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Sleeping Giant: How the New Working Class Will Transform America Hardcover – April 5, 2016

by Tamara Draut (Author)
3.8 out of 5 stars 22 customer reviews
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Product Details

  • Hardcover: 272 pages
  • Publisher: Doubleday (April 5, 2016)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0385539770
  • ISBN-13: 978-0385539777
  • Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 1 x 9.5 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #303,072 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 starsA welcome addition to the conversation about the downward slide of working people in the US. But there are better, deeper books.
By Worddancer Redux VINE VOICE on March 7, 2016
Format: Hardcover Vine Customer Review of Free Product ( What's this? )
There is a lot of good material out there about the downward slide of the middle class, and the decreased work possibilities for working class people. I strongly recommend BOTH HANDS TIED for people who are interested in how Clinton's welfare 'reform' produced great numbers of people (largely women) who have been compelled to take any job, no matter how poorly paid, or how uncertain the hours are, etc. I recommend BOOM, BUST, EXODUS for people who want to know more about how closing US factories and sending jobs south to maquilas can be awful for both groups of workers. $2 A DAY discusses the cash poor, and the intractable obstacles they face trying to enter the work force. EVICTED (wrongly being lauded as the best thing about poverty in decades) explains how eviction can and does begin a slide into unemployment and poverty that the dispossessed cannot reverse. (For those who like her work, Juliet Schorr also has several relevant publications.)

Why do I mention all those books in my review of this one? To point out that there are a lot of people out there discussing the downward slide, and its drivers, its shape, and its implications. My own view is that the books I have named are all deeper and more insightful than Ms. Draut's book. Draut's belief that the possession (or non-possession) of a college education is all-important--for women as well as men--seems to me neither well-defended nor even true. (Ask some of the people who 'retrained' and got college degrees when they were left high and dry when Maytag abandoned Galesburg how much good they think that did them.)
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4.0 out of 5 starsA vision of the future that I would like to believe in
By Robert Moore HALL OF FAMETOP 500 REVIEWERVINE VOICE on March 28, 2016
Format: Hardcover Vine Customer Review of Free Product ( What's this? )
There were several reasons for the extraordinary economic growth in the U.S. in the decades following WW II. One factor was a truly progressive tax structure. Even though the very wealthy were taxed at a 90% marginal income tax rate, they nonetheless managed to become increasingly affluent, the high tax rate both serving to increase federal revenue and to decrease the political influence of the rich. Similarly, in the 1980s Reagan strove to decrease the political strength of the working class by eliminating as many union jobs as possible, which is the dark side of the attempt to move America from an economy based on manufacturing to one based on investment and service. With the very wealthy paying less than half of what they did in the 1950s and 1960s [which, by the way, is a powerful refutation of the claim by many free market fundamentalists that low taxes on the entrepreneurial class are essential to a robust and growing economy – the twenty-five year period following WW II was the longest period of sustained and high economic growth in the nation’s history, as well as the period of the highest marginal tax rate on the wealthy] and union jobs increasingly difficult to find, the rich literally became much, much richer, while the middle class shrank at an alarming pace. Meanwhile, more and more people fell below the poverty line. FDR once said that America was not better off unless all American were better off. It would be safe to say that he would not consider America to be better off.

With that as the framework for this book, I desperately wanted to give this book five stars. I agree with all of Tamara Draut’s suggestions and I love that she is laying out a potential leftist agenda.Read more ›
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4.0 out of 5 starsThe plight of the working class
By Divascribe VINE VOICE on March 18, 2016
Format: Hardcover Vine Customer Review of Free Product ( What's this? )
This book is especially timely during this presidential election year, when much has been said about the working class although it is not always referred to by that term. Author Tamara Draut fleshes out the large trends that have affected people without a college degree: the decline of manufacturing, union busting, outsourcing to cheaper overseas workers, the rise of poorly-paid service jobs. She supports her points with graphics, and with stories of individual workers who struggle to make ends meet while dealing with poor treatment by their employers.

It's also the story of increasing economic segregation in America: people are much more likely today to live in a neighborhood with people like themselves, go to schools with kids from similar economic backgrounds, and so forth. Draut also addresses the issues of immigration, both now and in the past.

The American Dream, she writes, is much harder to realize these days than a generation or two ago, when a worker -- make that a male worker most of the time -- who hadn't gone beyond high school could earn a good living in manufacturing or another industry. Today, workers without a college degree are most often found in poorly-paid service jobs such as fast food and retail, making minimum wage or not much better, and with little or no benefits.

Draut explores efforts to improve the situation, from the battle for $15 an hour to the Black Lives Matter movement. The book concludes with a "blueprint for a better deal" for the working class, ranging from reforming labor laws to give workers the right to join a union to establishing automatic voter registration for all citizens.

I found this an interesting book, even though I was already familiar with many of its major points.Read more ›
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsWake Up and Smell the Coffee!

An important book for our times. A required read for those who consider themselves adequately informed voters in the upcoming U.S Presidential Election!

Published 1 month ago by Robert W. Grant
5.0 out of 5 starsChallenges Assumptions and Pushes Buttons

Sleeping Giant: How the New Working Class Will Transform America by Tamara Draut provokes thought, anger, disbelief, and hope all in a few short pages. Read more

Published 2 months ago by T. L. Cooper
5.0 out of 5 starsA Fast, Easy Read About a Huge and Seriously Overlooked Group of...

Today's ordinary workers are repeatedly told that they must help themselves, all while the traditional avenues of doing so (decent schools, union jobs) are being closed off, and... Read more

Published 2 months ago by Charlie Sweatpants
4.0 out of 5 starsAn interesting treatise

Highly biased towards workers rights and decreasing the income disparity seen in the lower and middle class, it's an interesting treatise on how social changes can improve America. Read more

Published 3 months ago by Epilady
3.0 out of 5 starsSome helpful numbers but not a complete picture

"Working class." That is a term that is missing in many statistical compilations and polling questions today. Read more

Published 4 months ago by H. Laack
5.0 out of 5 starsPay Attention, Politicians!

It's a very interesting time to read this book as the movement to elect Bernie Sanders is happening. Read more

Published 4 months ago by Morgaine Swann
2.0 out of 5 starsLittle analysis or depth of thinking

The three star reviews make some good points but are not critical enough about this book. It offers very little analysis or depth of thinking. Read more

Published 4 months ago by doug korty
4.0 out of 5 starsMany controversial topics

I'm really torn... Some aspects of Sleeping Giant are right on the money, from the $15 an hour minimum wage to the BLM movement (I'm within miles of Ferguson... Read more

Published 4 months ago by Jeri Zerr
3.0 out of 5 starsGood, but keep reading up on the subject to get a less biased view...

This is highly biased, but that doesn't mean it's not worth reading. Yeah, you should read this, but don't stop with this book. Read more

Published 4 months ago by Neal Reynolds
3.0 out of 5 starsA lot of good points regarding the new working class workers.

This book gives an interesting perspective on the "working class" as it pertains to fast food workers, health, retail, etc. Read more

Published 4 months ago by Jeremy Haggard

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