Showing titles in Labor & Industrial Relations

From longtime labor organizer Jane McAlevey, a vital call-to-arms in favor of unions, a key force capable of defending our democracy. For decades, racism, corporate greed, and a skewed political system have been eating away at the social and political fabric of the United States. Yet as McAlevey...

On a spring morning in 1914, members of the United Mine Workers of America clashed with guards employed by the Rockefeller family, and a state militia beholden to Colorado's industrial barons. When the dust settled, nineteen men, women, and children among the miners' families lay dead. The strikers had killed at least thirty men, destroyed six mines, and laid waste to two company towns. Killing for Coal offers a bold and original perspective on the 1914 Ludlow Massacre and the "Great Coalfield War."

In this landmark work, acclaimed historian Joshua Freeman has created an epic portrait of a nation both galvanized by change and driven by conflict. Beginning in 1945, the economic juggernaut awakened by World War II transformed a country once defined by its regional character into a uniform and cohesive power and set the stage for the United States’ rise to global dominance. Meanwhile, Freeman locates the profound tragedy that has shaped the path of American civic life.

Rules to Win By: Participation and Power in Union Negotiations is a book for anyone who wants to understand how to build the power required to effectively challenge and reverse income inequality and attacks on democracy.

When it was first published, The Conscience of a Conservative reignited the American conservative movement and made Barry Goldwater a political star. It influenced countless conservatives in the United States and helped to lay the foundation for the Reagan Revolution in 1980. Just as vital today as it was then, this book addresses many topics that could be torn from today's headlines.

NEW YORK TIMES BUSINESS BEST SELLER A suspenseful behind-the-scenes look at the dysfunction that contributed to one of the worst tragedies in modern aviation: the 2018 and 2019 crashes of the Boeing 737 MAX. An "authoritative, gripping and finely detailed narrative that charts the decline of...

Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies provides an intimate examination of the everyday lives and suffering of Mexican migrants in our contemporary food system. An anthropologist and MD in the mold of Paul Farmer and Didier Fassin, Seth M. Holmes shows how market forces, anti-immigrant sentiment, and racism undermine health and health care. Holmes' material is visceral and powerful. He trekked with his companions illegally through the desert into Arizona and was jailed with them.

“Outstanding… social history at its best.” –The New York Times Book Review “An amazing, long-forgotten tale. A riveting history written with flair and precision.”—Bob Woodward In one of the most honored books of the year, David Von Drehle transports us to a beautiful spring day in...

During the formative years of the Industrial Revolution, English workers and artisans claimed a place in society that would shape the following centuries. But the capitalist elite did not form the working class - the workers shaped their own creations, developing a shared identity in the process. Despite their lack of power and the indignity forced upon them by the upper classes, the working class emerged as England's greatest cultural and political force.

Anthropologist David Graeber - one of our most important and provocative thinkers - traces the peculiar and unexpected ways we relate to bureaucracy today and reveals how it shapes our lives in ways we may not even notice...though he also suggests there may be something perversely appealing - even romantic - about bureaucracy.     

The Peter Kropotkin Anthology includes The Conquest of Bread, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, Fields, Factories and Workshops, Appeal to the Young, and an original biography of Kropotkin titled The Life of Kropotkin. Kropotkin was a thought leader in communist anarchism and tirelessly approached a cause which he believed would benefit humanity and continued to inspire his fellow countrymen to join the movement until his death in 1921.

Holding the Line, Barbara Kingsolver's first nonfiction book, is the story of women's lives transformed by an a signal event. Set in the small mining towns of Arizona, it is part oral history and part social criticism, exploring the process of empowerment that occurs when people work together as a community. Like Kingsolver's award-winning novels, Holding the Line is a beautifully written book grounded on the strength of its characters.

WINNER OF THE TENNESSEE BOOK AWARD FOR NONFICTION A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR A riveting courtroom drama about the victims of one of the largest environmental disasters in U.S. history—and the country lawyer determined to challenge the notion that, in America, justice can be...

As recommended on The Ezra Klein Show From Pulitzer Prize finalist John Fabian Witt comes the “engrossing” (The New York Times) secret history of an epic experiment to remake American democracy. Before the dark money of the Koch Brothers, before the billions of the Ford Foundation, there was...

Instant National Bestseller A PBS NewsHour-New York Times Book Club Pick "Excellent." —San Francisco Chronicle Silicon Valley is a modern utopia where anyone can change the world. Unless you're a woman. It's time to break up the boys' club. Incisive, powerful, and a fierce rallying cry, Emily...

The bitingly funny, eye-opening story of finding work in the automated and time-starved world of hourly low-wage labor. "Nickel and Dimed for the Amazon age" —Salon After the local newspaper where she worked as a reporter closed, Emily Guendelsberger took a pre-Christmas job at an Amazon...

From mechanical looms to the combustion engine to the first computers, new technologies have always provoked panic about workers being replaced by machines. For centuries, such fears have been misplaced, and many economists maintain that they remain so today. But as Daniel Susskind demonstrates, this time really is different. Breakthroughs in artificial intelligence mean that all kinds of jobs are increasingly at risk.

An examination of why "doing what you love" is a recipe for exploitation, creating a new tyranny of work in which we cheerily acquiesce to doing jobs that take over our lives. “An indispensable guide to the broader dynamics of work in the contemporary moment.” —Nation You’re told that if...

A generation of Americans came of age boycotting grapes, swept up in a movement that vanquished California's most powerful industry and accomplished the unthinkable: dignity and contracts for farm workers. Four decades later, Cesar Chavez's likeness graces postage stamps, and dozens of schools and streets have been renamed in his honor. But the real story of Chavez's farm workers' movement - both its historic triumphs and its tragic disintegration - has remained buried beneath the hagiography.

Prisoners of the American Dream is Mike Davis's brilliant exegesis of a persistent and major analytical problem for Marxist historians and political economists: Why has the world's most industrially advanced nation never spawned a mass party of the working class?