Description
Book SynopsisFor retired steelworkers in Youngstown, Ohio, the label "working class" fits comfortably. Questioning the widely held view that laborers in postwar America have adopted middle-class values, Robert Bruno shows that in this community a blue-collar...
Trade ReviewIn marvellously well written passages, Bruno is able to really evoke a feeling for the working and home lives of his interviewees.... He builds up a picture of life experience that is completely at odds with any notion of the disappearance of the working class.
-- Diane Fieldes * The Journal of Industrial Relations *
Steelworker Alley suggests that the recent books on working-class illiberalism do not tell the whole story.
-- Judith Stein, Graduate School and City College of the City University of New York * Industrial and Labor Relations Review *
Steelworker Alley is a compassionate book based on extensive research chronicling the lives and identities of men who had been steelworkers. Bruno offers a significant contribution to the debate on class consciousness by examining how the similarity of their lives on the job, at home and in their neighborhoods created the basis for a shred sense of identity for steelworkers.... This analytical account... raises troubling concerns regarding the options people have to provide for their families in a economic system so heavily weighed against them.
-- June Corman * Canadian Journal of Sociology *
This book combines the immediacy of personal recollection with scholarly analysis to describe working-class life.
* Library Journal *
Bruno has provided a very compelling discussion of how class works in Youngstown.... Steelworker Alley is an important contribution to new working-class studies. Not only is it worker-centered, but it attempts to deal with the contradictory expressions of class in America. The book should be of interest to labour historians and educators, social scientists, and cultural geographers.
-- John Russo, Youngstown State University * Left History *
For this well-written ethnography, Bruno interviewed 75 retirees, wives and other residents.... Readers see everyday working-class life.... Recommended for classes in stratification, social history, and work.
* Choice *
