Joshua Morris has published The Many Worlds of American Communism in September. Morris completed his Ph.D. at Wayne State University and teaches at Grand Valley State University in Michigan. Randi Storch asked him some questions about his purpose and findings.
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This is the fourth and final contribution to our symposium on Tom Alter’s new book, Toward a Cooperative Commonwealth: The Transplanted Roots of Farmer-Labor Radicalism in Texas, published recently by University of Illinois Press. We started with Kyle Wilkison’s analysis of the book’s contribution and survey of previous literature.
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Jenny Carson profiles some of the dynamic early leaders of the New York laundry workers union uprising of the 1930s, and how their fight for a democratic union met resistance from a notable CIO union, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers. It is a window into her longer treatment in A Matter of Moral Justice, published by University of Illinois Press –editor
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Our series of interviews with authors of new books in labor and working-class history continues. In this edition, Stephanie Riley interviewed Jake Altman on his new book Socialism before Sanders: The 1930s Moment from Romance to Revisionism
Lane Windham’s new book, Knocking on Labor’s Door: Union Organizing in the 1970s and the Roots of a New Economic Divide, was officially released on Labor Day by the University of North Carolina Press.
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During election years white people who do not have bachelor’s degrees (the increasingly common definition of “the working class”) become both a somewhat exotic who-knew-they-were-here-and-in-such-large-numbers object of discussion and a target for freewheeling social psychologizing. Thus, it is more than a little refreshing to see two books attempt to tackle the more exotic side of Donald Trump’s beloved “the poorly educated.”
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Like me, are you bone weary of hearing non-stop news coverage of Donald Trump? Do you roll your eyes when the pundits “discover” the working class at election time, and then groan when you realize that by “working class” they really only mean white guys?
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We have had quite a year, in 2016, of Irish history, certainly the biggest for decades. The centenary of the 1916 uprising offered history buffs a veritable compulsion to write and speak on events, but more ordinary Irish men and women, at home and in the diaspora anywhere on the globe, to meet, pay more than the usual attention to lectures, also party, drink and perhaps above all, listen to music.
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In honor of its centennial the Department of Labor began posting a list of “Books that Shaped Work in America”. What does it say about the value the Department of Labor places on labor history when it doesn’t even ask labor historians for input for such a list?
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