This first book-length history of the AFT provides a comprehensive view of events which have shaped teacher activism and of issues which have defined the AFT s role in teacher unionism.From its turbulent beginnings in 1916 in Chicago, where the seeds of the movement took root, to the 1961 teacher strike in New York City, which proved the union s effectiveness, the American Federation of Teachers union has provided a simulacrum of industrial organizational patterns common to the labor movement in this country. Deriving its principal strength from such modes, the AFT was crisis oriented from...