Description
Book SynopsisThese nine essays by a prominent scholar in American labor history self-consciously evoke the tensions between the worker as historical subject and the historian as outside observer. Encompassing studies of labor culture, strategy, and movement building from the late nineteenth century to the present, In Search of the Working Class also connects the trials of the early labor economists to the conceptual challenges facing today''s academic practitioners.
'Fink places American labor history in the broader context of American political historiography better than any other historian I can think of.' -- James R. Barrett, author of Work and Community in the Jungle: Chicago''s Packinghouse Workers, 1894-1922
Trade Review"Epitomizes the successful efforts of New Left historians to remake not only labor history but also U.S. history... A moving and persuasive depiction of a U.S. history in which class conflict has been central, and which, to quote Fink, 'successfully projects heretofore invisible working people as conscious historical actors.'" -- Industrial Labor Relations Review