This famous book, representing some of the finest thinking and writing about the history of American labor in the twentieth century, is now revised to incorporate two important recent essays, one surveying the historical study of the CIO from its founding to its fiftieth anniversary in 1985, another placing in historical and comparative perspective the declining fortunes of the labor movement from 1980 to the present. As always, Brody confronts central questions, both substantive and historiographical, focusing primarily on the efforts of laboring people to assert some control over their...

These extended essays by one of the preeminent scholars in U.S. labor history discuss central questions in the field, from the colonial period to the present: What do the first demands for a fixed workday tell us about how early American workers experienced the beginnings of the industrial revolution? Why did American labor politics never manage to break the grip of the two-party system? What was the impact of ideology, career leadership, and ethnicity on the American labor movement? How did American trade unionism cope with the market-drive forces of American capitalism? Why did so great a...

This edition of one of the seminal books in labor includes a new preface as well as a symposium on the book in which seven prominent historians discuss its significance and its place in the historiography of labor.

American unions are weaker now than at any times in the past hundred years, with fewer than one in ten private-sector workers currently organized. In "Labor embattled, David Brody says this is a problem not only for the unions but also a disaster for American democracy and social justice. In a series of historically informed chapters, Brody explores recent developments affecting American workers in fight of labor's past. Of special concern to him is the erosion of the rights of workers under the modern labor law, which he argues is rooted in the original formulation of the Wagner Act. Brody...

The abolition movement is perhaps the most salient example of the struggle the United States has faced in its long and complex confrontation with the issue of race. In his final book, historian Paul Goodman, who died in 1995, presents a new and important interpretation of abolitionism. Goodman pays particular attention to the role that blacks played in the movement. In the half-century following the American Revolution, a sizable free black population emerged, the result of state-sponsored emancipation in the North and individual manumission in the slave states. At the same time, a white...

The enormous wealth of material in the Fiddler's Fakebook makes it more than a reference book to be left on the shelf. You will find it helpful in any playing situation--from a square dance to an informal gathering of friends. You can study it page by page learning those tunes that particularly strike your fancy. But perhaps most importantly, you can have a great deal of fun just sitting down and playing through these remarkable monuments to the traditional musician's art.

This collection of essays, originally published by Harper and Row in 1971, traces the development of the American labor movement and its evolution from the first trade union. The contributors challenge Perlman's Wisconsin Theory and provide an understanding of the continuities between the labor movement of 1928 and that of 1970.