Customer Reviews

Worked Over: The Corporate Sabotage of an American Community

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Doukas' ethnography describes the change of American ideals in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Doukas describes the change as a movement from "the gospel of work" to "the gospel of wealth," a movement away from the Jeffersonian ideal of the individual producer as integral to the economy, largely fueled by the rise of trusts and corporations in America. The reading is invigorating and Doukas' reasoning empowering. This is a book for the lay-man and the scholar, written in plain language and supported by irrefutable facts. One of the best books I have read, a few times. A wonderful anthropological work.

Undergraduate
University of California, Berkeley.

As a history major with little knowledge of legal and economic technicalities, I have long puzzled over how such devices as "trusts" allowed large corporations to greedily gobble up the fruits of the industrial revolution. Now I know! This book should be a "must read" for anyone who has difficulty believing that we have long had class warfare in America. Enron et al have had a long history of exploiting the labor of the people who work for them, as well as the interests of the public . This book tells the story of one of the first such successful corporate sabatoge efforts ... but, sadly, not the last! Very well documented AND very readable. (I could almost hear the theme from "Jaws" as I read.) Quite a scholarly feat!