Customer Reviews

Labor's Story in the United States

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I read this book for personal enrichment. Realizing my knowledge of US labor history was sorely lacking, I read this to get a broader view of the nation's history. My inadequate early 90's high school/college coverage of the topic basically went something like "back in the 19th century working conditions were terrible for many men/women/children so people started forming unions. There were a couple of big strikes like the Pullman strike that sometimes turned violent. Then the Progressives gave the workers some of what they wanted and things calmed down. Then in the 1950's the AFL merged with the CIO."

Realizing this was a pathetic understanding of history, I had been searching on and off for years for a broad overview of labor history. After trying to muddle through a couple of dry and boring older (mostly from the 60's) books, I stumbled on this wonderful gem.

The book covers an amazing amount of material in a highly readable fashion. I found it to be a real page turner. The author strikes a wonderful balance of depth on individual events while putting these in their proper historical perspective. Not just covering individual strikes or organizations and giving the score card of who won or lost, the author takes these events and puts them in their proper place showing the hows and whys of the rise, absorption, and decline of labor against capital.

The only flaw I see with the book is that the author wears his pro-industrial democracy bias on his sleeve. While he doesn't let this get in the way of the overall story, the bias is there. Given that his bias is almost diametrically opposed to that which we are inundated with regularly in the media, I found his bias a refreshing counterpoint, but I can see why some people that walk into this book with an anti-labor bias would be off-put by it.

That said, I found this a truly riveting, highly readable, and enlightening book on a sadly almost ignored subject. For anyone interested in getting an introduction to US labor history, this is a great place to start.

this is the most tedious, obtuse presentation i have ever had the displeasure... the info is there but it will not flow! it is especially ominous that so many prestigious colleagues have touted this.