Michael Innis-Jiménez, Stephanie Luce, Joseph A. McCartin, John W. McKerley, Matthew M. Mettler, Stephen Meyer, David Montgomery, Kim E. Nielsen, Peter Rachleff, Ralph ScharnauTrade Review"At once an introduction to the long tradition of engaged scholarship among labor historians and a guide to the richly varied ways many have found to make a difference today, Civic Labors is a perfectly timed treasure trove of inspiration."--Nancy MacLean, author of Freedom Is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace"These essays provide illuminating insights into what it means to be an engaged academic and citizen of labor. Graced by Shelton Stromquist's sharp essay and David Montgomery's endearing comments, in this one volume we find a true community of scholars who seek to understand and change the world."--Michael Honey, author of Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King's Last Campaign"This book makes an important contribution to the field of working-class studies by offering a 'sober-yet hopeful' outlook on the challenges and opportunities of scholar activism." --Capital & Class"Addresses the many ways scholars can be and are activists outside the ivory tower, as well as the risks that they may face when they engage in this activism. . . . Readers will be reminded why they became labor historians."--Journal of American History"This is a must-read for labour activists, scholarly or not."--Labour/Le Travail"This publication is a well-deserved tribute to Stromquist, who is held in the highest regard by labor historians for his keen intellect, generous spirit, and commitment to social justice." --Labor: Studies in Working-Class History

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Book Synopsis Against Labor highlights the tenacious efforts by employers to organize themselves as a class to contest labor. Ranging across a spectrum of understudied issues, essayists explore employer anti-labor strategies and offer incisive portraits of people and organizations that aggressively opposed unions. Other contributors examine the anti-labor movement against a backdrop of larger forces, such as the intersection of race and ethnicity with anti-labor activity, and anti-unionism in the context of neoliberalism. Timely and revealing, Against Labor deepens our understanding of management history and employer activism and their metamorphic effects on workplace and society. Contributors: Michael Dennis, Elizabeth Esch, Rosemary Feurer, Dolores E. Janiewski, Thomas A. Klug, Chad Pearson, Peter Rachleff, David Roediger, Howard Stanger, and Robert Woodrum.Trade Review"Boldly challenges the scholarship that considers employers as a malleable force that often compromises when social movements forge political environments that are inimical to their interests. Contributes enormously to our understanding of business tactics and strategy."--Immanuel Ness, author of Guest Workers and Resistance to U.S. Corporate Despotism"At a time when public sector unions are under renewed attack and private-sector union membership hovers near levels not seen since the early twentieth century, Against Labor offers a potent, powerful reminder that, as Feurer and Pearson put it, 'People, not faceless markets, shaped this story.'" --The Journal of Southern History"An excellent volume. The standard of scholarship and writing is very high, and the editors have worked hard to produce a cohesive collection of essays that shed much light on a still-understudied phenomenon in US and labor history more broadly."--Australasian Journal of American Studies"These essays make one thing quite clear: the existential threat that US unions currently face has been building for decades"--Social History"Recommended."--Choice"The respective chapters make for interesting reading. They raise fundamental issues concerning the long arc of industrial relations or labour history in America; of the long, unrelenting class-based campaign of employers and the various strategies and methods they have used to keep unions at bay and counter their attempts to improve the wages and working conditions of American workers."--Labour History"The decline of organized labor in recent decades is often attributed to globalization, financialization, and right-wing politics. But the compelling essays in this important volume show that the limits to workers’ collective power stem more basically from the concerted anti-union efforts of their employers dating back to the nineteenth century. Chronicling how capitalists have effectively forged a class-conscious social movement 'against labor,' these critical case studies make a vital contribution to the history of capitalism while illuminating the challenges facing workers today."--Jeffrey Sklansky, author of The Soul's Economy: Market Society and Selfhood in American Thought, 1820–1920

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Book SynopsisA wave of teacher strikes in the 1960s and 1970s roiled urban communities. Jon Shelton illuminates how this tumultuous era helped shatter the liberal-labor coalition and opened the door to the neoliberal challenge at the heart of urban education today. As Shelton shows, many working- and middle-class whites sided with corporate interests in seeing themselves as society''s only legitimate, productive members. This alliance increasingly argued that public employees and the urban poor took but did not give. Drawing on a wealth of research ranging from school board meetings to TV news reports, Shelton puts readers in the middle of fraught, intense strikes in Newark, St. Louis, and three other cities where these debates and shifting attitudes played out. He also demonstrates how the labor actions contributed to the growing public perception of unions as irrelevant or even detrimental to American prosperity. Foes of the labor movement, meanwhile, tapped into cultural and economic fears toTrade ReviewFirst Book Award, International Standing Conference for the History of Education, 2018 Herbert G. Gutman Award, Labor and Working-¬Class History Association (LAWCHA), 2014 "Through the vividly drawn case studies described in this smart volume, Jon Shelton shows how the labor conflicts that rocked America's public schools in the tumultuous years between 1968 and 1981 altered the nation's politics and education policy, accelerating the decline of 1960s labor-liberalism and propelling the ascendancy of neoliberalism. His is a brilliantly recounted, timely, and sobering tale that illuminates the tangled roots of educational inequality, teacher disempowerment, and urban underfunding that continue to plague public education. It will interest all those who seek to revive both our schools and our democracy."--Joseph A. McCartin, author of Collision Course: Ronald Reagan, the Air Traffic Controllers, and the Strike that Changed America"This book makes a significant contribution to the fields of educational history and labor history. . . . This provocative and well-written study will be a welcome addition to courses in educational history and labor history." --Journal of Social History"Teacher Strike! is a major contribution to the growing literature on teacher unionism." --Labor: Studies in Working-Class History"Teacher Strike traces the foundations of this aspect of current school trends with great clarity and insight, offering readers an original way of thinking about teachers, public opinion, and school reform."--History of Education Quarterly"This excellent study of the political debates that developed from the rise of teacher unions in the 1970s and 1980s is a valuable addition to the growing literature on the rightward turn in American politics."--Journal of American History"An important book both historiographically and in terms of its relevance to our own times. It deserves a wide readership and thoughtful discussion of its argument."--Missouri Historical Review"This is a fascinating study of the link between public perceptions of teachers' labor activism and the decline of political liberalism and public investment in education. Shelton makes a compelling case to place teachers' struggles for labor rights at the center of broader political changes of the last fifty years."--Kate Rousmaniere, author of Citizen Teacher: The Life and Leadership of Margaret Haley"Shelton captures America at a pivotal moment, as long-held assumptions about the role of the state and unions in promoting growth and prosperity came under attack. An essential book for understanding an essential era in modern American history."--Jerald Podair, author of The Strike That Changed New York: Blacks, Whites, and The Ocean-Hill Brownsville Crisis

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Book SynopsisOpinions of specialized labor courts differ, but labor justice undoubtedly represented a decisive moment in worker ''s history. When and how did these courts take shape? Why did their originators consider them necessary? Leon Fink and Juan Manuel Palacio present essays that address these essential questions. Ranging from Canada and the United States to Chile and Argentina, the authors search for common factors in the appearance of labor courts while recognizing the specific character of the creative process in each nation. Their transnational and comparative approach advances a global perspective on the various mechanisms for regulating industrial relations and resolving labor conflicts. The result is the first country-by-country study of its kind, one that addresses a defining shift in law in the first half of the twentieth century. Contributors: Rossana Barragán Romano, Angela de Castro Gomes, David Díaz-Arias, Leon Fink, Frank Luce, Diego Ortúzar, Germán Palacio, Juan Manuel PaTrade Review"This is a fabulous book. As historians and social scientists return to the distributional dimensions of capitalist development, they should look closely at this anthology. It contains insightful studies of national experiences; it also lays out a template for analyzing a central institution in framing class conflict in the modern age: labor courts and the struggle for justice and recognition. This is a wonderful example of connected and comparative history." --Jeremy Adelman, author of Worldly Philosopher: The Odyssey of Albert O. Hirschman"Labor Justice across the Americas can help us to learn from past struggles to think creatively about new ideas for effective labor justice. It is a unique book that deserves to be read by labor historians, legal historians, labor advocates, and quixotic dreamers who want to keep a toe on the ground." --New Labor Forum“An important and necessary first step in assessing the role of the law in twentieth-century capital-labor relations, a valuable contribution greatly enhanced by its comparative focus." --Hispanic American Historical Review"Highly recommended." --Choice"An ambitious transnational project developed around a specialized body of knowledge, this volume has many great strengths. This book artfully presents side-by-side national histories within their hemispheric context and points us toward a sophisticated neo-Boltonian hemispheric labor history founded on deeply researched national case studies." --Labor

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Book SynopsisAlike in many aspects of their histories, Australia and the United States diverge in striking ways when it comes to their working classes, labor relations, and politics. Greg Patmore and Shelton Stromquist curate innovative essays that use transnational and comparative analysis to explore the two nations’ differences. The contributors examine five major areas: World War I’s impact on labor and socialist movements; the history of coerced labor; patterns of ethnic and class identification; forms of working-class collective action; and the struggles related to trade union democracy and independent working-class politics. Throughout, many essays highlight how hard-won transnational ties allowed Australians and Americans to influence each other’s trade union and political cultures.Contributors: Robin Archer, Nikola Balnave, James R. Barrett, Bradley Bowden, Verity Burgmann, Robert Cherny, Peter Clayworth, Tom Goyens, Dianne Hall, Benjamin Huf, Jennie Jeppesen, MaTrade Review"Two of the leading comparative labour historians in Australia and the U.S., Greg Patmore and Shelton Stromquist, have joined forces to produce an outstanding edited collection comparing key aspects of Australian and American labour history. . . . Their volume is a fine example of the enormous benefits and promises that such a combined approach brings to labour history." --Moving the Social"The essays in this volume make a splendid contribution to the important fields of US and Australian labor history."--Neville Kirk, author of Labour and the Politics of Empire: Britain and Australia 1900 to the Present"Historians cannot do experiments with history, but we can do the functional equivalent by way of comparative history. This excellent collection compares Australian and US workplace experiences. We expect the differences; these sophisticated labor historians also attend to the surprising extent of 'commonalities,' which seem to have grown over time." --Melanie Nolan, editor of Revolution: The 1913 Great Strike in New Zealand"This terrific collection, edited by two of the leading scholars of Australian and US labor history, respectively, contributes significantly to our understanding of labor and working-class conflicts in these two countries." --Labor"This collection is a must for comparative historians. Rather than having a collection of national case studies, this collection goes the extra mile and shows how useful and critical such transnational history is." --Pacific Historical Review"This collection of sixteen comparative essays, plus an introduction and a conclusion, marks a significant step in the advancement of labor history on both sides of the Pacific Ocean." --The Journal of American History

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Shackel brings the tools of archaeology, ethnography, and history to bear on an important moment in U.S. labor history, to disclose how immigration, labor strife and racial-ethnic discrimination were and continue to be at play, a long-term perspective informative for addressing these timely issues today."--Robert Paynter, coeditor of Lines That Divide: Historical Archaeologies of Race, Class, and Gender"Shackel's contribution provides a deeply researched discussion about an often-neglected event in labor history." --International Journal of Heritage Studies"This important and timely book uncovers the forgotten history of the Lattimer Strike and massacre, its impact on the history and development of organized labor in the United States, and the enduring legacies of racial and class tensions these events have for the present. The story of the xenophobic exploitation of immigrants and their subsequent central role in the struggle for better working conditions and wages is used to offer a thoughtful and considered intervention into contemporary polarizing debates about immigration and migrant labor. Remembering Lattimer is a statement about the implications of the choices communities and nations alike make to collectively remember and forget, and the importance of breaking long held silences for the insight the past may offer for present and future aspirations for social justice."--Laurajane Smith, coauthor of Heritage, Communities, and Archaeology

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Cole does a magnificent job in this book. . . . An excellent study of dockworkers in port cities in California and South Africa, and their respective struggles for social justice." --International Journal of Comparative Sociology"Dockworker Power is the first book that specifically compares South African and American ports as a site of workplace activism. . . . The inspiring story of Dockworker Power provides the optimism needed for contemporary activists to fight and win twenty-first-century battles." --Journal of African American History"Dockworker Power: Race and Activism in Durban and the San Francisco Bay Area is a sparkling exercise in comparative labor history. Informative and informed, morally anchored, and successfully mastering two sets of literature, it is also a pleasure to read." --American Historical Review"Cole's book is a tremendous first step in understanding the parallel struggles of dockworkers in both locations and their ongoing importance in the face of global containerized trade." --African Studies Review"The combination of labour, comparative and global history, framed by the political economy of containerization and technological change, makes this book most timely and worthy of deep reflection. . . . Peter Cole's book will inform and motivate." --Review of African Political Economy"The first three words of this book read: 'Dockworkers have power' (p. 1). They capture the essence of this fascinating and closely researched work by Peter Cole, Professor of History at the Western Illinois University. With this brilliant work on dockworkers' power, Cole implicitly invites other labour, social and economic scholars to pick up from where he leaves off and maybe develop a new analysis of labour strategy for transnational solidarity. Hopefully, scholars will meet this challenge with the same degree of verse and insight as that displayed by Peter Cole." --International Review of Social History"Peter Cole's superb examination of dockworkers in San Francisco and Durban, South Africa, provides an excellent model of how to write comparative labor history, weaving together a compelling tale around issues of racial justice, intentional labor solidarity, and resistance to job-destroying technological change." --H-Net Reviews"A sweeping, panoramic narrative . . . This book with have wide appeal, for historians of South Africa and the US, for those interested in workers struggles in a global context and how technology transforms the lives of working people, and for those looking for evidence that workers maintain power, even in our increasingly connected globalized world." --Reviews in History "Cole's book is a valuable contribution to the relatively thin field of global union comparisons." --In These Times "Dockworker Power is worth the read. It's riveting and distinguishes itself from the mainstream labor and civil rights history we have come to know." --48 Hills "Dockworker Power is highly recommended . . . The book is ambitious in execution and delivers new perspectives through a comparative and transnational approach." --The Northern Mariner "Persuasive and compelling. . . . Dockworker Power makes an important contribution to the development of the interdisciplinary field of working-class studies." --Journal of Working Class Studies "Dockworker Power is a book of vital importance to labor scholars, educators, and activists." --Labor Studies "The fascinating stories [Cole] centers in Dockworker Power capture the dynamics of global social movements, the significance of black internationalism, and the power of grassroots organizing." —Keisha N. Blain, Black Perspectives "Dockworker Power is worth the read. It's riveting and distinguishes itself from the mainstream labor and civil rights history we have come to know." —48 Hills "Compelling." —Salon "Dockworker Power suggests that the rising global white supremacist menace cannot be defeated without a confrontation at today’s docks—the mechanized ports, trucking networks, and warehouses where racial capitalism does its work." —Dissent Magazine "Cole makes a strong case for the importance of studying ports and their workers in global history. His research is meticulous—not a minor feat when you compare two ports in very different contexts. " —Black Perspectives "Peter Cole has done us a great service in his comparative history. He has demonstrated that the social and political context of unions is important in determining their course of struggle, and he has highlighted the great impact that dockers have had on social justice struggles." —Jacobin "Cole’s book shows us the possibilities that anti-racist labor organizing had and has for attacking and analyzing how systems of racial and capital oppressions are intertwined. " —Africa is a Country "The importance of Cole's study and topic are undeniable. " —History: Reviews of New Books "Peter Cole has written a cutting-edge work that combines labor, maritime, comparative, and global history in brilliantly illuminating ways. The edge is the waterfront, whose workers make the world economy go 'round."--Marcus Rediker, author of The Slave Ship: A Human History "Peter Cole's study of port labor and capital accumulation is the most useful US-SA comparative analysis I've seen in years. By tracing containerization, the book also clarifies ways that new technology can tear asunder socio-ecological relations, and in turn occasionally be foiled by creative, solidaristic workers—offering vital lessons from courageous dockworkers for the Fourth Industrial Revolution era."--Patrick Bond, University of the Witwatersrand

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Book SynopsisThe history of unemployment and concepts surrounding it remain a mystery to many Americans. This introduction takes an aim at misinformation, willful deceptions, and popular myths to set the record straight, providing a roadmap to better jobs and economic security.Trade Review”Frank Stricker has done the nation an important service, wisely analyzing the history of unemployment, and our attempts to redress this problem. By exposing our failures as well as our successes, he provides a badly needed template for action.”—Robert Slayton, author of Empire Statesman: The Rise and Redemption of Al Smith”A truly accessible explanation of what ails the U.S. economy accompanied by clear explanations of progressive solutions to these problems. I can think of no other book that even tries to cover this ground as comprehensively, with such easy to navigate chapters, and such easy to understand prose. If you can read a newspaper, you can understand this book. A joy to read, even when you disagree with the author, and a great discussion starter.”—Philip L. Harvey, coauthor of America's Misunderstood Welfare State: Persistent Myths, Enduring Realities

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Wood's ambitious book recognizes and highlights the importance of child labor as a cultural symbol and should spark new investigations of this topic." --Journal of American History"This is a highly interesting and novel reading of the child labor reform movement as being deeply imprinted by the debate about slavery. . . . Very welcome and highly recommended study." --H-Sol-Kult "In this engaging book, Betsy Wood invites us to re-evaluate the history of sectionalist conflict through the lens of child labor reform. . . . Upon the Altar of Work demonstrates just how important debates over child labor were to understandings of capitalism, morality, and freedom, in both the North and South, in the years after slavery's legal demise." --American Nineteenth Century History "Upon the Altar of Work manages to make well-worn subject matter feel fresh, exciting, and original. . . . Betsy Wood's work reveals how far we have come in combating that evil, while reminding readers of the work yet to be done." --Labor/Le Travail "An innovative and persuasive narrative that traces the evolution of ideas championed by child labor reformers from their free labor roots to their faith in the modern bureaucratic state. . . .Upon the Altar of Work is a well-researched, crisply argued, and excellent addition to the scholarship on the politics of child labor reform." --Journal of Southern History​"Wood's book demonstrates the long history of conceptualizing child labor as battles over region, progress, and childhood, one that hopefully other scholars will apply to the present. It's an excellent work well worth the attention of all labor and southern historians." --Register of the Kentucky Historical Society ​"Slim, engaging . . . Upon the Altar of Work offers a new interpretation by highlighting postbellum reformers' discursive invocations of free and unfree labor, concepts that heretofore have occupied the attention of scholars of slavery, abolition, Reconstruction, and postemancipation society and culture." --Journal of Civil War Era "Wood’s most useful contribution, is the connection made between the hyper-sectionalism caused by the issue of slavery to the post-emancipation campaigns against child labor that Wood convincingly argues became central to the new sectionalism that developed over the decades following the Civil War. . . . A very good book that should inspire additional research in other times and places." --Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth "Upon the Altar of Work is an exemplary work of intellectual and political history. Wood's skilled analysis closely tracks the arguments against child labor across decades with acute attention to both specific language and symbols and the wider context." --Labor "Betsy Wood manages to say highly original things about an old subject--the movement to abolish child labor. Was the labor of children a new form of slavery or an embodiment of the free labor ideal sanctified by the Civil War? Wood shows how, despite (white) sectional reconciliation, a deep divide between reform-minded northerners and rural southerners over child labor, and the power of the government to abolish it, persisted well into the twentieth century. At a time when millions of children are at work throughout the world, the book is extraordinarily timely."--Eric Foner, Columbia University "Recommended." --ChoiceTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction 1 Fields of Free Labor: Child Rescue and Sectional Crisis 2 Testing Ground of Freedom: Child Labor in the Age of Emancipation 3 Seeds of a New Sectionalism: Southern Origins of Child Labor Reform 4 Child Labor Abolitionists: A Northern Progressive Vision 5 Cultural Warriors: A Southern Capitalist Vision Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Skillfully arranged. . . Caldemeyer demonstrates that the world of the Gilded Age working class was not as cut and dried as some of its would-be leadership thought it was -- and that it was not as politically bespoke for as believed by many of the historians who have tried to interpret it." --Journal of American History"Overall, Union Renegades offers an engaging account of Midwestern history, which will appeal to lay readers and provide scholars with innovative interpretations of labor history." --Choice"Dana M. Caldemeyer's Union Renegades begins with a resonating bang for its reader. . . . A clear and thoughtful reexamination of labor struggles during the Gilded Age. Through six detailed and nuanced instances of dissatisfaction with the union, the book shows that miners navigated a complex world of capitalism and labor as individuals pursuing the best option for themselves as wage workers and miners." --Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society"For anyone who assumes that joining a union in the late-nineteenth-century coalfields reflected a simple choice, Union Renegades is a stunning catalog of the various factors that shaped the complex calculation that workers had to make. Caldemeyer’s deeply researched study joins a growing list of scholarship exploring attitudes about unions, capitalism, and power in the rural-industrial heartland. Its lessons are important for our time."--Kenneth Fones-Wolf, coauthor of Struggle for the Soul of the Postwar South: White Evangelical Protestants and Operation DixieTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction 1 Deceived: Producers in a Dishonest World 2 Undermined: Winter Diggers, Union Strikebreakers 3 “Judases”: Union “Betrayal” and the Aborted 1891 Strike 4 Outsiders: Race and the Exclusive Politics of an Inclusive Union, 1892-1894 5 Unsettled: Non-Union Mobilization and the 1894 Strike 6 Wolves: Fractured Unions in the Gilded Age, 1894-1896 Epilogue Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"This book is a must for those who would strive to replace marble men with stories of people who lived and died fighting against monopoly, white supremacy, inequality, militarism, convict labor, and a growing internal empire." --Journal of American History"As Matthew Stanley shows, the foot-soldiers in Grand Army of Labor lost many of their initial electoral battles. Yet pioneering efforts ultimately succeeded in popularizing the idea that veterans’ benefits were a good working model for more expansive social welfare programs, benefiting all U.S. workers and their families." --Against the Current "Stanley's outstanding study reminds us of the power of symbols--including popular images of antislavery leaders, such as Abraham Lincoln, and abolitionist martyrs, such as John Brown--as well as incomplete and skewed historical representations, such as the Lost Cause." --Journal of the Civil War Era "Matthew Stanley’s capacious study gives many voices their due in this decades long struggle to harness the meaning of the Civil War into the fight for a more democratic America." --Civil War Monitor "Grand Army of Labor: Workers, Veterans, and the Meaning of the Civil War shows how industrial workers, farmers, and radicals deployed an 'antislavery vernacular' in their struggles against Gilded Age and Progressive Era capitalism. They cast themselves as the natural torchbearers of the antebellum free labor ideal, which, they argued, targeted not only chattel slavery, but wage labor — heralding what Karl Marx envisioned as a 'new era of the emancipation of labor.'" --Jacobin"One of the most powerful suggestions in Stanley's book is the recognition that the era's labor and populist movements can't be fully understood except through the afterlives of slavery generally, and the Civil War in particular." --American Studies Journal​​"Stanley does an excellent job highlighting how Civil Warm memory shaped Gilded Age labor reform efforts." --Annals of Iowa ​​"The real value of Grand Army of Labor lies in its analysis and perspective, which shed new light on well-known figures and events. . . . In an era when Americans are hotly contesting the memory and legacy of the Civil War in ways that have significant social and political ramifications, Stanley's book certainly carries relevance for some of the challenges facing the nation today." --H-CivWar "Stanley adds a valuable layer of analysis to an already well-studied post-Civil War commemorative ethos. . . . It is next to impossible to understand today's sensibilities and contentions without understanding the Civil War. Grand Army of Labor supports that statement." --Ohio Valley History "This powerful and judicious study changes how we think about Civil War memories and working class histories. Sure grasp of the multiplicity of United States labor--African American and white, native-born and newcoming, female and male, North and South, veteran and not--illuminates how a constantly recreated remembrance of the emancipatory side of the war could produce a broad language of freedom, one bound to contain its own contradictions and limitations."--David Roediger, author of Seizing Freedom: Slave Emancipation and Liberty for All "With erudition, sensitivity, and sophistication, Matthew Stanley shows us how the U.S. Civil War lived on in the memory of the country’s labor movement during the decades that followed--symbolizing and dramatizing values and aspirations and therefore inevitably becoming itself a terrain of struggle among the movement’s contending factions."--Bruce Levine, author of The Fall of the House of Dixie: The Civil War and the Social Revolution That Transformed the South "In often surprising and unexpected ways, Grand Army of Labor tells us how the experience, imagery, and memory of the Civil War shaped the United States labor movement. The result is a history of divergent movements, from Greenbackism to Debsian socialism, that were at times expansively emancipatory and at others tragically narrow. It is a history chock full of lessons for our present moment."--Charles Postel, author of Equality: An American Dilemma, 1866–1896"Recommended." --Choice

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Book SynopsisA long-overlooked group of workers and their battle for rights and dignity Like thousands of African American women, Charlotte Adelmond and Dollie Robinson worked in New York's power laundry industry in the 1930s. Jenny Carson tells the story of how substandard working conditions, racial and gender discrimination, and poor pay drove them to help unionize the city's laundry workers. Laundry work opened a door for African American women to enter industry, and their numbers allowed women like Adelmond and Robinson to join the vanguard of a successful unionization effort. But an affiliation with the powerful Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) transformed the union from a radical, community-based institution into a bureaucratic organization led by men. It also launched a difficult battle to secure economic and social justice for the mostly women and people of color in the plants. As Carson shows, this local struggle highlighted how race and gender shaped worker conditions, labor orgTrade Review"Even progressive organizations like the ACWA actively participated in the reproduction of racial and gender hierarchies within labour markets and within their own organizations. It is a sobering finding, albeit one tempered in Carson's account by extraordinary heroism of the laundry workers themselves." --Labour"Grounded in recent scholarship, A Matter of Moral Justice combines structural analysis of the industry with deft mini-biographies and astute assessments of industrial feminism, left organizations, and the CIO itself." --Labor: Studies in Working-Class History"An engaging book on a workforce that has received surprisingly little attention from labor historians. Carson provides a highly readable analysis of how racialized and gendered were job assignments, union organizing campaigns, and labor politics."--Dennis Deslippe, author of Protesting Affirmative Action: The Struggle over Equality after the Civil Rights Revolution"With this beautifully written, emotionally powerful book, Jennifer Carson has rescued the history of organizing among African-American and Afro-Caribbean laundry workers from the shadows. Power laundries were the largest industrial employer of Black women in the U.S. in the first half of the twentieth century, but professional historians have paid little attention to these workers' long campaigns for justice. Carson narrates this crucial history with grace and verve, nuance and drama, centering the biographies of the remarkable organizers Dollie Robinson and Charlotte Adelmond and their struggle to bring decent working conditions and union recognition to a labor force made up almost entirely of women of color. As Carson relates struggles between Black women organizers and white male union leaders, fruitful but fraught alliances with Jewish organizers in the Women’s Trade Union League and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union, she makes clear again and again how these movements were direct forebears of the Black Lives Matter and Fight for $15 movements. This history and its powerful actors are as relevant in 2020 as they have ever been. Brava."--Annelise Orleck, author of Rethinking American Women's Activism"Carson's book is well worth the read. . . . Carson has done a masterful job making Black working-class women and intersectionality central to US history." --American Historical Review"Carson's compelling study recovers Black women-led civil rights unionism in the North and provides a powerful and understudied history of how Black women workers sought to transform the labor movement, abolish oppressive workplaces, and build a moral and just society." --Journal of American History

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Book SynopsisAgrarian radicalism''s challenge to capitalism played a central role in working-class ideology while making third parties and protest movements a potent force in politics. Thomas Alter II follows three generations of German immigrants in Texas to examine the evolution of agrarian radicalism and the American and transnational ideas that influenced it. Otto Meitzen left Prussia for Texas in the wake of the failed 1848 Revolution. His son and grandson took part in decades-long activism with organizations from the Greenback Labor Party and the Grange to the Populist movement and Texas Socialist Party. As Alter tells their stories, he analyzes the southern wing of the era''s farmer-labor bloc and the parallel history of African American political struggle in Texas. Alliances with Mexican revolutionaries, Irish militants, and others shaped an international legacy of working-class radicalism that moved U.S. politics to the left. That legacy, in turn, pushed forward economic reform during the Trade Review"A fountain of information. . . Alter does an excellent job of showing the persistence of the agrarian radical impulse." --Southwestern Historical Quarterly"Alter's Toward a Cooperative Commonwealth is a highly readable, extensively researched contribution to our understanding of Southwestern radicalism. Both seasoned scholars and beginning students will benefit." --Western Historical Quarterly"Masterful. . . . Alter’s clear writing and well-argued analysis provides students of the Texas Socialist movement a newly congruent foundation. To repeat, this is the book to read first." --Kyle Wilkinson, Labor Online"Alter's careful attention to Socialists in Texas provides an excellent case study of the numerous forces that affect political agendas. He convincingly demonstrates that revolutions beyond the borders of the United States directly shaped the course of radical platforms in Texas, and he shows how even these radicals could not fully escape the grasp of white supremacy." --Journal of Southern History"In this thoroughly researched and clearly written study of radical politics and ideas, historian Thomas Alter II argues that German transplants to rural Texas contributed to building a farmer-labor bloc that significantly shaped American politics from Reconstruction to the 1920s." --Pacific Historical Review"In Towards a Cooperative Commonwealth, Alter provides a powerful example of how history can converse with the present. . . . His work deftly and naturally provides historical perspective into contemporary issues, clearly demonstrating that a certain degree of presentism within the profession is not only possible but often necessary. . . . Alter's work is an exceptional example of both quality scholarship and the role historians can and should have in the world today." --Journal of Arizona History"The Meitzens -- and Alter's book -- are too important for scholars of labor and American political radicalism to ignore. Toward a Cooperative Commonwealth should further appeal to a broader audience of scholars of immigration and transnational history, while lay readers will find it a rich and rewarding experience." --Journal of the Gilded Age"This engaging study moves easily from family history to broad movements for justice. It shows farmer-labor alliances as a persistent, important presence from Silesia to Texas. Alter tells a fascinating story of how solidarity with Mexican revolutionaries challenged white supremacy across borders."--David Roediger, author of The Sinking Middle Class: A Political History "Alter narrates the rise and fall of an agrarian radical movement in Texas that brought unlikely partners together, albeit temporarily. German origin families such as the Meitzens collaborated with African Americans and Mexican Americans to create a commonwealth based on mutual benefits and centered on land, until reactionary forces in Texas and beyond quashed the movement. Alter's account shows the crucial role of land in the history of class struggle and class alliances."--Sonia Hernández, author of For a Just and Better World: Engendering Anarchism in the Mexican Borderlands, 1900–1938Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ixIntroduction 11 What Was Lost in Germany Might, in Texas, Be Won 132 Inheritors of the Revolution 453 Populist Revolt 754 The Battle for Socialism in Texas, 1900–1911 1075 Tierra y Libertad 1356 From the Cooperative Commonwealth to the Invisible Empire 171Conclusion: Descent into New Deal Liberalism 205Notes 219Bibliography 251Index 265Alter_

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Where are the Workers? has much to offer labor historians, public historians, and all readers who want to know more about how working people's stories are told and how those narratives can be presented more often, with more respect in museums and historic places." --North Carolina Historical Review“A much-needed contribution to larger and urgent national conversations around both organized labor and place-based public labor history. The need for (and threats to) unions, the struggle for fair wages, efforts to ensure workplace safety--the headlines of the present were the headlines of the past, too. These essays make the compelling case that museums and historic sites have, can, and must actively shape public understanding, while helping to inspire the activists and organizers of the future.”--Marla Miller, coauthor of Bending the Future: Fifty Ideas for the Next Fifty Years of Historic Preservation in the United States

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"The implications of Working in the Magic City reach far beyond Miami itself. . . . Castillo punctures the spaces between vagrancy and vacation, transient and resident, service and survival. The strength of Working in the Magic City is its analysis of a seemingly innocuous emphasis in localism." --H-Net"The superficial sheen of Miami as a purely seasonal 'winter playground' for the well-to-do obscures the city’s rich and long-standing quotidian working-class history dating back to the early twentieth century. Few scholars have done more than Castillo to pull back the curtain on the lives and aspirations of the multiracial class of chauffeurs, construction workers, transient laborers, and care and service workers who helped make Miami what it was--and what it is today. Based on an unprecedented mining of long-neglected archives and local newspapers from the first half of the last century, Working in the Magic City offers a major exposure of the deep layers--and fault lines--of labor and urban history of one of the most poorly understood and understudied transnational urban conglomerations in the contemporary world. What once seemed Miami’s anomaly--an urban economy based primarily on low-wage service work and seasonal precarity--now appears to define capitalist modernity."--Alex Lichtenstein, author of Twice the Work of Free Labor: The Political Economy of Convict Labor in the New South"Thomas Castillo has rendered one of America's premier cities of leisure a city of labor. Contradicting more than a century of booster propaganda, Working in the Magic City reveals Miami's rich and complex history of class conflict. Even more impressively, it arms today's readers with a powerful parable about the frailty and preciousness of interracial, working-class organizing, dare one dream, class harmony."--N. D. B. Connolly, author of A World More Concrete: Real Estate and the Remaking of Jim Crow South Florida"Castillo has presented a fascinating analysis of how southern workers charted a path of labor activism independent of communism or socialism while also mapping out a vision of radical economic justice. It is an achievement worthy of wide attention." --Journal of Southern History

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Book SynopsisIn the mid-twentieth century, corporations consolidated control over agriculture on the backs of Mexican migrant laborers through a guestworker system called the Bracero Program. The National Agricultural Workers Union (NAWU) attempted to organize these workers but met with utter indifference from the AFL-CIO. Andrew J. Hazelton examines the NAWU''s opposition to the Bracero Program against the backdrop of Mexican migration and the transformation of North American agriculture. His analysis details growers’ abuse of the program to undercut organizing efforts, the NAWU''s subsequent mobilization of reformers concerned by those abuses, and grower opposition to any restrictions on worker control. Though the union''s organizing efforts failed, it nonetheless created effective strategies for pressuring growers and defending workers’ rights. These strategies contributed to the abandonment of the Bracero Program in 1964 and set the stage for victories by the United Farm Workers andTrade Review"A much-needed examination of two intertwined institutional histories: the effort to unionize farmworkers from the New Deal era to the eve of the UFW set alongside the growth and evolution of the Bracero Program. Labor’s Outcasts exhibits a remarkable depth of archival research into the actions of officials in the labor movement and the government."--John Weber, author of From South Texas to the Nation: The Exploitation of Mexican Labor in the Twentieth Century"Why are farmworkers so poor? It’s not because they pick crops or get dirty, Andy Hazelton reveals in this important book. It’s because farmworkers--“Labor’s Outcasts”--were left out of the protections of American labor law. When farmworkers tried to organize anyway, they were crushed by a government-run labor supply system known as the Bracero Program. Long before Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers appeared on the scene, a fierce little farm labor union led by a southern socialist and a Mexican farmworker turned academic took on the agribusiness industry to battle the Bracero Program and organize farmworkers on both sides of the US-Mexican border. This is a story you don’t know and you won’t forget."--Cindy Hahamovitch, author of No Man’s Land: Jamaican Guestworkers in America and the Global History of Deportable Labor"Labor's Outcasts shows how labor migration was a transnational phenomenon that benefitted growers and governments while it exploited the labor power of migrants and ignored the protests of citizen workers." --Pacific Historical Review

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Benton's work stands as a model history with a particular focus that expands in both breadth and chronology into a useful account for academics and contemporary policy makers. Highly recommended." --Choice"Benton brilliantly traces the politics and mistakes that marked the 1970s. . . A model of scholarship. Moreover, it is a work that must be read to understand the fall of the economic order by the 'new era of globalization' and the political consequences that accompanied it." --New York Labor History Association“James Benton engages with a complex topic that most labor historians have traditionally avoided: U.S. trade policy. An ambitious study taking us from the Roosevelt administration to the present, Fraying Fabric traces the evolution of that policy, its ultimately devastating impact on the textile and apparel sectors, and the response of business and organized labor to the challenge of global trade. Its provocative arguments should provoke overdue debate in the fields of labor history and public policy.”--Eric Arnesen, author of Brotherhoods of Color: Black Railroad Workers and the Struggle for Equality"In Fraying Fabric: How Trade Policy and Industrial Decline Transformed America, historian James C. Benton provides a richly detailed analysis of the impact of trade policy on textile and apparel manufacturing in the United States, and the ultimately unsuccessful efforts of unions in these closely related industries to limit the flow of imports." --H-Net ReviewsTable of ContentsAcknowledgments List of Abbreviations Introduction From Free Trade to Populism: How Did We Get Here? 1974-2016 Clashing Aims: The New Deal, Labor, and Tariff Reform, 1933-45 New Challenges: Labor’s Limits, International Recovery, and Industrial Decline, 1945-60 New Domestic and International Frontiers: John F. Kennedy, Labor, and Trade, 1961-63 Trade Deals, Import Challenges, and Shifting Political Alliances, 1964-69 Fighting to Win: Organized Labor Challenges Trade Policy, 1969-70 Labor Strikes Out: The Mills Bill, Burke-Hartke, and the Trade Act of 1974 Epilogue: Where Do We Go from Here? Notes Index

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Book SynopsisAs the United States transformed into an industrial superpower, American socialists faced the vexing question of how to approach race. Lorenzo Costaguta balances intellectual and institutional history to illuminate the clash between two major points of view. On one side, white supremacists believed labor should accept and apply the ascendant tenets of scientific theories of race. But others stood with International Workingmen’s Association leaders J. P. McDonnell and F. A. Sorge in rejecting the idea that racial and ethnic division influenced worker-employer relations, arguing instead that class played the preeminent role. Costaguta charts the socialist movement’s journey through the conflict and down a path that ultimately abandoned scientific racism in favor of an internationalist class-focused and racial-conscious American socialism. As he shows, the shift relied on a strong immigrant influence personified by the cosmopolitan Marxist thinker and future IWW cofounder Trade Review"Costaguta’s findings torpedo the familiar notion that nineteenth-century socialists were indifferent toward race, and the interracial internationalism he recovers should be recognized as part of early socialism’s enduring legacy." --Jacobin“Lorenzo Costaguta has produced an important book that reimagines the history of labor, racism and antiracism, socialism, and the post-Civil War United States. An extraordinary work.” --Angela Zimmerman, author of Alabama in Africa: Booker T. Washington, the German Empire, and the Globalization of the New SouthTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction. A Racialized History of the Origins of American Socialism Chapter One. “Freedom for All”: German American Socialism and Race before 1876 Chapter Two. “Geographies of Peoples”: Ethnicity and Racial Thinking in the Early SLP Chapter Three. Must They Go? American Socialism and the Racialization of Chinese Immigrants, 1876-1890 Chapter Four. “Regardless of Color”: The SLP and African Americans, 1876-1890 Chapter Five. Savage Capitalists, Civilized Indians: The SLP and Native Americans, 1876-1890 Chapter Six. The SLP in the 1890s: Americanization and Socialist Evolutionism Conclusion. The Past and the Future of Racial Socialism Notes Index

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Book SynopsisOnce seen as a harbinger of a new enlightened capitalism, Google has become a model of robber baron rapaciousness thanks to its ruthless monetizing of private data, obsession with monopoly, and pervasive systems of labor discrimination and exploitation. Using the company as a jumping-off point, ShinJoung Yeo explores the political economy of the search engine industry against the backdrop of the relationship between information and capitalism’s developmental processes. Yeo’s critical analysis draws on in-depth discussions of essential issues like how the search engine evolved into a ubiquitous commercial service, it’s place in a global information business that is restructuring the information industry and our very social lives, who exactly designs and uses search technology, what kinds of workers labor behind the scenes, and the influence of geopolitics. An incisive look at a pervasive presence in our lives, Behind the Search Box places the search engine iTrade Review“The book reminds readers that despite all the various new labels of supposedly new forms of capitalism, we really are still talking about capitalism after all. An important book that promises to make a major contribution to the ever-accumulating research on the new digital monopolies. Yeo’s analysis is original and incisive.”--Victor Pickard, author of Democracy Without Journalism? Confronting the Misinformation SocietyTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction Searching for Profits Situating Search Laboring Behind the Search Digital Welfare Capitalism Market Dynamics and Geopolitics Conclusion Notes Index

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