Labor History Links

 

Booklist

This page is organized with an emphasis on the most recent work in the field, as well as the most important work of scholars from the past. some sections are more developed than others.

Topical

Books that are highly readable
Books for Children
Overviews and Surveys of Labor History
Documents Collections
Essay Collections

Biographies and Oral Histories
U.S. Labor History in Global/Transnational Perspective
Interpretations of Class in the USA
Managerial Strategies /Bourgeois Class Formation
Professionals and Class Issues
Working Class Cultures/Cultures of the Workplace
Exceptionalism (why no Labor Party/Socialism)
Labor and the State/Labor and the Law
Unemployment/Hours/Leisure
African-American Labor History/Race and Labor
Latinos/Latinas in US Labor History
Labor Rights & Civil Rights

Immigration Ethnicity and Labor History
Women/Gender/Labor and Feminism
War and the Working Class/War and Labor
Labor and the Environment

Specific trades/industries
Geographical treatments
Unions and Corruption

 

 

Chronological

Colonial thru Early Nineteenth Century
Slavery
Late 19th through early 20th
Working Class Formation/Working Class Community
Studies 1850-1950

Twentieth Century Approaches and overviews
Labor and Radicalism late 19th early 20th
IWW early 20th
World War I
Interwar Years/1930s
World War II
Cold War & Labor-Anticommunism/Red Scare
Postwar-present
Capital Disinvestment in recent years

 

Books that are highly readable -let me know if your favorite is not here!

  • "They Take Our Jobs!": and 20 Other Myths about Immigration by Aviva Chomsky (2007)
  • Jeff Faux The Global Class War: How America's Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future - and What It Will Take to Win It Back
  • David Roediger, Haymarket Scrapbook (1986) and many books from Charles Kerr
  • Three Strikes: Miners, Musicians, Salesgirls, and the Fighting Spirit of Labor's Last Century Howard Zinn, Dana Frank, Robin D.G. Kelley
  • Jeremy Brecher, Strike!
  • William M. Adler, Mollie's Job: A Story of Life and Work on the global Assembly Line (2000)
  • Murolo/Chitty From the Folks Who Brought You the Weekend
  • Studs Terkel, Working (1974)
  • Staughton Lynd, Rank and File
  • Kingsolver, Barbara, Holding the Line: Women in the Great Arizona Mine Strike of 1983 (1989)
  • Franklin Folsom, Impatient Armies of the Poor (1992)
  • Zweig, Michael, The Working Class Majority: America’s Best Kept Secret
  • Big Trouble: A Murder in a Small Western Town Sets Off a Struggle for the Soul of America by J. Anthony Lukas (1998)
  • Priscilla Long, Where the Sun Never Shines: A History of America’s Bloody Coal Industry (1989)
  • James Green, Death in the Haymarket, 2007
  • Richard Boyer and Herbert M. Morais, Labor's Untold Story (1955) a classic that many trade unionists insist is their favorite introduction, even when they've read all the new academic books

Labor Books for Children

 

List of 40 books (pdf)

Annotated list of Books about Mother Jones and Mining for young readers

That's Not Fair!/No Es Justo!: Emma Tenayuca's Struggle for Justice/La lucha de Emma Tenayuca por la justicia By Carmen Tafolla and Sharyll Teneyuca ( 2008) 40 pp "This bilingual book tells the true story of the labor organizer Emma Tenayuca, beginning with her childhood in Texas in the 1920s. At the age of 21, she led 12,000 workers in the historic pecan workers strike."

folks who brought you weekend

Labor History Surveys and Perspectives

  • Brenner, Aaron, Benjamin Day, Immanuel Ness, eds. The Encyclopedia of Strikes in American History. (2009)
  • Beverly J. Silver, Forces of Labor: Workers' Movements and Globalization Since 1870 (2003)
  • Philip Yale Nicholson , Labor's Story in the United States (2004)
  • Murolo, Patricia From the Folks Who Brought You the Weekend (2001)
  • American Social History Project, Who Built America, Vols. I & II (new edition 2008)
  • Ronald Filipelli, Labor in the USA: A History (1984)
  • Steve Babson, The Unfinished Struggle: Turning Points in American Labor, 1877-present  ( 1999)
  • Daniel Jacoby Laboring For FreedomA New Look at the History of Labor in America (1998)
  • Paul LeBlancA Short History of the U.S. Working Class: From Colonial Times to the Twenty-First Century (1999)
  • Jacqueline Jones, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work and the Family from Slavery to the Present (1985)·       
  • Jacquelyn Jones, A Social History of the Laboring Classes in America ·       
  • Jacquelyn Jones, American Work: Four Centuries of Black and White Labor in America
  • David Brody, In Labor's Cause: Main Themes on the History of the American Worker (1993)
  • William Harris, The Harder We Run: Black Workers Since the Civil War (1982)
  • Alice Kessler-Harris, Out to Work: A History of Wage Earning Women in America (1982)
  • Teresa L. Amott and Julie A. Matthaei, Race, Gender and Work: A Multicultural Economic History of Women in the United States (1991)
  • Mike Davis, Prisoners of the American Dream: Politics and Economy in the History of the U.S. Working Class (1986) · 
  • Nell Irvin Painter, Standing at Armageddon
  • Montgomery, David.  Workers' Control in America: Studies in the History of Work, Technology, and Labor Struggles. 1979.
  • Michael Reich, Segmented Work, Divided Workers
  • Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital
  • Philip Foner, 10 volume History of American Labor
  • Jeremy Brecher, Strike!
  • Richard Boyer and Herbert M. Morais, Labor's Untold Story (1955
  • Philip Foner Labor Movement series -volume 9 (TUEL to the end of the Gompers Era)
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Documents Collections

Anthologies

  • Nicholas Coles , Janet Zandy American Working-Class Literature: An Anthology
  • Millie Beik, Labor Relations (2005) –organized around key events from 1827-1980s
  • Vicki L. Ruiz and Ellen Carol DuBois, eds., Unequal Sisters: a Multicultural Reader in U.S. Women’s History, 4th ed. (2007)
  • Jonathan Rees Jonathan Pollack, The Voice of the People: Primary Sources on the History of American Labor, Industrial Relations, and Working-Class Culture (2004)
  • Melvyn Dubofsky (Editor), Joseph A. McCartin American Labor : A Documentary History (2004)
  • Lichtenstein and Boris, Major Problems in this History of American Workers (1991, 2003)
  • Baxandall, Rosyln America's Working Women: A Documentary History (1995)
  • Zandy, Janet, ed. Calling Home: Working-Class Women's Writings: An Anthology.( 1990.)
  • Philip Foner,  and Ronald L. Lewis, eds. The Black Worker (10 vols.)
    • --also see other documents collections edited by Philip Foner , too numerous to list here
  • John R. Commons et. al., History of American Industrial Society (entire book on-line)

On specific topics/people:

  • Gerald Markowitz David Rosner ed, "Slaves of the Depression": Workers' Letters About Life on the Job (1987)
  • Robert McElvaine, Down and Out in the Great Depression: Letters from the Forgotten Man (2007-25th anniversary edition)
  • Hartmut Keil and John Jentz Workers in Chicago: A Documentary History of Working-Class Culture from 1850 to World War I
  • Thomas Dublin Farm To Factory: Women's Letters, 1830-1860 (1993)
  • Letters of Eugene V. Debs. 1990.1990 (3 volumes
  • Philip S. Foner, Mother Jones Speaks: Speeches and Writings of a Working-Class Fighter (1995)]
  • eds. Walter D. Kamphoefner Wolfgang Helbich Ulrike Sommer, News from the Land of Freedom: German Immigrants Write Home (1993)
  • Edward M. Steel, The Correspondence of Mother Jones (1985).
  • Edward M. Steel, ed. The Speeches and Writings of Mother Jones (1988)
  • The Samuel Gompers Papers 1986- multiple volumes
  • Ann Fagan Ginger, The Cold War Against Labor (2 vols., 1987)
 
 

Essay Collections

  • Cassanello, Robert & Melanie Shell-Weiss (eds). Florida’s Working-Class Past: Current Perspectives on Labor, Race, and Gender from Spanish Florida to the New Immigration.
    ( 2009)
  • Stromquist, Shelton, ed. · Labor's Cold War: Local Politics in a Global Context (2008)  
  • The Sex of Class: Women Transforming American Labor by Dorothy Sue Cobble, ed. (2007)
  • Eric Arnesen The Black Worker (2008)
  • Mercier, Laurie and Jaclyn J. Gier, eds.  Mining Women: Gender in the Development of a Global Industry, 1670-2005.  2006.
  • David Brody, Labor Embattled: History, Power, Rights (2005)
  • Robert Cherny, et.al. American Labor and the Cold War: Grassroots Politics and Postwar Political Culture (2004)
  • Joe William Trotter, Jr., Earl Lewis, and Tera Hunter, eds. The African- American Urban Experience:  Perspectives from the Colonial Period to the Present,. (2005)
  • Colin Davis, Waterfront Revolts: New York and London Dockworker, 1946-1961 (2003)
  • Linkon, Sherry Lee and John Russo.  Steeltown U.S.A.: Work and Memory in Youngstown.  (2002)
  • Boyle, Kevin, ed. Organized Labor and American Politics, 1894-1994: The Labor-Liberal
    Alliance
    .  1998
  • Unionizing the Jungles: Labor and Community in the Twentieth-Century Meatpacking Industry by Marvin Bergman and Shelton Stromquist (1997)
  • Buhle, Paul, From the Knights of Labor to the New World Order: Essays on Labor and Culture (Garland, 1997)
  • Miller, Sally M, and Daniel A. Cornford, eds. American Labor in the Era of World War II.
    1995.
  • Perusek, Glenn, and Kurt Worcester, eds.  Reade Union Politics: American Unions and Economic Change, 1960s-1990s 1995
  • Brody, David.  Workers in Indsutrial America, 2nd ed.  1993
  • Rosswurm, Steve, ed.  The CIO's Left-Led Unions 1992
  • Baron, Ava, ed.  Work Engendered: Toward a New History of American Labor (1991)
  • Robert H. Zieger, ed. Organized Labor in the Twenieth-Century South, 35-59 (1991)
  • Asher, Robert, and Charles Stephenson, eds.  Labor Divided: Race and Ethnicity in United States
    Labor Struggles, 1835-1960
    .  1990.
  • Boris, Eileen, and Cynthia R. Daniels, eds.  Homework: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Paid Labor at Home.  1989.
  • Lichtenstein, Nelson, and Stephen Meyer, eds.  On the Line: Essays in the History of Auto Work. 1989.
  • Dubofsky, Melvyn, and Warren Van Tine, eds. Labor Leaders in America  1987
  • Groneman, Carol, and Mary Beth Norton, eds.  "To Toil the Livelong Day": America's Women at
    Work, 1780-1908
     (1987)
  • Gutman, Herbert G., and Donald H. Bell, eds. The New England Working Class and the New
    Labor History
      (1987)
  • Gutman, Herbert G.  Power and Culture:  Essays on the American Working Class ( 1987)
  • Clark, Paul F., Peter Gottlieb, and Donald Kennedy, eds.  Forging a Union of Steel: Philip
    Murray, SWOC, and the United Steelworkers
      (1987)
  • Hoerder, Dirk, ed.  "Struggle a Hard Battle": Essays on Working-Class Immigrants 1986
  • Stephenson, Charles, and Robert Asher, eds.  Life and Labor: Dimensions of American Working-
    Class History.
      1986
  • Milkman, Ruth, ed.  Women's Work and Protest: A Century of Women's Labor History 1985
  • Jensen, Joan M., and Sue Davidson, eds.  A Needle, a Bobbin, a Strike: Women Needleworkers in
    America
    . (1984)
  • Frisch, Michael, and Daniel Walkowitz, eds.  Working-Class America: Labor, Community, and
    American Society
    1983
  • Keil, Hartmut, and John B. Jentz, eds.  German Workers in Industrial Chicago, 1850-1910 1983
  • James C. Foster, ed. American Labor in the Southwest (1982) Bisbee Deportation, Latino workers
  • Montgomery, David.  Workers' Control in America:  Studies in the History of Work, Technology,
    and Labor Struggles 1979.
  • Gutman, Herbert G.  Work, Culture, and Society in Industrializing America: Essays in American
    Working Class and Social History
      1976
  • Cantor, Milton, and Bruce Laurie, eds.  Class, Sex, and the Woman Worker 1977
  • Fink, Gary, ed.  Essays in Southern Labor History  1977
  • Laslett, John H.M., and S. M. Lipsett, eds.  Failure of a Dream? Essays in the History of
    American Socialism
    1974.
  • Bracey, John H., Jr., August Meier, and Elliott Rudwick, eds.  Black Workers and Organized
    Labor
    1971
  • Jacobson, Julius, ed.  The Negro and the American Labor Movement.  1968
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Biographies and Oral History Published Collections

Biographies

  • Simon Cordery, Mother Jones: Raising Cain and Consciousness (2010)
  • Pastorello, Karen. A Power Among Them: Bessie Abramowitz Hillman and the Making of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America. (2008)
  • Jackson, Carlton. Child of the Sit-Downs: The Revolutionary Life of Genora Dollinger 2008
  • Shaw, Randy Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW, and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century. (2008
  • Clancy Sigal, A Woman of Uncertain Character: The Amorous and Radical Adventures of My Mother Jennie (Who Always Wanted to Be a Respectable Jewish Mom) (2007)
  • James Barrett, William Z. Foster  and the Tragedy of American Radicalism
  • Elliott J. Gorn, Mother Jones: The Most Dangerous Woman in America.  2001 see also Mother Jones Bibliography
  • Robert Bussel, From Harvard to the Ranks of Labor: Powers Hapgood and the American Working Class
  • Nell Irvin Painter, The Narrative of Hosea Hudson (Norton, 1993)
  • Dubofsky, Melvyn, and Warren Van Tine, eds. Labor Leaders in America.  1987
  • Bill Bailey, The Kid from Hoboken. An Autobiography (self-published on-line)

Oral History Published Collections

  • Schwartz, Harvey. Solidarity Stories: An Oral History ofthe ILWU (2009)
  • Jane Latour Sisters in the Brotherhoods: Working Women Organizing for Equality in New York City (2008)
  • Sandy Polishuk, Sticking to the Union: An Oral History of the Life and Times of Julia Ruuttila (2003)
  • MichaelHoney Black Workers Remember: An Oral History of Segregation, Unionism, and the Freedom Struggle) (2002)
  • Rocking the Boat: Union Women's Voices, 1915-1975 by Brigid O'Farrell Joyce L. Kornbluh
  • Marat Moore, Women in the Mines: Stories of Life and Work (1996).
  • Stromquist, ed. Solidarity and Survival: An Oral History of Iowa Labor in the Twentieth Century (1993)Rocking the Boat
  • Meatpackers: An Oral History of Black Packinghouse Workers and Their Struggle for Racial and Economic Equality (by Rick Halpern & Roger Horowitz (1999)
  • Susan Eisenberg, We’ll Call You if We Need You: Experiences of Women Working Construction (1998)
  • Talking Union by Judith Stepan-Norris Maurice Zeitlin Ford Local 600, left labor and anticommunism
  • When the Mines Closed: Stories of Struggles in Hard Times ed. Thomas Dublin (1998). anthracite region of Pennsylvania.
  • Hooligans and Rebels: An Oral History of Working-Class Childood and Youth 1889-1939 by Stephen Humphries (1995)
  • A Woman's Place: An Oral History of Working Class Women 1890-1940 Elizabeth Roberts (1995)
  • Calling Home: Working-Class Women's Writings : An Anthology by Janet Zandy (1990)
  • Studs Terkel, Working (1972)
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Linked Labor Histories

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Glass Towns

U.S. Labor History in Global/Comparative/
" Transnational" Perspective

  • Paul Mason, Live Working or Die Fighting: How the Working Class Went Global (2010)
  • Norman Caulfield, NAFTA and Labor in North America (2010)
  • Julie Greene, The Canal Builders: Making America's Empire at the Panama Canal (2009)
  • Daniel Sidorick, CONDENSED CAPITALISM: Campbell Soup and the Pursuit of Cheap Production in the Twentieth Century (2009)
  • Lipman, Jana K. Guantanamo: A Working-Class HistoryBetween Empire & Revolution 2009.
  • David Bacon, Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants 2008.
  • Marcus Rediker, The Slave Ship: A Human History (2008)
  • Buda's Wagon: A Brief History of the Car Bomb by Mike Davis (2007)
  • Linked Labor Histories: New England, Colombia, and the Making of a Global Working Class Aviva Chomsky
  • Aviva Chomsky" They Take Our Jobs!": and 20 Other Myths about Immigration (2007)
  • Mercier, Laurie and Jaclyn J. Gier, eds.  Mining Women: Gender in the Development of a Global Industry, 1670-2005.  2006.
  • Marcel Van der Linden, The Globalization of Labor and Working Class History and Its Consequences, ILWCH 65 (Spring 2004) 136-156
  • Donna Gabaccia. Franca Iocavetta and Fraser Ottanelli, "Laboring Across National Borders: Class, Gender and Militancy in the Proletarian Mass Migrations," ILWCH (Fall 2004) 57-77 ·   
  • Colin Davis, Waterfront Revolts: New York and London Dockworker, 1946-1961 (2003)
  • William M. Adler, Mollie's Job: A Story of Life and Work on the global Assembly Line (2000)
  • Beverly J. Silver, Forces of Labor: Workers' Movements and Globalization Since 1870 (2003)
  • Nan Elizabeth Woodruff, American Congo: The African American Freedom Struggle in the Delta (2003)
  • Linebaugh, Peter and Marcus Rediker, The Many Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic (2000)
  • David Harvey, Spaces of Hope (California Studies in Critical  Human Geography, 7)
  • Kevin R. Cox, Spaces of Globalization: Reasserting the Power of the Local (1997)
  • Jamie Bronstein, Land Reform and Working-Class Experience in Britain and the United States, 1800-1862 ·      
  • John H. M. Laslett  Colliers Across the Sea: A Comparative Study of Class Formation in Scotland and the American Midwest, 1830-1924
  • Neville Kirk, Comrades or Cousins: Globalization, Workers and Labour Movements in Britain, the USA and Australia from the 1880s to 1914 - ; (2003)
  • Steinfeld, Robert, The Invention of Free Labor: The Employment Relation in English and American Law and Culture, 1350-1870
  • Sam Davies, et.al  Dock Workers: International Explorations in Comparative Labour History, 1790-1970 by. (2000)
  • Victor Silverman, Imagining Internationalism in American and British Labor, 1939-1949.  2000.
  •   Marcel van der Linden "Transationalizing American Labor History,"Journal of American History Vol 86, no 3, (1999) ·        
  • Gerald Friedman State-Making and Labor Movements: France and the United States, 1876-1914 (1999) · 
  • Berberoglu, Berch Labor and capital in the age of globalization :   the labor process and the changing nature of work in the global  economy
  • William Greider, "Why the Global Economy Needs Worker Rights" WorkingUSA May/June 1997
  •  Neville Kirk Labour and Society in Britain and the USA: Capitalism, Custom and Protest, 1780-1850 (1994)
  •   Guerin-Gonzalez Camille and Carl Strikwerda eds. The Politics of Immigrant Workers: Labor Activism and Migration in  the World Economy Since 1830 (1993)
  •   Steinfeld, Robert The Invention of Free Labor: The Employment Relation in English and American Law and Culture, 1350-1870 (1991)
  •   Levine, Rhonda ed. Bringing Class Back In: Contemporary and Historical Perspectives (Boulder 1991).
  •     Kealey, Greg and Greg Patmore eds. Canadian and Australian Labour History: Towards a Comparative Perspective    (Sydney 1990).
  •    Haimson, Leopold and Charles Tilly eds. Strikes, Wars and Revolutions in an International Perspective Strike Waves in  the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries (Cambridge 1989).
  •    Haydu, Jeffrey. Between Craft and Class: Skilled Workers and Factory Politics in the United States and Britain, 1890-1922 (California 1988).
  •     Bergquist, Charles Labor in Latin America: Comparative Essays on Chile, Argentina Venezuela, and Colombia.     Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1986. ·      
  • Bright, Charles and Susan Harding eds. Statemaking and Social Movements (Michigan 1984).
  •    Cronin, James and Carmen Sirianni eds. Work, Community and Power: The Experience of Labor In Europe and America, 1900-1925 (Philadelphia 1983).  
  •   Edwards, P.K. Conflict at Work (Oxford 1986).
  • Katznelson, Ira and Aristide Zolberg eds. Working Class Formation: Nineteenth Century Patterns in Western Europe  and the U.S. (Princeton 1986).
  •   Fredrickson, George. White Supremacy: A Comparative Study in American and South African History (1980)
  • Frenkel, Stephen ed. Organized Labour in the Asia-Pacific Region: a Comparative Study of Trade Unionism in Nine Countries (Ithaca 1993).
  • Laslett, John. Nature's Noblemen: The Fortunes of the Independent Collier in Scotland and the American Midwest,  1855-1889.
  • Pahl, R.E. On work: historical, comparative and theoretical approaches (Oxford 1988).
  • Ramirez, Bruno. On the Move: French Canadian and Italian Migrant Workers in the Atlantic Economy, 1860-1914 (Toronto 1993) ·       
  • Safa, Helen and Eleanor Leacock. Women's Work: Development and the Division of Labor by Gender (South Hadley 1986).
  • Skocpol, Theda et.al eds. Bringing the State Back In (Cambridge 1985). ·   
  • Taylor, Andrew. Trade Unions and Politics: A Comparative Introduction (1989).
  • Tolliday, Stephen and Jonathan Zeitlin eds. Shop Floor Bargaining and the State: historical and comparative perspectives     ( 1985)
  • Ward, Kathryn. Women's Work and Global Restructuring (1992)
  • Wrigley, Chris ed. Challenges of Labour: Central and Western Europe, 1917-1920 (1993).
  • Haimson, Leopold and Charles Tilly eds. Strikes, Wars and Revolutions in an International Perspective Strike Waves in  the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries (Cambridge 1989).
  •   Zeitlin, Jonathan ed. The automobile industry and its workers: between Fordism and Flexibility (London 1986).
  • S.M. Jacoby, ed., Masters to Managers: Historical and Comparative Perspectives on American Emplyers (1991)
  •   S.M. Jacoby, ed., The Workers of Nations: Industrial Relations in a Global Economy
  • Bergquist, Charles Labor in Latin America: Comparative Essays on Chile, Argentina Venezuela, and Colombia.     1986.
  • Bright, Charles and Susan Harding eds. Statemaking and Social Movements (1984).
  • Cronin, James and Carmen Sirianni eds. Work, Community and Power: The Experience of Labor In Europe and America, 1900-1925 (Philadelphia 1983).
  • Katznelson, "Working Class formation: Constructing Casess and Comparisons,"in Working Class formation: Nineteenth Century Patterns in Western Europe and the US (Princeton, 1986) p 3-41
  • Katznelson, Ira and Aristide Zolberg eds. Working Class Formation: Nineteenth Century Patterns in Western Europe  and the U.S. (Princeton 1986).
  • Fredrickson, George. White Supremacy: A Comparative Study in American and South African History (1980)
  • Frenkel, Stephen ed. Organized Labour in the Asia-Pacific Region: a Comparative Study of Trade Unionism in Nine Countries (Ithaca 1993).
  • Geary, Dick. European Labour Protest 1848-1939 (London 1981).
  • Greenberg, Stanley. Race and State in Capitalist Development: Comparative Perspective (New Haven 1980).
  • Haydu, Jeffrey. Between Craft and Class: Skilled Workers and Factory Politics in the United States and Britain, 1890-1922 (California 1988).
  • Kealey, Greg and Greg Patmore eds. Canadian and Australian Labour History: Towards a Comparative Perspective    (Sydney 1990).
  • Laslett, John. Nature's Noblemen: The Fortunes of the Independent Collier in Scotland and the American Midwest,  1855-1889.
  • Ward, Kathryn. Women's Work and Global Restructuring (Ithaca 1992).
  • Wrigley, Chris ed. Challenges of Labour: Central and Western Europe, 1917-1920 (London 1993).
  • Zeitlin, Jonathan ed. The automobile industry and its workers: between Fordism and Flexibility (1986)
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Interpretations of Class/consciousness

  • Zweig, Michael, ed. What's Class Got to Do with it? American Society in the Twenty-first Century, 2004. see essay by Fletcher
  • Zweig, Michael.  The Working Class Majority: America's Best Kept Secret.  (2000)
  • Jack Metzgar Striking Steel: solidarity remembered chapter on class consciousness; working in capitalism article
  • Leon Fink, excerpt on American Labor History, in New American History
  • Introduction to Labor Histories by Arnesan, etal
  • Peter Calvert, The Concept of Class: An Historical Introduction (NY: St. Martin/s Press, 1982)
  • Aronowitz, Stanley. False Promises: The Shaping of American Working Class Consciousness, (1973, 1993).
  • Berberoglu, Berch. The Legacy of Empire: Economic Decline and Class Polarization in the United States. 1992.
  • Zandy, Janet, ed. Liberating Memory: Our Work and Our Working-Class Consciousness. (1994.)
  • Weis, Lois and Michelle Fine, eds. Beyond Silenced Voices: Class, Race, and Gender in United States Schools, 1993.
  • Ehrenreich, Barbara. Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class. New York, 1989. This is one of my favorite books
  • Cheri Register, Packinghouse Daughter –musing about academics and their separation from the working class
  • Linkon, Sherry Lee and John Russo.  Steeltown U.S.A.: Work and Memory in Youngstown.  2002.
  • Kazin, Struggling with Class Struggle: Marxism and the Search for a Synthesis of U.S. Labor History,” Labor History 28 (Fall 1987): 497-514 
  • Albelda, Randy Pearl and Chris Tilly.  Glass Ceilings and Bottomless Pits: Women's Work, Women's Poverty. 1997.
  • Sennett, Richard and Jonathan Cobb. The Hidden Injuries of Class.  1972, 1993.
  • Rubin, Lillian B.  Worlds of Pain: Life in the Working-class Family.  1992.

 

Managerial Strategies /Bourgeois Class Formation (see also capital disinvestment section)

  • Judith Stein, Pivotal Decade: How the United States Traded Factories for Finance in the Seventies (2010)
  • Norman Caulfield, NAFTA and Labor in North America (2010)
  • Daniel Sidorick, CONDENSED CAPITALISM: Campbell Soup and the Pursuit of Cheap Production in the Twentieth Century (2009)
  • Greg Grandin, Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City (2009)
  • Delton, Jennifer. Racial Integration in Corporate America, 19401990. (2009)
  • Gage, Beverly. The Day Wall Street Exploded; A Story ofAmerica in its First Age ofTerror. (2009)
  • Nelson Lichtenstein, The Retail Revolution: How Wal-Mart Created a Brave New World of Business (2009)
  • Moreton, Bethany. To Serve God and Wal-Mart: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise. .(2009)
  • Kim Phillips-Fein, Invisible Hands: The Businessmen's Crusade Against the New Deal (2009)
  • Michael Dennis, The New Economy and the Modern South (2009)
  • Haydu, Jeffrey. Citizen Employers: Business Communities and Labor In Cincinnati and San Francisco, 1870-1916. (2008)
  • Nelson Lichtenstein, Wal-Mart: The Face of Twenty-First-Century Capitalism (2006)
  • Michael Yates, Naming the System (2005)
  • Andrew Dawson Lives of the Philadelphia Engineers: Capital, Class and Revolution, 1830-1890 (2004)
  • Sven Beckert The Monied Metropolis: New York City and the Consolidation of the American Bourgeoisie, 1850-1896 (2003)
  • Steven Fraser, Ruling America: A History of Wealth and Power in a Democracy (2003)
  • Markowitz & Rosner, Deceit and Denial: The Deadly Politics of Industrial Pollution (2003)
  • Robert Michael Smith, From Blackjacks to Briefcases: A Histoyr of Comercialized Strikebreaking and Unionbusting in the United States (2003)
  • Bud Schultz and Ruth Schultz, The Price of Dissent: Testimonies to Political Repression in America (2001)
  • William Millikan, A Union Against Unions: The Minneapolis Citizens Alliance and Its Fight Against Organized Labor(2001)
  • Clifford Kuhn, Contesting the New South Order: The 1914-1915 Strike at Atlanta’s Fulton Mills (2001)
  • Stephen Norwood, Strikebreaking and Intimidation:Mercenaries and Masculinity in Twentieth Century America (2001)
  • Venus Green Race on the Line: Gender, Labor and Technology in the Bell System, 1880-1980 (2001)
  • Marc Linder and Ingrid Nygaard, Void Where Prohibited: Rest Breaks and the Right to Urinate on Company Time
  • Sanford Jacoby Modern Manors
  • David Brian Robertson, Capital, Labor and State: The Battle for American Labor Markets from the Civil War to the New Deal (2000)
  • Howell John Harris, Bloodless Victories: The Rise and Fall of the Open Shop in the Philadelphia Metal Trades, 1890-1940 (2000)
  • Marc Linder Wars of Attrition: Vietnam, the Business Roundtable and the Decline of Construction Unions (1999)
  • Charles McCormick,  Seeing Reds: Federal Surveillance of Radicals in the Pittsburgh Mill District, 1917-1921 (1998)
  • Theodore Kornweibel, Jr, Seeing Red: Federal Campaigns against Black Militancy, 1919-1925 (1998) some sections on labor activists
  • Daniel Nelson, Managers and Workers: Origins of the New Factory System (1975, new ed. 1995)
  • Gary Fink, The Fulton Bag and Cotton Mills Strike of 1914-1915:Espionage, Labor Conflict and New South Industrail Relations (1993)
  • Sanford M. Jacoby, Employing Bureaucracy: Managers, Unions, and the Transformation of Work in American Industry, 1900-1945 (1985)
  • Ruth Milkman  Gender at Work: The Dynamics of Job Segregation by Sex During WWII (1987)
  • Susan Porter Benson, Counter Cultures: Saleswomen, Managers, and Customers in American Department Stores, 1890-1940 (1986)
  • Braverman, Harry, Labor and Monopoly Capitalism: The Degradation of Work in Twentieth Century (1974)
  • Gordon, Robert, Edwards, Reich, Segmented Work, Divided Workers
  • Gerald Zahavi, Workers, Managers, and Welfare Capitalism: The Shoeworkers and Tanners of Endicott Johnson, 1890-1950
  • Elizabeth Fones-Wolf, Selling Free Enterprise: The Business Assault on Labor and Liberalism, 1945-1960 (1994)
  • Daniel Ernst, Lawyers Against Labor: From Individual Rights to Corporate Liberalism (1995)
  • Jay Leavitt, Confessions of A Union Buster (1980s-present)
  • Stephen Meyer, The Five Dollar Day: Labor Management at the Ford Motor Company, 1908-1921 (1981)
  • Howell Harris, The Right to Manage: Industrial Relations Policies of American Business in the 1940s(1981
  • Bud Schultz and Ruth Schultz, It Did Happen Here: Recollections of Political Repression in America  (1989)
  • Bennett Harrison and Barry Bluestone, The Great U-Turn: Corporate Retructuring and the Polarizing of America (1988)
  • John Cumbler, A Social History of Economic Decline (1988)
  • Patricia Cayo Sexton, The War on Labor and The Left
  • Jerry Cooper, The Army and Civil Disorder (1980)
  • Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson (anti-union ideology)
  • Sylvester Petro, works on unions for Right-to-Work committee (leading light)
  • Frederick Hayek'schapter on unions in Constitution of Liberty (1960) (anti-union ideology)
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Professionals and Class

  • Jack Metzgar, Striking Steel: Solidarity Remembered
  • Barbara Ehrenreich Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class
  • Walkowitz, Daniel Working With Class: Social Workers and the Politics of Middle Class Identity (1999)
  • Clarence Wunderlin Visions of A New Industrial Order: Social Science and Labor Theory in America’s Progressive Era (1992)
  • Marjorie Murphy Blackboard Unions: The AFT and the NEA, 1900-1980 (1990)
  • Michelle M. Tokarczyk , Elizabeth A. Fay eds. Working-Class Women in the Academy: Laborers in the Knowledge Factory
  • This Fine Place So Far from Home: Voices of Academics from the Working Class - C. L. Barney Dews, Carolyn Leste La
cushing agitate posters

Working Class Cultures/Cultures of the Workplace

see also working class formation/community Studies, which usually address this

  • On Strike and on Film: Mexican American Families and Blacklisted Filmmakers in Cold War America by Ellen R. Baker
  • Susan Porter Benson, Counter Cultures: Saleswomen, Managers, and Customers in American Department Stores, 1890-1940 (1986)
  • Herbert G. Gutman, Work, Culture, and Society in Industrializing America: Essays in American Working Class and Social History (1977
  • Madelon Powers Faces Along the Bar: Lore and Order in the Wrokingman’s Saloon, 1870-1920
  • Susan Porter Benson, Counter Cultures: Saleswomen, Managers, and Customers in American Department Stores, 1890-1940 (1986)
  • Francis Couvares,                                                     
  • Colette Hyman,  Staging Strikes: Workers’ Tehatre and the American Labor Movement
  • Roy Rozenzweig, Eight Hours for What We Will
 

Labor "Exceptionalism"

  • Why Is There No Labor Party in the United States?by Robin Archer (2008)
  • Sean Wilentz, "Against Exceptionalism: Consciousness and the American Labor Movement, 1790-1920," International Labor and Working Class History (Fall 1984) + responses
  • Sanford M. Jacoby, "American Exceptionalism Revisited: The Importance of Management," in S. Jacoby, ed., Masters to Managers: Historical and Comparative Perspectives on American Employers (1991)
  • Kim Voss, The Making of American Exceptionalism: The Knights of Labor and Class Formation in the Nineteenth Century (1994)
  • Aristide Zolberg, "How Many Exceptionalisms?" in Ira Katznelson and Zolberg, ed.s, Working-Class Formation: Nineteenth-Century Patterns in Western Europe and the United States (1986)
  • Patricia Sexton, The War on Labor and the Left (1993)
  • John H.M Laslett and Seymour Martin Lipset Failure of a Dream? Essays in the Histoyr of American Socialism (New York, 1974)
  • Marianne Debouzy, In the Shadow of the Statue of Liberty: Immigrants, Workers and Citizens in the American Republic, 1880-1920) Paris: 1988
  • Eric Foner, “Why is There No Socilaism in the United States” Histoyr Workshop, 17 (Spring 1984) pp 57-80
  • Selig Perlman, A Theory of the Labor Movement (1928)
  • Christopher Johnson, “French Exceptionalism,” Labor History, Winter 1995
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In Pursuit of Equity

Labor and the State/Labor and the Law (American exceptionalism and the law)-

  • Barbara Young Welke, Recasting American Liberty : Gender, Race, Law, and the Railroad Revolution, 1865-1920 (2002)
  • Robert Steinfeld Coercion, Contract, and Free Labor in the Nineteenth Century (2003)
  • Steinfeld, Robert The Invention of Free Labor: The Employment Relation in English and American Law and Culture, 1350-1870
  • Julie Novkov, Constituting Workers, Protecting Women: Gender, Law and Labor in the Progressive Era and New Deal Years  (2001)
  • Stephen H. Norwood, Strikebreaking and Intimidation: Mercenaries and  Masculinity in Twentieth-Century America
  • Alice Kessler-Harris, In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in 20th Century America (2001)
  • David Brian Robertson, Labor Capital and State: The Battle for American Labor Markets\
  • James Schmidt, Free to Work: Labor Law, Emancipation and Reconstruction, 1815-1880 (1999)
  • Ruth O’Brien, Workers’ Paradox: The Republican Origins of New Deal Labor Policy, 1886-1935 (1998)
  • Simon, Bryant   A Fabric of Defeat: The Politics of South Carolina Millhands, 1910-1948. 1998.
  • Breen, W.J., Labor Market politics and the Great War: the Dept of Labor, the states and the first U.S. Employment Service, 1907-1933 (1997)
  • Amy Dru Stanley From Bondage to ContractColin Gordon, New Deals: Business, Labor and Politics in America, 1920-1935 (1995)
  • Ernst, Lawyers Against Labor: From Individual Rights to Corporate Liberalism (1995)
  • Steven Fraser, Labor Will Rule: Sidney Hillman and the Rise of American Labor (1994)
  • Udo Sautter, Three Cheers for the Unemployed: Government and Unemployment Before the New Deal (1991)
  • James Gross, Broken Promise: The Subversion of U.S. Labor Relations Policy, 1947-1994 (1995)
  • Melvyn Dubofsky The State and Labor in Modern America (1994)
  • Nelson Lichtenstein and Howell John Harris, eds. Industrial Democracy in America: the Ambiguous Promise (1993)
  • Victoria Hattam, Labor Visions and State Power –
  • Victoria Hattam, “Economic Visions and Political Strategies: American Labor and the State, 1865-1936” in Studies in American Political Development 4 (199), 82-129
  • Karen Orren Belated Feudalism: Labor the Law and Liberal Development in the United States (1991)
  • Kim Voss, The Making of American Exceptionalism: The Knights of Labor and Class Formation in the Nineteenth Century
  • William E. Forbath, Law and the Shaping of the American Labor Movement (1991)
  • Marty Sklar, The Corporate Reconstruction of American Politics (1988)
  • Christoper L. Tomlins, The State and the Unions: Labor Relations, Law, and the Organized Labor Movement in America, 1880-1960 (1985)
  • Christoper Tomlins, Law Labor and Ideology in the Early American Republic
  • Richard Oestreicher, “Urban Working-Class Political Behavior and Theories of American Electoral Politics, 1870-1940The Journal of American History, Vol. 74, No. 4. (Mar., 1988), pp. 1257-1286.
  • Alan Dawley, Struggles for Justice: Social Responsibility and the Liberal State (1991)
  • David Montgomery, Citizen Worker (1994)
  • Thomas Ferguson and Joel Rogers, Right Turn: The Decline of the Democrats and the Future of American Politics (1984)—excellent section on the effects of labor’s Cold War blinders on direction of postwar state
  • Nelson Lichtenstein, Labor's War at Home: The CIO in World War II (1982)
  • Karl E. Klare, "Judicial Deradicalization of the Wagner Act and the Origins of Modern Legal Consciousness, 1937-1941," Minnesota Law Review 62 (1978) 265-339 ; classic article about the way that the state dismantled radical possibilities for the Wagner Act and the labor movement
  • James Gross, The National Labor Relations Board (3 vols)
  • Staughton Lynd, "Ideology and Labor Law," Stanford Law Review 36 9184) 1273-1298
  • Staughton Lynd and Michael Klare, articles in Industrial Relations Law Journal, 1981
  • Dawley, “Workers, Capital and the State in the Twentieth Century,” in J. Carroll Moody and Alice Kessler-Harris, eds., Perspectives on American Labor History ( 1990), 152-202
  • Steven Tolliday and Jonathan Zeitlin. Shop Floor Bargaining and the State: Historical and Comparative Perspectives (1985)
  • Rick Fantasia, Cultures of Solidarity: Consciousness, Action, adn Contemporary American Workers (1988)
  • Barbara Garson, The Electronic Sweatshop: How Computers Are Transforming the Office of the Future into the Factory of the Past (1988)
  • Shoshana Zuboff, In the Age of the Smart Machine: The Future of Work and Power (1988)
  • Gerda Ray, “Strike Control and the State Police in New York, 1991-1923” Labor History Summer 1995
  • Price Fishback, “An Alternative View of Violence in Labor Disputes in the early 1900s: The Bituminous Coal Industry, 1890-1930J
  • Joseph McCartin, Labor’s Great War: The Struggle for Industrial Democracy and the Origins of Modern American Labor Relations, 1912-1921Charles McCormick, Seeing Reds: Federal Surveillance of Radicals in the Pittsburgh Mills District, 1917-1921Julie Greene, Pure and Simple Politics : The American Federation of Labor and Political Activism, 1881-1917
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Unemployment/Hours/Leisure

  • Donna Haverty-Stacke; America's Forgotten Holiday: May Day and Nationalism, 1867-1960 (2008)
  • Jonathan Cutler, Labor's time: shorter hours, the UAW, and the struggle for the American unionism 2004
  • David Roediger and Philip Foner, Our Own Time: A History of American Labor and the Working Day (1988)
  • Roy Rosenzweig, Eight Hours for What We Will: Workers and Leisure in an Industrial City, 1870-1920 (1983)
  • Benjamin Kline Hunnicutt, Work Without End: Abandoning Shorter Hours for the Right to Work (1988)
  • Gary Cross, The Quest for Time
  • Juliet Schor, The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure (1992)
  • Folsom, Franklin. Impatient Armies of the Poor: The Story of Collective Action of the Unemployed, 1808-1942.(1990)
  • Breen, W.J., Labor Market politics and the Great War: the Dept of Labor, the states and the first U.S. Employment Service, 1907-1933 (1997)
  • Udo Sautter, Three Cheers for the Unemployed: Government and Unemployment Before the New Deal (1991)
  • David Montgomery, Beyond Equality: Labor and the Radical Republicans

black freedom fighters

 

African-American Workers / Race and Labor (much to be added here soon)

  • Bob Zieger's bibliography on Race and Labor (basic)
  • Glymph, Thavolia. Out of this House of Bondage: The Transformation of the Plantation Household (2008)
  • Laurie B. Green, Battling the Plantation Mentality: Memphis and the Black Freedom Struggle (2008)
  • Frymer, Paul. Black and Blue: African Americans, the Labor Movement, and the Decline of the Democratic Party., 2008
  • Robert Zieger, For Jobs and Freedom: Race and Labor in America since 1865 (2007)
  • Michael Honey Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King's Last Campaign (2007)
  • Eric Arnesen, Brotherhoods of Color: Black Railroad Workers and the Quest for Equality (2001)
  • Richard Iton, Solidarity Blues: Race, Culture, and the American Left (2000)
  • Roediger, David, "Labor in White Skin": Race and Working Class History, Reshaping the U.S. Left: Popular Struggles in the 1980s: The Year Left, Volume 3 ed, Mike Davis (verso, 1988), 287-308
  • Roediger, David, "What if Labor Were Not White and Male? Recentering Working Calss Histoyr and Reconstructing..." International Labor and Working Class History, NO. 51, Spring 1997 pp 72-95
  • Sidney Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (New York, 1985)
  • Heather Cox Richardson, Race, Labor and Politics in the Post-Civil War North, 1865-1901
  • Eric Arnesen, "Up From Exclusion: Black and White Workers, Race, and the State of Labor History," Reviews in American History 26 (1998) 1946-174
  • Bruce Nelson, Divided We Stand: American Workers and the Struggle for Black Equality (2001)
  • Soul by Soul: Inside the Antebellum Slave Market (2001)
  • Obadele-Starks, Ernest Black Unionism in the Industrial South ( 2000)
  • Bates, Beth Tompkins Pullman Porters and the Rise of Protest Politics in Black America, 1925,-1945 (2000)
  • Minchin, Timothy, The Color Of Work: The Struggle for Civil Rights in the Southern Paper Industry, 1945-1980 (2000)
  • Minchin, Timothy, Hiring the Black Worker: The Racial Integration of the Southern Textile Industry, 1960-1980 (1999)
  • Daniel Letwin The Challenge of Interracial Unionism: Alabama Coal Miners, 1878-1921 (1998)
  • Thomas Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis (1998)--see Labor History symposium Vol 39, No. 1, Feb 1998
  • Alexander Saxton, The Rise and Fall of the White Republic: Class Politics and Mass Culture in 19th Century America (Verso, 1996)
  • Robin D. G. Kelley, Race Rebels: Culture, Politics and the Black Working Class (1994)
  • Symposium: Bruce Nelson, "Class, Race and Democracy in the CIO: The "New" Labor History Meets the "Wages of Whiteness" International Review of Social History 41 (1996) pp. 351-374; and responses:374-420
  • David Roediger, Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (1991)
  • Walter Johnson, Soul By Soul
  • Michael Honey, Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights: Organizing Memphis Workers (1992)
  • Earl Lewis, In Their Own Interests: Race, Class, and Power in Twentieth Century Norfolk(1991)
  • Eric Arnesen, Waterfront Workers of New Orleans: Race, Class and Politics (1990)
  • Janiewski, Dolores, Sisterhood Denied: Race, Gender and Class in a New South Community (Temple, 1985)
  • Robert H. Zieger, ed. Organized Labor in the Twenieth-Century South, 35-59
  • Thomas Sugrue The Origins of the Urban Crisis: see also symposium on the book in Labor History Feb 1998, vol 39, and Sugrue's response
  • Peter Rachleff, Black Labor in Richmond (1989)
  • Nell Irvin Painter, The Narrative of Hosea Hudson ( 1993)
  • Robin Kelley, Hammer and Hoe (1990)
  • Robert Asher and Charles Stephenson, eds., Labor Divided: Race and Ethnicity in United States Labor Struggles (1990)
  • Herbert Hill, Black Labor and the American Legal System: Race, Work and the Law (1985) and his numerous articles
  • Joe William Trotter, Jr, Black Milwaukee: The Making of an Industriaal Proletariat, 1915-45
  • Susan Turner Meiklejohn, Wages, Race, Skills and Space: Lessons from Employers in Detroit’s Auto Industry (2000)
  • Halpern and Horowitz: Packinghouse Unionism, see symposium in Labor History, May 1999
  • Du Bois, W.E.B.  Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880.  1935  the classic work of African-Americans as a black proletariat
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Labor Rights Are Civil Rights

Latino/Latina Labor History

  • Guerin-Gonzales, "CONVERSING ACROSS BOUNDARIES OF RACE, ETHNICITY, CLASS, GENDER, AND REGION: LATINO AND LATINA LABOR HISTORY" in The African- American Urban Experience:  Perspectives from the Colonial Period to the Present, ed. Joe William Trotter, Jr., Earl Lewis, and Tera Hunter. 2005
  • On Strike and on Film: Mexican American Families and Blacklisted Filmmakers in Cold War America by Ellen R. Baker (2007)
  • Jose Alamillo, Making lemonade out of lemons: Mexican American labor and leisure in a California town, 1880-1960,2006.
  • Vargas, Zaragosa, Labor Rights are Civil Rights (2005)
  • Matt García. A World of Its Own: Race, Labor, and Citrus in the Making of GreaterLos Angeles, 1900–1970. 2001.
  • Carmen Teresa Whalen, From Puerto Rico to Philadelphia: Puerto Rican Work-ers and Postwar Economies. 2001.
  • Mike Davis, Magical Urbanism: Latinos Reinvent the U.S. City (2001)
  • Guerin-Gonzales, Camille, Mexican Workers and American Dreams: Immigration, Repatriation, and California Farm Labor, 1900-1939 (1996)
  • Zaragosa Vargas,  Proletarians of the North A History of Mexican Industrial Workers in Detroit and the Midwest, 1917-1933 (1993)
  • Cletus E. Daniel, Bitter Harvest  (1991)
  • Cletus E. Daniel, Chicano Workers and the Politics of Fairness (1991)
  • Juan Gonzalez, Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America (1990)
  • Erasmo Gamboa, Mexican Labor and World War II (1990)
  • Sara Deutsch, No separate refuge: culture, class, and gender on an Anglo-Hispanic frontier, 1880-1940. 1987.
  • Robin F. Scott, “Wartime Labor Problems and Mexican-Americans in the War,” in Manuel P. Servin, ed., The Mexican Americans (1974)
  • Juan R. Garcia Operation Wetback (1965)
  • Ernesto Galarza, Merchants of Labor (1965)
  • Vicki Ruiz, Cannery Women, Cannery Lives (1976)
  • Selden C. Menefee and Orin C. Cassmore, The Pecan Shellers of San Antonio (1940)
  • George Sanchez, Forgotten People (1996)
  • Daniel T. Simon, "Mexican Repatriation in East Chicago, Indiana," Journal of Ethnic Studies 2 (Summer 1974) 11-23
  • Richard Griswold del Castillo, The Los Angeles Barrio, 1850-1890 (1979)
  • James R. Kluger, The Clifton-Morenci Strike (1970)
  • Mark Reisler, By the Sweat of Their Brow  (1976)
  • David R. Maciel, "Mexican Migrant Workers in the United States," in James C. Foster, ed. American Labor in the Southwest (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1982)
  • Ortiz, Altagracia, ed. Puerto Rican Women and Work: Bridges in Transnational Labor (1996)
  • The World of the Mexican Worker in Texas (1995)
  • Open Veins of Latin America
  • Juan R. Garcia Operation Wetback (1965)
  • Ernesto Galarza, Merchants of Labor (1965)
  • Cletus E. Daniel, Bitter Harvest  (1991)
  • Cletus E. Daniel, Chicano Workers and the Politics of Fairness (1991)
  • Vicki Ruiz, Cannery Women, Cannery Lives (1976)
  • George Sanchez, Forgotten People (1996)
  • Juan Gomez-Quiñones. Mexican American Labor, 1790-1990. University of New Mexico Press. 1994.
  • Barbara A. Driscoll. The Tracks North: The Railroad Bracero Program of World War II. Texas UP.

 

working whiteness

Ethnicity/Immigration

  • Glen Omatsu's bibliographic list: Asian Pacific American Labor Organizing: An Annotated Bibliography, Part I: Historical Struggles, 1840s 1960s \
  • David Bacon, Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (2009)
  • Aviva Chomsky. Linked Labor Histories: New England, Colombia, and the Making of a Global Working Class (2008)
  • Aviva Chomsky. "They Take Our Jobs!": and 20 Other Myths about Immigration (2007)
  • Ruth Milkman, L.A. Story: Immigrant Workers And the Future of the U.S. Labor Movement (2007)
  • Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, Domestica: Immigrant Workers Cleaning and Caring in the Shadows of Affluence (2007)
  • Donna R. Gabaccia, Fraser M. Ottanelli, eds. Italian Workers of the World: Labor Migration and the Formation of Multiethnic States (2005)
  • Immanuel Ness, Immigrants, Unions, & The New Us Labor Market (2005)
  • Colleen O’Neill. Working the Navajo Way: Labor and Culture in the Twentieth Century (2005)
  • Cindy Hahamovitch. “Creating the Perfect Immigrants: Guestworkers of the World in Historical Perspective.” Labor History (Great Britain) 44:1 (2003): 69-94.
  • Matt Garcia. A World of Its Own: Race, Labor, and Citrus in the Making of Greater Los Angeles, 1900- 1970. (2001)
    Andrew Gyory, Closing the Gate: Race, Politics, and the Chinese Exclusion Act (1998)
  • The Politics of Immigrant Workers: Labor Activism and Migration in the World Economy Since 1830 by Camille Guerin-Gonzales and Carl Strikwerda (1998)
  • Paul Buhle and Dan Georgakas The Immigrant Left in the United States (1996)
  • Mildred A. Beik, The Miners of Windber: The Struggles of New Immigrants for Unionization, 1890s-1930s (1996)
  • Gwendolyn Mink. Old Labor and New Immigrants in American Political Development: Union, Party and State, 1875-1920 (1990)
  • Peck, Gunther. Reinventing Free Labor: Immigrant Padrones and Contract Laborers in North America, 1880-1920
  • Alexander Saxton, The Indispensible Enemy: Labor and the Anti-Chinese Movement in California (1971)
  • *James Barrett, "Americanization from the Bottom Up: Immigration and the Remaking of the Working Class in the United States, 1880-1930," Journal of American History (79 (Dec 1992)
  • *Gary Gerstle, Working Class Americanism: The Politics of Labor in a Textile City, 1914-1960 (1989)
  • Robert Asher and Charles Stephenson, eds., Labor Divided: Race and Ethnicity in United States Labor Struggles (1990)
  • David M. Emmons, The Butte Irish: Class and Ethnicity in an American Mining Town, 1875-1925 (1989)
  • Donna Gabaccia, Militants and Migrants: Rural Sicilians Become American Workers (1988)

Labor and Civil Rights

  • Buss, Fran Leeper. Moisture of the Earth: Mary Robinson, Civil Rights & Textile Union Activist. (2009)
  • Chen, Anthony S. The Fifth Freedom; Jobs, Politics, and Civil Rights in the United States, 1941-1972 (2009)
  • Collins, Gail. When Everything Changed; The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present.(2009
  • Lang, Clarence. Grassroots at the Gateway: Class Politics and Black Freedom Struggle in St. Louis, 1936-1975. (2009)
  • Levenstein, Lisa. A Movement Without Marches: African American Women and the Politics of Poverty in Postwar Philadelphia. (2009)
  • Orozco, Cynthia E. No Mexicans, Women, or Dogs Allowed: The Rise ofthe Mexican American Civil Rights Movement. (2009)
  • Hill, Rebecca N. Men, Mobs & Law: Anti-Lynching & Labor Defense in U.S. Radical History (2009)
  • Emilio Zamora, Claiming Rights and Writing Wrongs in Texas: Mexican Workers and Job Politics during World War II. (2009)
  • Smith, Robert Samuel. Race, Labor & Civil Rights: Griggsversus Duke Power and the Struggle for Equal EmploymentOpportunity. (2008)
  • Honey, Michael. Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King’s Last Campaign. (2007)
  • MacLean, Nancy. Freedom Is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace. 2006.
  • Vargas, Zargosa. Labor Rights are Civil Rights. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2005
  • Isaac, Larry and Lars Christenson. “How the Civil Rights Movement Revitalized Labor Militancy.” American Sociological Review, Vol. 67, No. 5 (Oct., 2002).
  • Korstad, Robert, Civil Rights Unionism. (2003)
  • James A. Gross, Workers' Rights As Human Rights (2003)
 
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Sisters in the brotherhoods

 

 

 

Mining women

 

 

 

 

rights not roses

 

 

 

Gender at Work

 

 

Women/Gender/Labor and Feminism

  • Sisters in the Brotherhoods: Working Women Organizing for Equality in New York City by Jane Latour (2008)
  • The Sex of Class: Women Transforming American Labor by Dorothy Sue Cobble, ed. 2007
  • Mercier, Laurie and Jaclyn J. Gier, eds.  Mining Women: Gender in the Development of a Global Industry, 1670-2005.  2006.
  • United Apart: Gender and the Rise of Craft Unionismby Ileen DeVault
  • Dorothy Cobble The Other Women's Movement (Princeton, 2004)
  • Mary Fonow, Union Women: Forging Feminism in the United Steelworkers of America (2003)
  • Ann Crittenden, The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World is Still the Least Valued (2001)
  • Allison Helper, Women in Labor: Mothers, Medicine and Occupation Health in the United States, 1890-1980 (2000)
  • Kessler Harris, In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in 20th Century America (2001)
  • Novkov, Julie. Constituting Workers, Protecting Women: Gender, Law and Labor in the Progressive Era and New Deal Years (2001)
  • Joan Williams Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work Conflict and What to Do about it (2000)
  • Dennis A. DeSlippe, "Rights, Not Roses:" Unions and the Rise of Worling-Class Feminism, 1945-80 (2001)
  • Barbara Ehrenreich, "Maid to Order: The Politics of Other Women's Work," Harper's Magazine, vol 300, No. 1799 (April 2000)
  • Susan Eisenberg, We'll Call You if We Need You: Experiences of Women Working Construction (1998)
  • Albelda, Randy Pearl and Chris Tilly.  Glass Ceilings and Bottomless Pits: Women's Work, Women's Poverty. 1997
  • Amott, Teresa and Julie Matthaei, Race, Gender and Work: A Multi-cultural Economic History of Women in the United States (1996)
  • Blackwelder, Julia Kirk Now Hiring : The Feminization of Work in the United States, 1900-1995 (1997)
  • Arlie Hochschild with Anne Machung, The Second Shift (1997)
  • Eileen Boris, Home to Work: Motherhood and the Politics of Industrial Homework (1994)
  • Tera W. Hunter, To ‘Joy Our Freedom: Southern Black Women’s Lives and Labors After the Civil War
  • Thomas Dublin, Transforming Women's Work: New England Lives in the Industrial Revolution ( 1994)
  • Eileen Boris, Homeworkers in Global Perspective: Invisible No More (1996)
  • Amy Kesselman, Fleeting Opportunities: Women Shipyard Workers in Portland and Vancouver During World War II and Recoversion (1990)
  • Lise Vogel, Mothers on the Job: Maternity Policy in the U.S. Workplace (1991)
  • Zandy, Janet, ed. Calling Home: Working-Class Women's Writings: An Anthology.( 1990.)
  • Gabin, Nancy F. Feminism in the Labor Movement: Women and the United Auto Workers, 1935-1975 (1990)
  • Alice Kessler-Harris, Out to Work: A History of Wage Earning Women in America (1982)
  • Karen Anderson Wartime Women: Sex Roles, Family Relations and the Status of Women in World War II (1981)
  • Elizabeth Jameson All that Glitters
  • Du Bois, Ellen Carroll and Vicki Ruiz eds. Unequal Sisters: A Multicultural Reader in U.S. Women's History (New York 1990).
  • Kingsolver, Barbara, Holding the Line: Women in the Great Arizona Mine Strike of 1983 (Cornell, 1989, 1996)
  • Mary Blewett, Men, Women, and Work: Class, Gender, and Protest in the New England Shoe Industry, 1780-1910 (1988)
  • Patricia Ann Cooper, Once A Cigarmaker: Men, Women, and Work Culture in American Cigar Factories, 1900-1919
  • Vicki Ruiz, Cannery Women, Cannery Lives: Mexican Women, Unionization and the California Food Processing Industry, 1930-1950 (1987)
  • Sharon Hartman Strom, Beyond the Typewriter: Gender, Class and the Origins of Modern American Office Work, 1900-1930 (1992)
  • Kathy Peiss, Cheap Amusements
  • --articles in special issue of Labor History on Gender, Spring Summer 1993—Tera Hunter, Faue, Kessler-Harris esp
  • Ardis Cameron, Radicals of the Worst Sort: Laboring Women in Lawrence, Massachusetts, 1860-1912 (1994)
  • Vivien Hart, Bound By Our Constitution: Women, Workers and the Minimum Wage (Princeton, 1994)
  • Annelise Orleck, Common Sense and a Little Fire: Women anf Working Class Politics in the United States, 1900-1965 (University of North Carolina Press, 1995)
  • Eisenberg, Susan We’ll Call you if We Need You: Experiences of Women Working Construction (Cornell, 1998)
  • Nancy Gabin, Feminism in the Labor Movement: Women and the United Auto Workers, 1935-1975 (1990)
  • Sarah Deutch, No Separate Refuge: Class and Gender on an Anglo-Hispanic Frontier
  • Johanna Brenner Women and the Politics of Class --challenges traditional Marxist and traditional feminist analysis of gender and family life-
  • Amy Dru Stanley, From Bondage to Contract: Wage Labor, Marriage, and the Market in the Age of Slave Emancipation (1999)
  • Tera W. Hunter, To ‘Joy Our Freedom: Southern Black Women’s Lives and Labors After the Civil War
  • Nancy Folbre, The Invisible Heart (2000)—on care giving and it’s under valuation in capitalist value systems
  • Kingsolver, Barbara, Holding the Line: Women in the Great Arizona Mine Strike of 1983 (Cornell, 1989, 1996) This is one of my favorite books
  • Susan Strasser, Never Done: A History of American Housework
  • Ruth Schwartz Cowan, More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology From the Open Hearth to the Microwave (1983)
  • Jeanne Boydston, “The Woman Who Wasn’t There: Women’s Market Labor and the Transition to Capitalism,” Journal of the Early Republic 16, 2 (Summer 1996)
  • Christine Stansell, City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789-1860
  • Dolores Janiewski, Sisterhood Denied: Race, Gender and Class
  • Sue Levine, Labor’s True Women: Carpet Weavers, Industrialization and Labor Reform in the Gilded Age
  • Dana Frank Purchasing Power: Consumer Organizing, Gender and the Seattle Labor Movement, 1991-1929
  • Patricia Cooper, Once a Cigar Maker: Men Women and …
  • *Dana Frank, Purchasing Power: Gender, Consumer Organizing, and the Labor Movement of Seattle (1994)
  • Ruth Milkman, Gender at Work: The Dynamics of Job Segregation by Sex During World War II (1987)
  • Eileen Boris and Cynthia Daniels, Homework: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Paid Labor at Home (1989)
  • Ruth Milkman, ed., Women, Work and Protest (1985)—essays on WTUL, Bread and Roses strike, WWII,
  • Hoffman, Nancy and How, Florence, eds Women Working: An Anthology of Stories and Poems (Feminist Press, 1979)
  • Women at Work: The Transformation of Work and Community in Lowell, Massachusetts, 1826-1860 (1979).
  • Mary Blewett, Men, Women, and Work: Class, Gender, and Protest in the New England Shoe Industry, 1780-1910 (1988)
  • Patricia Ann Cooper, Once A Cigarmaker: Men, Women, and Work Culture in American Cigar Factories, 1900-1919
  • Vicki Ruiz, Cannery Women, Cannery Lives: Mexican Women, Unionization and the California Food Processing Industry, 1930-1950 (1987)
  • Sharon Hartman Strom, Beyond the Typewriter: Gender, Class and the Origins of Modern American Office Work, 1900-1930 (1992)
  • Kathy Peiss, Cheap Amusements
  • Ardis Cameron, Radicals of the Worst Sort: Laboring Women in Lawrence, Massachusetts, 1860-1912 (1994)
  • Sara Deutsch, No separate refuge: culture, class, and gender on an Anglo-Hispanic frontier, 1880-1940. 1987.
  • Vivien Hart, Bound By Our Constitution: Women, Workers and the Minimum Wage (Princeton, 1994)
  • Annelise Orleck, Common Sense and a Little Fire: Women anf Working Class Politics in the United States, 1900-1965 (University of North Carolina Press, 1995)
  • Eisenberg, Susan We'll Call you if We Need You: Experiences of Women Working Construction (Cornell, 1998)
  • Johanna Brenner Women and the Politics of Class --challenges traditional Marxist and traditional feminist analysis of gender and family life-
  • Nancy Folbre, The Invisible Heart (2000)—on care giving and it's under valuation in capitalist value systems
  • Alice Kessler-Harris, Out to Work: A History of Wage Earning Women in America (1982)
  • Susan Strasser, Never Done: A History of American Housework
  • Ruth Schwartz Cowan, More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology From the Open Hearth to the Microwave (1983)
  • Christine Stansell, City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789-1860
  • Dolores Janiewski, Sisterhood Denied: Race, Gender and Class
  • Sue Levine, Labor's True Women: Carpet Weavers, Industrialization and Labor Reform in the Gilded Age
  • Dana Frank Purchasing Power: Consumer Organizing, Gender and the Seattle Labor Movement, 1991-1929
  • Ruth Milkman, Gender at Work: The Dynamics of Job Segregation by Sex During World War II (1987)
  • Eileen Boris and Cynthia Daniels, Homework: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Paid Labor at Home (1989)
  • Ruth Milkman, ed., Women, Work and Protest (1985)—essays on WTUL, Bread and Roses strike, WWII,
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Labor Loyalty Rebellion

War and American Labor (see also WWI and World WarII and Cold War and Labor)

  • Weinberg, Carl Labor, Loyalty and Rebellion:  Southwestern Illinois Coal Miners and World War I
  •   Between a River and a Mountain: The AFL-CIO and the Vietnam War by Edmund Wehrle (2005).
  • Elizabeth McKillen, Chicago Labor and the Quest for a Democratic Diplomacy,  (I1995);,
  • Elizabeth McKillen, "Hybrid Visions: Working-Class Internationalism in the Mexican Borderlands, Seattle, and Chicago, 1910-1920," Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas 2:1 (Winter 2005): 77-107;
  • Elizabeth McKillen, "Ethnicity, Class, and Wilsonian Internationalism Reconsidered: The Mexican- and Irish-American Immigrant Left and U.S. Foreign Relations, 1914-1922," Diplomatic History 25 (Fall 2001): 553-87
  • Catherine Lutz, Homefront: A Military City and the American Twentieth Century ( 2001).
  • Kim Phillips, "'All I wanted Was a Steady Job: The State and African American Workers," in New Working-Class Studies, eds.John Russo and Sherry Linkon (2005).
  • Christian Appy's Working Class War (Vietnam)  (1993)
  • Savage Acts (American Social History Project film)-Phillipines War
  • Jeannette Keith
  • Randolph S. Bourne,  War and the Intellectuals: Collected Essays ,1915-1919 (1999 ).
  • Roger Horowitz, "It is 'the Working Class Who Fight All the Battles': Military Service, Patriotism, and the Study of American Workers," in Rick Halpern and Jonathan Morris, eds., American Exceptionalism? US Working Class Formation in An International Context (1997)
  • Richard Moser's The New Winter Soliders:  GI and Veteran Dissent During the Vietnam Era
  • William Short and Willa Seidenberg, A Matter of Conscience:  GI Resistance During the Vietnam War (1992)

Labor and Environment

  • Andrews, Thomas G. Killing for Coal: America’s Deadliest Labor War (2008)
  • Timothy J. Minchin, John David Smith, Forging a Common Bond: Labor and Environmental Activism During the Basf Lockout
  • Montrie, Chad. Making a Living: Work and Environment in the United States
    2008
  • Thomas Estabrook, Labor-environmental Coalitions: Lessons from a Louisiana Petrochemical Region (2007)
  • Feurer, Radical Unionism in the Midwest, 1900-1950 (chapter 5) -2007
  • Chad Montrie, To Save the Land and People: A History of Opposition to Surface Coal Mining in Appalachia (2003)
  • Sellars, Nigel Anthony. Oil, Wheat and Wobblies:The Industrial Workers of the World in Oklahoma, (1998)
 

Specific trades commodities industries

the Samuel Gompers papers site has a bibiographic listing of works for the following industries:

Clothing & TextilesCommunication / Service

 Food, Alcohol & Tobacco /Graphic Arts / Manufacturing / Maritime   /Metal Trades / Mining / Railroads

 

tied to the great packing machine

 

Food Industry/Labor in the Food Chain

  • Susan Levine, School Lunch Politics: The Surprising History of America's Favorite Welfare Program (2010)
  • Tracey Deutsch, Building a Housewife's Paradise: Gender, Politics, and American Grocery Stores in the Twentieth Century (2010)
  • Daniel Sidorick, CONDENSED CAPITALISM: Campbell Soup and the Pursuit of Cheap Production in the Twentieth century (2009)
    • Kathleen Mapes. Sweet Tyranny: Migrant Labor, Industrial Agriculture, and Imperial Politics. (2009)
  • Participant Media, Karl Weber, eds., Food Inc.: A Participant Guide: How Industrial Food is Making Us Sicker, Fatter, and Poorer-And What You Can Do About It (2009) -companion to the film by same name
  • Robert Cassanello, Melanie Shell-Weiss, eds. Florida's Working-Class Past: Current Perspectives on Labor, Race, and Gender from Spanish Florida to the New Immigration (2009) -several relevant essays
  • Shane Hamilton, Trucking Country: The Road to America's Wal-Mart Economy (2008)
  • Warren Belasco and Roger Horowitz, ed. Food Chains: From Farmyard to Shopping Cart, ( 2008)
  • John Bowe, Nobodies: Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the New Global Economy (2008)
  • Raj Patel, Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System (2008)
  • Steve Penfold's The Donut: A Canadian History (2008)
  • Deborah Barndt, Tangled Routes: Women, Work, and Globalization on the Tomato Trail (2007)
  • Roger Horowitz, Putting Meat On the American Table: Taste, Technology and Transformation (2005)
  • Eric Schosser, Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal (2005)
  • Steve Striffler, Chicken: The Dangerous Transformation of America's Favorite Food (2005 )
    • Peter Rachleff, ed. Starving Amidst Too Much: IWW Writings on the Food Industry (2005)
  • Franklin Rosemont Joe Hill: The IWW & the Making of a Revolutionary Workingclass Counterculture (2003) -selected excerpts/chapters
  • Harvey Levenstein, Paradox of Plenty: A Social History of Eating in Modern America, Revised Edition (2003)
    • Charlie Thompson and Melinda Wiggins, eds. The Human Cost of Food, Farmworkers' Lives, Labor, and Advocacy (2002)
  • Deborah Barndt, Women Working The Nafta Food Chain: Women, Food and Globalization (1999)
  • Ester Reiter, Making Fast Food: From the Frying Pan into the Fryer (1996)
    • Peter Coclanis "Food Chains: the Burdens of the (Re)past," Agricultural History, 72 (1998), 660-673, which puts labor at the center of the complex global story he tells.
  • Sellars, Nigel Anthony. Oil, Wheat and Wobblies:The Industrial Workers of the World in Oklahoma, (1998)
  • • Dorothy Sue Cobble, Dishing It Out: Waitresses and Their Unions in the Twentieth Century (1991)
    • Sidney W. Mintz Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (1986)
    • Vicki Ruiz's Cannery Women Cannery Lives. (1987)
  • Ruth Schwarz Cowan, More Work For Mother: The Ironies Of Household Technology From The Open Hearth To The Microwave (1983)
    • Carey McWilliams, Factories in the Field (1939)

    Meatpacking

    • Wilson Warren, Tied to the Great Packing Machine (2007)
    • Cheri Register, Packinghouse Daughter: A Memoir (2001)
    • Wilson J. Warren, Struggling with "Iowa's" Pride: Labor Relations, Unionism, and Politics in the Rural Midwest since 1877 Wilson J. Warren (2000)
    • Peter J. Rachleff, Hard-Pressed in the Heartland: The Hormel Strike and the Future of the Labor Movement (1999)
    • Horowitz and Halpern, Meatpackers: An Oral History of Black Packinghouse Workers (1999)
    • Deborah Fink, Cutting Into the Meatpacking Line: Workers and Change in the Rural Midwest (1998)
    • Halpern, Down on the Killing Floor: Black and White Workers in Chicago's Packinghouses (1997)
    • Horowitz, "Negro and White, Unite and Fight!" A Social History of Industrial Unionism in Meatpacking: 1930-1990 (1997)
    • Shel Stromquist, ed., Unionizing the Jungles: Labor and Community in the Twentieth Century Meatpacking Industry (1997)
    • The Jungle (esp. the new edition with missing chapters)

      Agricultural workers/Sharecropping/Tenant Farmers/Migrant Farmworkers

    • Kelly Lytle Hernandez, Migra: A History of the U.S. Border Patrol (2010)
    • Rick Nahmias, The Migrant Project: Contemporary California Farm Workers (2008)
    • Leon Fink, The Maya of Morgantown (2007)
    • Donald H. Grubbs, Cry From the Cotton: The Southern Tenant Farmers' Union and the New Deal (2000)
    • Daniel Rothenberg With These Hands: The Hidden World of Migrant Farmworkers Today (1998)
    • Cindy Hahamovitch, The Fruits of Their Labor: Atlantic Coast Farmworkers and the Making of Migrant Poverty, 1870-1945 (1997)
    • Clete Daniel, Bitter Harvest: A History of California Farmworkers, 1870-1941 (1981)
    • Weber, Devra. "Dark Sweat, White Gold": California Farm Workers, Cotton, and the New Deal (1994)
    • Eugene Nelson, Break Their Haughty Power: Joe Murphy in the Heyday of the Wobblies (1993)
    • Jane Maguire On Shares: Ed Brown's Story (1975)
    • Maralyn Edid, Farm Labor Organizing
    • Dennis Valdes, El Norte
    • Alec Wilkiesson, Big Sugar: Seasons in the Cane Fields of Florida (1990)
    • Leo Chavez, Shadowed Lives: Undocumented Immigrants in American Society (1997)

 

 
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Geographical

West (more to be added soon)

David Brundage, The Making of Western Labor Radicalism
Elizabeth Jameson, All That Glitters: Class, Conflict and Community in Cripple Creek (1998)
Katznelson Working Class formation: Constructing Casess and Comparisons, in Working Class formation: Nineteenth Century Patterns in Western Europe and the US ( 1986) p 3-41

 

Defying Dixie

 

Battling the Plantation mentality

Southern Diaspora

South

  • James Gregory's bibliography of the Southern diaspora-migrations of black and white southerners
  • Brian Kelly's list of essential Southern Labor/Social Movement History Reading List
  • Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, Defyng Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919-1950 (2008)
  • Robert Cassanello, Melanie Shell-Weiss, eds. Florida's Working-Class Past: Current Perspectives on Labor, Race, and Gender from Spanish Florida to the New Immigration (2009)
  • Laurie B. Green, Battling the Plantation Mentality: Memphis and the Black Freedom Struggle (2007)
  • Michael Honey Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King's Last Campaign (2007)
  • James Gregory The Southern Diaspora: How The Great Migrations of Black and White Southerners Transformed America ( 2005)
  • Robert Korstad, Civil Rights Unionism Tobacco Workers & the Struggle for Democracy in the Mid-Twentieth-Century South (2002)
  • Michelle Brattain, The Politics of Whiteness; race, Workers and Culture in the Modern South (2001)
  • Carlton, David, Capital Mobilization and Southern Industry 1880-1905) JEH 49 (March 1989): 73-94
  • Mohl,  Searching for the Sunbelt: Historical Perspectives on a Region, (1990)
  • Daniel, Pete Breaking the Land: The transformation of Cotton, Tobacco and Rice Cultures since 1880
  • Flamming, Douglas Creating the Modern South: Millhands and Managers in Dalton, Georgia, 1884-1984 (1992)
  • Flowers, Linda Throwed Away: Failures of Progress in Eastern North Carolina (1990)
  • Hahamovich, Cidny, The Fruits of their Labor: Atlantic Coast Farmworkers and the Making of Migrant Poverty, 1870-1945 (1997)
  • Hanchett, Thomas W. Sorting Out the New South City: Race, Class and Urban Development in Charlotte, 1875-1975 1998
  • Janiewski, Dolores Sisterhood Denied (1985)
  • William Link, The Paradox of Southern Progressivism, 1880-1930 (1992)
  • Obadele-Starks, Ernest Black Unionism in the Industrial South (2000)
  • Rachleff, Black Labor in the South
  • Wood, Phillp J. Southern Capitalism: The Political Economy of North Carolina (1986
  • Zieger, Robert H. Organized Labor in the twentieth Century South (1981)
  • "O. Delight Smith's Progressive Era: Labor, Feminism and Reform in the Urban South," in Visible Women: New Essays on American Activism;
  • "Private Eyes, Public Women: Class and Sex in the Urban South, Atlanta, 1913-1915," in Work Engendered: Toward a New History of American Labor;
  • William  Cohen: At Freedom's Edge: Black Mobility and the Southern White Quest for Racial Control, 1861-1915
  • Pete Daniel, The Shadow of Slavery: Peonage in the South, 1901-1969
  • Korstad, Robert and Nelson Lichtenstein, “Opportunities Lost and Found; Labor, Radicals, and the Early Civil Rights Movement,” Journal of American History 75 (December 1988) 786-811
  • Organized Labor in the Twenieth-Century South, ed Robert H. Zieger, 35-59
  • Gary Fink and Merl Reed, eds Race Class and Community in Southern Labor History
  • Obadele-Starks, Ernest Black Unionism in the Industrial South (2000)
  • Daniel Letwin The Challenge of Interracial Unionism: Alabama Coal Miners, 1878-1921
  • Minchin, Timothy, The Color Of Work: The Struggle for Civil Rights in the Southern Paper Industry, 1945-1980
  • Minchin, Timothy, Hiring the Black Worker: The Racial Integration of the Southern Textile Industry, 1960-1980
  • Nell Irvin Painter, The Narrative of Hosea Hudson (1993)
  • Hall, et. al., Like a Family: The Making of a Southern Mill World
  • Robin Kelley Hammer and Hoe (1990)
  • Peter Rachleff, Black Labor in Richmond
  • Earl Lewis, In Their Own Interests: Race, Class, and Power in Twentieth Century Norfolk—discussion of class in the U.S. and U.S. working class, challenges to interpretation
  • Robin D. G. Kelley, Race Rebels: Culture, Politics and the Black Working Class (1994)
  • Michael Honey, Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights: Organizing Memphis Workers (1992)

Unions and Corruption

  • Nathan Ward Dark Harbor: The War for the New York Waterfront (2010)
  • David Witwer, Shadow of the Racketeer: Scandal in Organized Labor (2009)
  • Nelson Lichtenstein, “Misunderstanding the Anti-Union Narrative,” The Chronicle Review, (January 22, 2010), B8-B10
  • Lawrence Richards, Union Free America: Workers and Antiunion Culture (2008)
  • David Witwer, “The Racketeer Menace and Antiunionism in the Mid-Twentieth Century US,” International Labor and Working-Class History, No. 74 (Fall 2008), pp. 133-140.
  • Elizabeth Tandy Shermer, “Origins of the Conservative Ascendancy: Barry Goldwater’s Early Senate Career and the De-legitimization of Organized Labor,” Journal of American History, v. 95 (December 2008), pp. 678-709
  • James B. Jacobs, Mobsters, Unions, and Feds: The Mafia and the American Labor Movement(2006)
  • Robert Fitch, Solidarity for Sale: How Corruption Destroyed the Labor Movement and Undermined America’s Promise( 2006)
  • David Witwer, Corruption and Reform in the Teamsters Union, (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2003),
  • Andrew Wender Cohen, The Racketeer’s Progress: Chicago and the Struggle for the Modern American Economy, 1900-1940, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004),
  • Andrew Wender Cohen, “The Racketeer’s Progress: Commerce, Crime, and the Law in Chicago, 1900-1940,” Journal of Urban History, v. 29, no. 5 (2003), pp. 575-596;
  • Horne, Gerald. Class Struggle in Hollywood, 1930-1950 : Moguls, Mobsters, Stars, Reds, and Trade Unionists (2001)
  • David Witwer, "The Landrum-Griffin Act: A Case Study in the Possibilities and Problems in an Anti-Union Corruption Law," Criminal Justice Review, v. 27, no. 2 (Autumn 2002), pp. 301-320
  • Philip Taft, Corruption and Racketeering in the Labor Movement, (1970)
  • John Hutchinson, The Imperfect Union: A History of Corruption in American Trade Unions, ( 1970)
  • William Z. Foster, Misleaders of Labor (New York: Trade Union Educational League, 1927
 
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Chronological

 

Colonial thru Early Nineteenth Century

  • Seth Rockman, Scraping By: Wage Labor, Slavery and Survival in Early Baltimore (2009)
  • Marcus Rediker, The Slave Ship: A Human History (2008)
  • Linebaugh, Peter and Marcus Rediker, The Many Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic (2000)
  • Kenneth Morgan, Slavery and Servitude in Colonial Norht America (2001)
  • Glickstein, Jonathan American Exceptionalism, American Anxiety
  • The Monied Metropolis: New York City and the Consolidation of the American Bourgeoisie, 1850-1896 - Sven Beckert (2001)
  • Daniel Vickers, Farmers and Fishermen; Two Centuries of Work in Essex County, Massachusetts, 1630-1830
  • Michele Gillespie, Free Labor in an Unfree Worlds: White Artisans in Slaveholding Georgia, 1789-1960 (2000)
  • Dublin, Thomas, Transforming Women’s Work: New England Lives in the Industrial Revolution (1994)
  • Boydston, Jeanne Home and Work: /Housework, Wages and Ideology in the Early Republic (1990);
  • Bruce Laurie Artisans into Workers: Labor in Nineteenth Century America (1989)
  • Rediker, Marcus, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates and the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1700-1750 (1987)
  • David Montgomery, Citizen Worker: The Experience of Workers in the United States With Democracy and the Free Market During the Nineteenth Century (1993)
  • Glcikstein, Jonathan, Concepts of Free Labor in Antebellum America (1991)
  • Peter Way, Common Labour: Workers and the Digging of the North American Canals, 1780-1850 (1993)
  • Billy Smith, The “Lower Sort”: Philadelphia’s Laboring People, 1750-1800 (1990)
  • Laurel Ulrich A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812 (1990)
  • David Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class
  • Bolster, W. Jefffrey. Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the age of Sail (1997)
  • Redicker, Marcus Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates, and the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1700-1750 (1987)
  • Peter Way, Common Labour: Workers and the Digging of the North Amerian Canals (Cambridge, 1993)
  • Walter Licht, Industrializing America
  • Bruce Levine, The Spirit of 1848: German Immigrants, Labor Conflict, and the Coming of the Civil War (1992)
  • Bruce Laurie, Artisans into Workers: Labor in Nineteenth-Century America (1989)
  • Salinger,  Sharon To Serve Well and Faithfully: Labor and Indentured Servants in Pennsylvania 1762-1800 (1987)
  • Bryan Palmer, "Social Formation and Class Formation in North America, 1800-1900," in David Levine, ed Proletarianization and Family History (1984)
  • Steffen, Charles G. The Mechanics of Baltimore: Workers and Politcs in the age of Revolution, 1763-1812 (1984)
  • Richard White, The Roots of Dependency: Subsistence, Environment and Socail Change Among the Choctaws, Pawnees, and Navajos (1983)
  • Stansell, Christine, City of Women: Sex and Class in New York: 1789-1860 (1986)
  • Susan Hirsch, Roots of the American Working Class: The Industrialization of Crafts in Newark, 1800-1860 (19
  • Dublin, Thomas, Women at Work: The Transformation of Work and Community in Lowell, Massachusetts, 1826-1860 (1979).
 

Slavery

  • Susan Peabody's bibliography & guide
  • Morgan, Kenneth, Slavery and Servitude in Colonial North America (2001)
  • Gillespie, Michele, Free Labor in an Unfree World: White Artisans in Slaveholding Georgia 1789-1860 (2000)
  • Johnson, Michael Soul By Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market (2000)
  • Berlin, Ira, Many Thousands Gone: The first Two Centuries of Slavery in North America (1998)
  • Brown, Kathleen Good Wives Nasty Wenches and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia
  • David Roediger and Martin Blatt, The Meaning of Slavery in the North (1998)
  • Shane White, Somewhat More Independent: The End of Slavery in New York City 1770-1810 (1991)
  • Betty Wood, Women’s Work, Men’s Work: The Informal Slave Economies of Lowcountry Georgia (1995)
  • Kolchin, Peter Unfree Labor: American Slavery and Russian Serfdom (1987)
  • Deborah White, Ar’n’t I a Woman? Female Slaves in the Plantation South (1986)
  • Gavin Wright, The Political Economy of the Plantation South (1978)
  • Eugene Genovese Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (1974)
  • Edmund Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Virginia (1975)
 

Late 19th, early 20th—see community studies as well

  • David O. Stowell, ed. The Great Strikes of 1877 (2008)
  • Douglas A. Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II (2008)
  • Matthew Hild, Greenbackers, Knights of Labor, and Populists: Farmer-labor Insurgency in the Late-nineteenth-century South (2007)
  • Reinventing "the People": The Progressive Movement, the Class Problem and the Origins of Modern Liberalism by Shelton Stromquist( 2006)
  • Moon-Ho Jung, Coolies and Cane: Race, Labor, and Sugar in the Age of Emancipation (2006)
  • Joshua Brown, Beyond the Lines: Pictorial Reporting, Everyday Life, and the Crisis of Gilded Age America (2006)
  • Steven Hahn, A Nation under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration (2003)
  • Heather Cox Richardson. The Death of Reconstruction: Race, Labor, and Politics in the Post-Civil War North, 1865-1901(2001)
  • Julie Greene, Pure and Simple Politics: The American Federation of Labor and Political Activism, 1881-1917 (see symposium in Labor History,  May 1999)
  • Shelton Stromquist, Richard Schneirov and Nick Salvatore, The Pullman Strike and the Crisis of the 1890's: Essays on Labor, Politics and the State ( 1999)
  • Herbert G. Gutman, Power and Culture: Essays on the American Working Class (New Press, 1992)
  • David Stowell, Streets, Railroads and the Great Strike of 1877 (1999)
  • Tera Hunter, To 'Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women’s Lives and Labors after the Civil War (1998)_
  • Richard Oestreicher, Solidarity and Fragmentation: Working People and Class Consciousness in Detroit, 1875-1900 (1986)
  • Shapiro, Karen, A New South Rebellion: The Battle Against Convict Labor in the Tennesseee Coalfields, 1971-1896 (1998)
  • Kim Voss, The Making of American Exceptionalism: The Knights of Labor and Class Formation in the 19th Century (1994)
  • Bruce Nelson, Beyond the Martyrs: A Social History of Chicago’s Anarchists, 1870-1900 (1988)
  • Paul Krause, The Battle for Homestead, 1880-1892: Politics, Culture, Steel (1992)
  • Madelon Powers Faces Along the Bar: Lore and Order in the Workingman’s Saloon, 1870-1920
  • Shelton Stromquist, A Genderation of Boomers: The Pattern of Railroad Labor Conflict in Nineteenth Century America
  • Leon Fink, Workingmen's Democracy: The Knights of Labor and American Politics (1982)
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Twentieth Century-approaches and overviews

  • Nelson Lichtenstein State of the Unions: A Century of American Labor
  • Alice Kessler Harris In Pursuit of Equity
  • Paul Buhle, Taking Care of Business: Samuel Gompers, George Meany, Lane Kirkland, and the Tragedy of American Labor (2000)
  • James Green, The World of the Worker
  • Richard Edwards Contested Terrain: The Transformation of the Workplace in the Twentieth Century (1979)
  • David Brody, Workers in Industrial America: Essays on the Twentieth Century Struggle (2nd ed, 1993)
  • David Brody, In Labor’s Cause (20th Century)
  • Zieger, Robert H.  American Workers, American Unions, 1920-1985. 1986.
  • James Barrett, Work and Community in the Jungle: Chicago's Packinghouse Workers, 1894-1922 (1987)
  • John Bodnar, Workers' World: Kinship, Community and Protest in an Industrial Society (1982)
  • Jacqueline Dowd Hall, et. al., Like A Family: The Making of A Southern Cotton Mill World (1987)
  • Tamara K. Hareven, Family Time and Industrial Time: The Relationship Between Family and Work in a New England Industrial Community (1982)
 

Working Class Formation/Working Class Community Studies 1850-1950

  • Learning to Forget: Schooling and Family Life in New Haven's Working Class, 1870-1940 by Stephen Lassonde (2008)
  • Shirley Ann Wilson Moore, To Place Our Deeds: The African American Community in Richmond, California, 1910-1963 (2000)
  • David Corbin, Life, Work and Rebellion in the Coal Fields: The South Virginian Miners, 1890-1922
  • Neil Foley, The White Scourge: Mexicans, Blacks and Poor Whites in Texas Cotton Culture (1997)
  • Kimberley Phillips, Alabama North: African-American Migrants, Community and Working Class Activism in Cleveland, 1915-1945 (2000)
  • Walker, Melissa, All We Knew Was to Farm: Rural Women in the Upcountry South, 1919-1941 (2000)
  • Cubmler, John, Working Class Community in Industrial America: Work, Leisure and Struggle in Two Industrial Cities (1979)
  • Gunther Peck, Reinventing Free Labor: Padrone and Immigrant Workers int ehNorth American West, 1880-1930
  • Cindy Hahamovitch, The Fruits of their Labor: Atlantic Coast Farmworekrs and the Making of Migrant Poverty (1997)
  • Curtin, Mary Ellen, Black Prisoners and their World: Alabama, 1865-1900 (2000)
  • Gretchen Lemke-Santangelo, Abiding Courage: African American Migrant Women and the East Bay Community (1996)
  • Sarah Deutsch, No Separate Refuge: Culture, Class and Gender on an Anglo-Hispanic Frontier in the American Southwest, 1880-1940 (1987)
  • Zaragosa Vargas, Proletarians of the North: A History of Mexican Industrial Workers in Detroit and the Midwest (1993)
  • Guerin-Gonzales, Camille, Mexican Workers and American Dreams: Immigration, Repatriation and California Farm Labor, 1900-1939 (1996)
  • Earl Lewis, In Their Own Interests: Race, Class, and Power in Twentieth Century Norfolk (1991)—discussion of class in the U.S. and U.S. working class, challenges to interpretation
  • Letwin, Daniel, The Challenge of Interracial Unionism: Alabama Coal Miners, 1878-1921 (1998)
  • Gregg Andrews, City of Dust: A Cement Company Town in the Land of Tom Sawyer
  • Camille Guerin-Gonzales The Politics of Immigrant Workers: Labor Activism and Migration  in the World Economy since 1830 (1993)-see especially Foreman-Peck article “Insiders and Outsiders”
  • James Barrett, Work and Community in the Jungle: Chicago's Packinghouse Workers, 1894-1922 (1987)
  • John Bodnar, Workers' World: Kinship, Community and Protest in an Industrial Society (1982)
  • Donna Gabbacia, From Italy to Elizabeth Street (1983)
  • Olivier Zunz, The Changing Face of Inequality: Urbanization, Industiral Developmetn, and Immigrants in Detroit (1982)
  • Michael Piore Birds of Passage; Migrant Labor and Industrial Societies (1979
  • Millie Beik, The Miners of Windber
  • The Butte Irish
  • Jacqueline Dowd Hall, Like A Family: The Making of a Southern Mill World (1987)
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Labor and Radicalism late 19th-early 20th-much more to be listed in this category

  • Rebecca N. Hill, Men, Mobs, and Law: Anti-lynching and Labor Defense in U.S. Radical History (2009)
  • Freeberg, Ernest. Democracy’s Prisoner: Eugene V. Debs, the Great War, and the Right to Dissent. 2008.
  • Victoria Johnson, How Many Machine Guns Does It Take to Cook One Meal?: The Seattle and San Francisco General Strikes (2008)
  • Nick Salvatore, Eugene V. Debs, Citizen and Socialist (1982)

IWW early 20th

  • List of books found at http://www.iww.org/en/history
  • Franklin Rosemont, Joe Hill: The IWW & the Making of a Revolutionary Workingclass Counterculture (2003)
  • Sandy Polishuk, Sticking to the Union : An Oral History of the Life and Times of Julia Ruuttila (2003)
  • Green, Archie Wobblies, Pile Butts, and Other Heroes: Laborlore Explorations 1993
  • Dubofsky, Melvyn, We Shall Be All: A History of the Industrial Workers of the World (1969)   See symposium on it in Labor History, August 1999
  • Preston, William, Jr. Aliens and Dissenters: Federal Suppression of Radicals,   1903-1933  1963.
  • Conlin, Joseph R., ed. At the Point of Production: The Local History of the IWW ( 1981 )
  • Salerno, Salvatore Red November/Black November: Culture and Community in the IWW  1989
  • Foner, Phillip S., ed. Fellow Workers and Friends: IWW Free Speech Fights As Told By Participants  1981.
  • Flynn, Elizabeth Gurley, Walker C. Smith, & William E. Trautman [Salvatore Salerno, ed.] Direct Action & Sabotage: Three Classic IWW Pamphlets from the 1910s   Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 1997 --one of my favorites-best stuff on sabotage and subverting ideology (primary documents with good introduction)
  • Sellars, Nigel Anthony, Oil, Wheat & Wobblies: The Industrial Workers of the World in  Oklahoma, 1905-1930
  • Kimeldorf, Howard Battling for American Labor: Wobblies, Craft Workers, and the Making of the Union Movement ( 1999)   comparative Philadelphia and New York, 1910-39. -- argues that successful unionism depends on rank   & file workers achieving and practicing shop floor control regardless of professed ideology of the unions  involved.
  • Roediger, David, ed. Covington Hall: Labor Struggles in the Deep South & Other Writings.  Chicago:  Charles Kerr Press, 2000, illustrated.
 

WWI era

  • Robert Whitaker, On the Laps of Gods: The Red Summer of 1919 and the Struggle for Justice That Remade a Nation (2008)
  • Freeberg, Ernest. Democracy’s Prisoner: Eugene V. Debs, the Great War, and the Right to Dissent. 2008.
  • Carl R. Weinberg, Labor, Loyalty, and Rebellion: Southwestern Illinois Coal Miners & World War I (2005)
  • Robert Shogan, The Battle of Blair Mountain: The Story of America's Largest Labor Uprising (2004)
  • Joseph McCartin, Labor's Great War: The struggle for Industrial Democracy and the Oritgins of Modern American Labor Relations, 1912-1921 (1998)
  • W. M. Breen, Labor Market Politics and the Great War: The Department of Labor, the States, and the First U.S. Employment Service, 1907-1933 (1997)
  • Thomas Fleming Illusion Of Victory: America In World War I (2004) sections on workers
  •  William J. Breen, Labor Market Politics and the Great War: The Department of Labor, The States and the first U.S. Employment Service, 1907-1933  (1997) HD 8072 B726 1997
  • Charles McCormick, Seeing Reds: Federal Surveillance of Radicals in the Pittsburgh Mill District, 1917-1921 (1998)
  • Maurine Weiner Greenwald Women, War, and Work: The Impact of World War I on Women Workers in the United States (. 1990)
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Interwar period/1930s/CIO

  • Labor in the 1930s bibliography  --huge list organized by subject and author, therefore, the list below is abbreviated for this period
  • The Unemployed People's Movement: Leftists, Liberals, and Labor in Georgia, 1929-1941by James J. Lorence (2009)
  • Laura Hapke, Labor's Canvas: American Working-Class History and the WPA Art of the 1930s (2008)
  • Gilmore, Glenda Elizabeth. Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights 1919-1950 , 2008
  • Randi Storch, Red Chicago (2007)
  • Daniel J. Opler, For All White-Collar Workers: The Possibilities of Radicalism in New York City's Department Store Unions, 1934-1953 (2007)
  • Susan Porter Benson, Household Accounts: Working-class Family Economies in the Interwar United States David Montgomery (Afterword) (2007)
  • Radical Unionism in the Midwest, 1900-1950 by Rosemary Feurer (2006)
  • Bucki, Cecelia, Bridgeport's Socialist New Deal, 1915-1936 (2001)
  • Sol Dolinger and Genora Johnson Dollinger, Not Automatic: Women and the Left in the Forging of the Auto Worker Union (
  • Michelle Brattain, The Politics of Whiteness: Race, Workers and Culture in the Modern South (2001)
  •  Janet Irons Testing the New Deal: The General Textile Strike of 1934 in the American South (2000)
  • James D. Rose, Duquesne and the Rise of Steel Unionism (2000)
  • Simon, Bryant   A Fabric of Defeat: The Politics of South Carolina Millhands, 1910-1948. 1998.
  • Michael Denning, The Cutlural Front: The Laboring of American Culture, (see symposium in Labor History, August 1998
  •  David F. Selvin, A Terrible Anger: The 1934 Waterfront and General Strikes in San Francisco (1996)
  • Lizabeth Cohen, Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939 (1987)
  • Staughton & Alice Lynd, "Rank and File": Personal Histories of Working Class Organizers (1973)
  • David F. Selvin, A Terrible Anger: The 1934 Waterfront and General Strikes in San Francisco (1996)
  • Which Side Are You On?: The Harlan County Coal Miners, 1931-39
  • Symposium: Bruce Nelson, "Class, Race and Democracy in the CIO: The “New” Labor History Meets the "Wages of Whiteness"International Review of Social Histiry 41 (1996) pp. 351-374;  and responses: Elizabeth Faue, “Anti-Heroes of the Working Class: A Response to Bruce NelsonIRSH 41 (1996), pp. 375-388, Thomas Sugrue, “Segmented Work, Race Conscious Workers: Structure, Agency and Division in the CIO Era, IRSH 41 (1996), pp 389-406, and Reply, Working Class Agency and Racial Inequality, IRSH 41 (1996)pp 407-420 
  • Bruce Nelson, Workers on the Waterfront (see Nelson’s revisions in Divided We Stand),
  • Ruth O'Brien, Workers' Paradox: The Republican Origins of New Deal Labor Policy, 1886-1935 (1998)    
  •   Robert Zieger, The CIO: 1935-1955 (1995)—see symposium in Labor History, Spring 1996
  • Symposium: Bruce Nelson, "Class, Race and Democracy in the CIO: The “New” Labor History Meets theWages of Whiteness" International Review of Social Histiry 41 (1996) pp. 351-374; and responses: Elizabeth Faue, Anti-Heroes of the Working Calss: A Response to Bruce NelsonIRSH 41 (1996), pp. 375-388, Thomas Sugrue, Segmented Work, Race Conscious Workers: Structure, Agency and Division in the CIO Era, IRSH 41 (1996), pp 389-406, and Reply, Working Class Agency and Racial Inequality, IRSH 41 (1996)pp 407-420
  • Staughton Lynd, ed. "We Are All Leaders": The Alternative Unionism of the 1930s (1996)
  • Colin Gordon, New Deals: Business, Labor and Politics in America, 1920-1935 (1995)
  • ·  Steven Fraser, Labor Will Rule: Sidney Hillman and the Rise of American Labor (1994)
  • Elizabeth Faue, Community of Suffering and Struggle: Women, Men and the Labor Movement in Minneapolis, 1915-1945 (1991)
  • Joshua Freeman In Transit: The Transport Workers Union of New York City (1989)
  • Benjamin Hunnicutt,  Work Without End: Abandoning Shorter Hours for the Right to Work (1988)
  • Melvyn Dubofsky, "Not So 'Turbulent Years': A New Look at the 1930s," in Charles Stephenson and Robert Asher, Life and Labor: Dimesions of American Working Class History (1986)
  • Gary Gerstle, Working-Class Americanism: The Politics of Labor in a Textile City, 1914-1960 (1989)
  •   Robert Zieger, The CIO: 1935-1955 (1995)
  • Irving Bernstein, Turbulent Years: A History of the American Worker, 1933-1941 (1970)
  •    Alice and Staughton Lynd, eds. Rank and File: Personal Histories by Working Class Organizers
  • Ronald Schatz, The Electrical Workers: A History of Labor at General Electric and Westinghouse 1923-1960 (1983)
  • David Brody Workers in Industrial America: Essays on the Twentieth Century Struggle (1981)
  • David Brody, "The CIO After Fifty Years," Dissent (Fall 1985)  
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WWII, 1940s

  • Daniel Kryder Divided Arsenal: Race and the American State During World War II (2000)
  • Silverman, Victor, Imagining Internationalsim in American and British Labor, 1939-1949 (2000)
  • Andrew Kersten Race, Jobs and the War: The FEPC in the Midwest, 1941-46  (2000)
  • Miller, Sally M, and Daniel A. Cornford, eds. American Labor in the Era of World War II. 1995
  • Maureen Honey, Bitter Fruit: African American Women in World War II (1999)
  • Nelson Lichtenstein,  Labor’s War at Home: The CIO in World War II (1982)
  • Ruth Milkman  Gender at Work: The Dynamics of Job Segregation by Sex During WWII (1987)
  • Maureen Honey, Creating Rosie the Riveter: Classs, Gender and Propaganda During World War II
  • Michael Honey,  Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights: Organizing Memphis Workers (1993)
  • Barbara Griffith, The Crisis of American Labor: Operation Dixie and the Defeat of the CIO
  • Nelson Lichtenstein, Class Politics and the State During World War II, International and Working Class History, Fall 2000 (no. 58)
  • Erasmo Gamboa Mexican Labor and World War II (1990)
  • James Atleson, Labor and the Wartime State: Labor Relations and Law During World War II
  • Irving Richeter, Labor's Struggles, 1945-1950: A Participatns;’s View
  • Jim Rose, The Problem Every Supervisor Dreads: Women Workers at the U.S. Steel Duquesne WorksLabor History
  • Marilyn Johnson, The Second Gold Rush: Oakland and the East Bay During World War II (1993)
  • Steve Fraser Labor Will Rule: Sidney Hillman and the Rise of American Labor (1993)
  • Howell Harris, The Right to Manage: Industrial Relations Policies of American Business in the 1940s (1982)
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     labor's cold war     

Cold War and Labor

  • John Haynes list of books and articles –the most comprehensive list of books and articles on the subject,  highly searchable, therefore only a select list below
  • Stromquist, Shelton, ed. · Labor's Cold War: Local Politics in a Global Context 2008
  • Rosemary Feurer, Radical Unionism in the Midwest, 1900-1950 (2006)
  • Cherny, et.al. American Labor and the Cold War: Grassroots Politics and Postwar Political Culture (2004)
  • Thai Jones, A Radical Line: From the Labor Movement to the Weather Underground, One Family's Century of Conscience (2004)
  • Robert Korstad, Civil Rights Unionism (2003)
  • Stepan Norris and Zeitlin: Left Out (2002)
  • Red Feminism: American Communism and the Making of Women's Liberation by Kate Weigand; (2002)
  • Joshua R. Freeman Working Class New York
  • Sexton, The War on Labor and the Left
  • Steve Rosswurm, The CIO's Left-Led Unions (1992)
  •   Meyer, Stephen Stalin Over Wisconsin (1992)
  • Ellen Schrecker, “How Red is a Valley” Clinton Jencks and His Union,” Chapter 9 of  Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America
  • Horowitz, Daniel. Betty Friedan and the Making of the Feminine Mystique: The American Left, the Cold War, and Modern Feminism (1998)
  • Stepan-Norris, Talking Union (1995)-Ford Local 600
  •   James J. Lorence, The Suppression of Salt of the Earth: How Hollywood, Big Labor and Politicians Blacklisted a Movie in Cold War America
  • Ellen Schrecker, McCarthyism and Organized Labor: Fifty Years of Lost Opportunities Working USA (vol 3, no. 5) 93-102highly readable summary of consequences of labor's cold war
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Postwar to the Present

  • Judith Stein, Pivotal Decade: How the United States Traded Factories for Finance in the Seventies (2010)
  • Jefferson R. Cowie, Stayin' Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class (2010)
  • Dennis Broe, Film Noir, American Workers, and Postwar Hollywood (2010)
  • Kim Phillips-Fein, Invisible Hands: The Businessmen's Crusade Against the New Deal (2009)
  • Michael Dennis, The New Economy and the Modern South (2009)
  • Ashby, Steven K. & c.J. Hawking. Staley: The Fight for a New American Labor Movement. University of Illinois Press. (2009)
  • Bryan-Wilson, Julia. Art Workers: Radical Practice in the Vietnam Era (2009)
  • Juravich, Tom. At the Alter of the Bottom Line:The Degradation of Work in the 21st Century (2009)
  • Kraft, James P. Vegas at Odds: Labor Conflict in a Leisure Economy, 1960-1985 (2009)
  • Witwer, David. Shadow of the Racketeer: Scandal in Organized Labor (2009)
  • Shane Hamilton, Trucking Country: The Road to America's Wal-Mart Economy (2008)
  • Michael Yates, Naming the System (2005)
  • Dorothy Cobble: The Other Women's Movement: Workplace Justice and Social Rights in Modern America (2003)
  • Becky M. Nicolaides,  My Blue Heaven: Life and Politics in the Working-Class Suburbs of Los Angeles, 1920-1965 (2002)
  • Colin Davis, Waterfront Revolts: New York and London Dockworker, 1946-1961 (2003)
  • Linkon, Sherry Lee and John Russo.  Steeltown U.S.A.: Work and Memory in Youngstown.  (2002)
  • Kenneth D. Durr, Behind the Backlash: White Working-Class Politics in Baltimore, 1940-1980
  • Jeffrey W. Coker, Confronting American Labor: The New Left Dilemma (2002)
  • Timothy J. Minchin, John David Smith, Forging a Common Bond: Labor and Environmental Activism During the Basf Lockout
  • Bao, Xiaolan, Holding Up More than Half the Sky: Chinese Women Garment Workers in New York City, 1948-1992 (2001)
  • Leslie Mcall, Complex Inequaltiy: Gender, Class And Race in the New Economy (2001)
  • Mike Davis, Magical Urbanism: Latinos Reinvent the U.S. City (2001)
  • Marie Gottschalk, The Shadow Welfare State: Labor, Business and the Politics of Health Care in the United States (2001)
  • Jill Fraser, White Collar Sweatshop: The Deterioration of Work and its Rewards in Corporate America (2001)
  • Zweig, Michael, The Working Class Majority: America’s Best Kept Secret (2000)
  • Lynd and Lynd, eds. The New Rank and File (2000)
  • Fred Rose, Coalitions across the Class Divide: Lessons from the Labor, Peace and Environmental Movements (2000)
  • Ruth Milkman, ed., Organizing Immigrants: The Challenge for Unions in Contemporary California (2000)
  • Heather Thompson Whose Detroit? Politics, Labor and Race in a Modern American City (2001)
  • John Bowe, Ed., Marisa Bowe, ed., Sabin Streeter, ed. Gig: Americans Talk About Their Jobs (2001)
  • Arlie Hochschild The Commercialization of Intimate Life : Notes from Home and Work
  • Jack Metzgar, Striking Steel: Solidarity Remembered
  • Ian Levison A Working Stiff's Manifesto: Confessions of a Wage Slave
  • Teixeira, Ruy America's Forgotten Majority: Why the White Working Class Still Matters
  • Richard Sennett, The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism -
  • Marc Linder Wars of Attrition: Vietnam, the Business Roundtable and the Decline of Construction Unions (1999)
  • Katherine Newman Falling From Grace: Downward Mobility in the Age of Affluence (1999)
  • Margaret Neslon and Joan Smith, Working Hard and Making Do: Surviving in Small Town America (1999)
  • Thomas Minchin Hiring the Black Worker
  • Reskin, Job Queues, Gender Queues
  • Dennis DeSlippe, Rights Not Roses: Unions and the Rise of Working Class Feminism
  • Dana Frank, Buy American: the Untold Story of Economic Nationalism (1999)
  • Robert Bruno, Steelworker Alley: How Class Works in Youngstown (1999)
  • James Galbraith, Created Unequal: The Crisis in American Pay (1998)
  • Judith Stein, Running Steel, Running America: Race, Economic Policy, and the Decline of Liberalism  (1998)
  • Thomas Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit
  • Stanley Aronowitz, From the Ashes of the Old: American Labor and America’s Future (1998)
  • Michael Yates, Why Unions Matter (1998)
  • Kate Bronfenbrenner, et al, eds. Organizing to Win: New Research on Union Strategies (1998)
  • Jacoby, Modern Manors: Welfare Capitalism Since the New Deal (1997)
  • Susan Ferriss, et al, The Fight for the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers Movement (1997)
  • James Gross, Broken Promise: The Subversion of U.S. Labor Relations Policy, 1947-1994 (1995)
  • Kevin Boyle, “There are no Union Sorrows that the Union Can’t Heal: The Struggle for Racial Equality in the United Automoblile Workers, 1940-1960” Labor History
  • Peter Levy, The New Left and Labor in the 1960s (1994)
  • Peter Rachleff, Hard-Pressed in the Heartland: The Hormel Strike and the Future of the Labor Movement (1993)
  • Jonathan D. Rosenblum, Copper Crucible The Arizona Copper Strike of 1983
  • Tom Juravich and Kate Bronfenbreener, Ravenswood,: The Steelworkers’ Victory and the Revivial of the American Labor Movement
  • Leon Fink and Brian Greenberg Upheaval in the Quiet Zone: A History of Hospital Workers Union Local 1199 (1989)
  • Christian Appy Working Class War: American Combat Soldiers in Vietnam (1993)
  • Steven Amberg Labor and the Postwar Political Economy (1992)
  • Thomas Geoghegan Which Side are you on? Trying to Be for Labor When Its Flat on Its Back (1992)
  • Aronowitz and DiFazio, The End of Work
  • Kim Moody, An Injury to All: The Decline of American Unionism (1988)
  • Michael Goldfield, The Decline of Organized Labor in the United States (1987)
  • David Noble, Forces of Production (1984) – a brilliant treatment of technology and politics of work
  • Rick Fantasia, Cultures of Solidarity: Consciousness, Action, adn Contemporary American Workers (1988)
  • Barbara Garson, The Electronic Sweatshop: How Computers Are Transforming the Office of the Future into the Factory of the Past (1988)
  • Shoshana Zuboff, In the Age of the Smart Machine: The Future of Work and Power (1988)
  • Thomas Ferguson and Joel Rogers, The Decline of the Democrats and the Future of American Politics (1986)
  • Ruth Milkman, "Women Workers, Feminism and the Labor Movement Since the 1960s," in Ruth Milkman, ed., Women, Work and Protest (1985)
  • David Halle, America's Working Man: Work, Home, and Politics Among Blue Collar Property Owners (1984)
  • David Bensman and Roberta Lynch, Rusted Dreams: Hard Times in a Steel Community (1987)
  • Barbara Kingsolver, Holding the Line: Women in the Great Arizona Mine Strike of 1983 (1989)
  • Arlie Hochschild, The Managed Heart: The Commercialization of Human Feeling (1983)
  • Babson Lean Work
  • Studs Terkel, Working (New York: New Press, 1972)
  • Cheri Register, Packinghouse Daughter
  • Stanley Aronowitz, False Promises: The Shaping of American Working Class Consciousness (1973)
  • Steve Fraser Labor Will Rule: Sidney Hillman and the Rise of American Labor (1993)
  • William Serrin, The Company and the Union: The "Civilized Relationship" of the General Motors Corporation and the United Automboile Workers (1973)
  • Sennett and Cobb, The Hidden Injuries of Class
  • Gendered Strife and Confusion
  • Thomas Geoghegan, Which Side Are You ON? Trying to Be For Labor When It’s Flat on Its Back (Plume, 1993)
  • Martha Fetherolf Loutfi Women, Gender and Work: What is Equality and How Do we Get There
 

Capital Disinvestment and Globalization of the recent era ”

  •  Michael Dennis, The New Economy and the Modern South (2009)
  • Gar Alperovitz, America Beyond Capitalism : Reclaiming our Wealth, Our Liberty, and Our Democracy (2006)
  •   Dimiltri Doukas Worked Over: The Corporate Sabotage of an American Community (2003)
  •  Arlie Russell Hochschild  and  Barbara Ehrenreich ,eds. Global Woman : Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy
  • Rhacel Salazar Parrenas,  Servants of Globalization: Women, Migration and Domestic Work
  • Kim Moody, Workers in a Lean World: Unions in the International Economy
  • Thomas Dublin and Walter Licht, The Face of Decline: The Pennsylvania Anthracite Region in the Twentieth Century. (2005)
  • Jefferson Cowie, Capital Moves: RCA’s Seventy Year Quest for Cheap Labor
  • Andrew Herod, Labor Geographies: Workers and the Landscapes of Capitalism
  •  Grace Chang, Disposable Domestics: Immigrant Women Workers in the Global Economy
  • Leon Fink, The Maya of Morgantown : Work and Community in the Nuevo New South
  • Michael E. Gordon and Lowell Turner, eds., Transnational Cooperation Among Labor Unions. 2000.
  •   William M. Adler, Mollie's Job: A Story of Life and Work on the global Assembly Line 2000)
  • Berberoglu, Berch Labor and capital in the age of globalization :   the labor process and the changing nature of work in the global  economy
  • Hondagneu-Sotelo, Pierrette Domestica: Immigrant Workers Cleaning and Caring in the Shadows of Affluence (2001)
  • McCall, Leslie. Complex Inequality: Gender, Class and Race in the New Economy (2001)
  • Articles in special issue of Monthly Review “Rising from the Ashes? Labor in the Age of Global Capitalism” July-Aug 1997 Vol 49 no. 3
  • Sugrue, Origins of the Urban Crisis
  •   David Bensman and Roberta Lynch, Rusted Dreams: Hard Times in a Steel Community (Wisconsin Steel-Chicago)
  •    Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrison, The Deindustrialization of America
  •   Eileen Boris, Homeworkers in Global Perspective: Invisible No More (1996)
  •   Louise Lamphere, et. al., Newcomers in the Workplace: Immigrants and the Restructuring of the U.S. Economy (1994)
  •   Ruth Milkman, Farewell to the Factory: Auto Workers in the Late 20th century (1997)
  • Ortiz, Altagracia, ed. Puerto Rican Women and Work: Bridges in Transnational Labor (1996)
  • Babson Lean Work

 

Prescriptions/Analysis

  • Steve Early Embedded with Organized Labor (2009)
  • , "They Take Our Jobs!": and 20 Other Myths about Immigration by Aviva Chompsky (2007)
  • Gerald Friedman, Reigniting the Labor Movement by (2007)
  • Kate Bronfenbrenner, et al, eds. Organizing to Win: New Research on Union Strategies (1998)
  • Fletcher, Bill, Jr. and Fernando Gapasin.  Solidarity Divided:  The Crisis in Organized Labor and A New Path Toward Social Justice.  (2007)
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