The anthracite coal region of Pennsylvania once prospered. Today, very little mining or industry remains, although residents have made valiant efforts to restore the fabric of their communities. In The Face of Decline, the noted historians Thomas Dublin and Walter Licht offer a sweeping history of this area over the course of the twentieth century. Combining business, labor, social, political, and environmental history, Dublin and Licht delve into coal communities to explore grassroots ethnic life and labor activism, economic revitalization, and the varied impact of economic...

Previous books on the industrialization of America have focused either on the industrial revolution in the first half of the nineteenth century or on the rise of big industry in the second. In this groundbreaking study Licht provides a new perspective by focusing on industrialization first as a product and then as an agent of change. As population expansion and greater market activity fueled manufacture, he explains, industrialization led to greater social and economic developments as well as crises that required a more administered political economic order.

Walter Licht chronicles the working and personal lives of the first two generations of American railwaymen, the first workers in America to enter large-scale, bureaucratically managed, corporately owned work organizations.

Originally published in 1983.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions....