James Green
On September 7, I’ll be presenting a reading from my new book on the West Virginia mine wars, The Devil Is Here in These Hills, at Porter Square Books in Cambridge, MA. The store events manager has asked me to compile a Labor Day list of the twenty best books on workers and unions, books that would appeal to the general reader. This list will be available to customers on line and in the store during the month of September.
In this first cut, I’ve combined books on current, ongoing issues and struggles with history books, and have listed a few of local interest, but the list is not rank ordered by merit.
I’d like LAWCHA members to nominate their favorites and then see what’s turns up on our website; it should be interesting, and it will help me make the final list of 20.
- Bill Fletcher, Jr., They’re Bankrupting Us! And 20 other Myths about Unions (Beacon Press)
- Nelson Lichtenstein, The State of the Union: Century of American Labor Politics. Princeton, University Press, 2013).
- Thomas Geoghegan, The Only Thing that Can Save Us: Why America Needs a New Kind of Labor Movement (New Press, 2015)
- Fernando Gapasian and Bill Fletcher, Jr., Solidarity Divided: The Crisis of Organized Labor and a New Path Toward Social Justice (University of California Press, 2008)
- Janice Fine, Workers’ Centers: Organizing Communities on the Edge of the American Dream (Cornell University, 2006)
- William M. Adler, Mollie’s Job: Life on the Global Assembly Line (Scribner’s 2001)
- Philip Dray, There is Power in Union: The Epic Story of Labor in America (Doubleday, 2010)
- Joseph A. McCartin, Collision Course: Ronald Reagan, the Air Traffic Controllers and the Strike that Changed America (Oxford University Press, 2013)
- William P. Jones, The March on Washington: Jobs, Freedom and the Forgotten History of Civil Rights (W.W. Norton, 2013)
- Robert F. Burk, Marvin Miller, Baseball Revolutionary (University of Illinois Press)
- Matthew Garcia, From the Jaws of Victory: The Triumph and Tragedy of Cesar Chavez and Farm Worker Movement (University of California Press, 2014)
- Michael K. Honey, Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King’s Last Campaign (W.W. Norton, 2008).
- Julie Greene, The Canal Builders: Making America’s Empire at the Panama Canal (Penguin, 2010)
- Robert Michael Bussel, From Harvard to the Ranks of Labor: Powers Hapgood and the American Working Class (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999)
- David Von Drehle, Triangle: The Fire That Changed America (Grove Atlantic)
- Bruce Watson, Bread and Roses: Mills, Migrants and the Struggle for the American Dream (Penguin Books, 2006)
- Annelise Orleck, Common Sense and Little Fire: Women and Working Class Politics in the United States, 1900-1965 (University of North Carolina Press, 1995)
- Frances Russell, A City in Terror: Calvin Coolidge and the 1919 Boston Police Strike (Beacon Press, 2005)
- William H. Adler, The Man Who Never Died: The Life, Times and Legacy of Joe Hill, American Icon (Bloomsbury, 2011)
- Kevin Kenney, Making Sense of the Molly Maguires (Oxford University Press, 1998)
Jim, thanks for getting this fun game started. Here are some–far fewer than 20–ideas, in no particular order.
Toni Gilpin et al., _On Strike For Respect: The Clerical and Technical Workers’ Strike at Yale University, 1984-85_
Annelise Orleck, _Storming Caesars Palace_
Robert Korstad, _Civil Rights Unionism_
Ellen Shrecker, _Many Are The Crimes_
Joe Burns, _Reviving the Strike_
J. Anthony Lukas, _Big Trouble_
Tera Hunter’s To Joy My Freedom; Robin Kelley’s Hammer & Hoe, Alice Kessler Harris’s In Pursuit of Equity, David Roediger’s Wages of Whiteness.
Hi, Why Unions Matter by Michael Yates. Industrial Goodwill by John Roger Commons. Thanks. God bless. Aaron
Some ideas from twitter:
@prof_casanova: Capitalism and Slavery by Eric Williams
@HG_watson: Nickel and Dimed
@sadbillionaire: 20. Boris and Klein 19. N Shah Contagious Divides 18. Nan Enstad. 17. RDGK Race Rebels 16. Rozensweig, 8 hours, 15. J Cowie RCA bk 14. D Ernst Lawyers Agnst Labor 13. D Frank Purchasing Power 12. S Fraser Hillman bio 11. Roediger and Esch 10. A Lichtenstein 9. Leon Fink on labor intellectuals 8. G Rawick Sundown to Sunup 7. G Lipsitz Rainbow at Midnight 6. Shane Hamilton 5. Tera Hunter 4. J Freeman NY book 3. N Lichtenstein Wal Mart book 2. Andrew Wender Cohen Racketeers Progress 1. M Denning The Cultural Front
@verybookish: King Coal, by Upton Sinclair
@heerjeet: Making of the English Working Class
In no particular order:
David Montgomery, The Fall of the House of Labor
Kim Moody, Workers in a Lean World
Mike Davis, Prisoners of the American Dream
Rosemary Feurer, Radical Unionism in the Midwest
Bryan D. Palmer, Revolutionary Teamsters
Brian Kelly, Race, Class, and Power in the Alabama Coalfields
Tera Hunter, To Joy My Freedom
Frank Bardacke, Trampling Out the Vintage
David Roediger and Elizabeth Esch, The Production of Difference
Mark Lause, Young America: Land, Labor, and the Republican Community
Susan Porter Benson, Counter Cultures
Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, The Many-Headed Hydra
Staughton Lynd ed., “We Are All Leaders”
Neville Kirk, Comrades and Cousins
Melvyn Dubofsky, We Shall Be All
Gerald Zahavi, Workers, Managers, and Welfare Capitalism
Howell Harris, Bloodless Victories
Peter Way, Common Labor
Robin Kelley, Hammer and Hoe
Herbert Gutman, Work, Culture, and Society
And I should have included Julie Greene’s Pure and Simple Politics
Bardacke on Chavez and UFWA
Here’s 20 of my favorites:
1. Everybody Was Black Down There/ Robert Woodrum
2. The Pullman Strike & the Crisis of the 1890s/ed. Schneirov, Stromquist & Salvatore
3. Revolutionary Teamsters/ Bryan Palmer
4. The Memorial Day Massacre and the Movement for Industrial Democracy/ Michael Dennis
5. The Racketeer’s Progress/ Andrew Wender Cohen
6. Civil Rights Unionism/ Robert Korstad
7. The Tribe of Black Ulysses/ Will Jones
8. Killing for Coal/ Thomas Andrews
9. Down on the Killing Floor/ Rick Halpern
10. Sisters in the Brotherhoods/ Jane Latour
11. Rebel Rank & File/ Ed. Brenner, Brenner & Winslow
12. Union Women/ Mary Margaret Fonow
13. Race on the Line/Venus Green
14. Race Against Liberalism/ David Lewis-Coleman
15. Labor’s Time/ Jonathan Cutler
16. Radium Girls/Claudia Clark
17. The Other Women’s Movement/ Dorothy Due Cobble
18. In Pursuit of Equity/ Alice Kessler-Harris
19. Death in the Haymarket/ James Green
20. Forging a Common Bond/ Timothy Minchin
You left out the best general history of labor in this country, “Labor’s Untold Story” I have given away hundreds of these since first reading it in 1972
Any of the works by Dale Maharidge and photographer Michael Williamson, but especially Journey to Nowhere, Someplace Like America, or And Their Children After Them.
Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickeled and Dimed.
Thanks!
For books in print geared towards general readers, I’d add Jim’s Death in the Haymarket, Steven Ashby and C.J. Hawking, Staley, Peter Rachleff, Hard-Pressed in the Heartland, Paul Felton The Murder of a Post Office Manager, Joe Burns,Reviving the Strike, and Thomas Bell, Out of This Furnace. Frances Russell wouldn’t make the cut.
What about Bethany Moreton’s _ To Serve God and Walmart_? That really needs to be on this list.