From the Folks Who Brought You the Weekend: An Illustrated History of Labor in the United States

by Priscilla Murolo, A.B. Chitty Narrated by Holly Adams

Overview

Praised for its "impressive even-handedness", From the Folks Who Brought You the Weekend has set the standard for viewing American history through the prism of working people (Publishers Weekly, starred review). From indentured servants and slaves in seventeenth-century Chesapeake to high-tech workers in contemporary Silicon Valley, the book "[puts] a human face on the people, places, events, and social conditions that have shaped the evolution of organized labor", enlivened by illustrations from the celebrated comics journalist Joe Sacco (Library Journal).



Now, the authors have added a wealth of fresh analysis of labor's role in American life, with new material on sex workers, disability issues, labor's relation to the global justice movement and the immigrants' rights movement, the 2005 split in the AFL-CIO and the movement civil wars that followed, and the crucial emergence of worker centers and their relationships to unions. With two entirely new chapters-one on global developments such as offshoring and a second on the 2016 election and unions' relationships to Trump-this is an "extraordinarily fine addition to US history [that] could become an evergreen . . . comparable to Howard Zinn's award-winning A People's History of the United States" (Publishers Weekly).

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

Management's perpetual dream of cheap labor explains the invention of slavery, though few may couch it in those terms. Drawing such connections with impressive evenhandedness and investigative and analytic acuity, this readable popular history covers U.S. labor from precolonial times to the late 1960s, with two short chapters on the last few decades. Brandishing little-known facts, the authors reshape common views of social history. Remarkably, for instance, hundreds of black indentured servants came to the colonies fromAfricain the 1600s, and throughout the century, as the "peculiar institution" was legalized, these free men and women were forced into slavery. Less astonishing but still significant, the Wobblies pushed as much for free speech as union organizing, and their newspapers were illustrated by famous avant-garde artists. Sometimes the authors simply highlight an obvious fact that has languished in obscurity for instance, that the American Revolution was sparked by the discontent of working people, not the wealthy or landowning, or that many defenders of slavery believed that all labor should be enslaved. Murolo (who teaches American history at Sarah Lawrence College) and Chitty (a librarian at Queens College) gracefully handle a broad range of subject matter Chinese railroad labor is considered alongside housework and steel-mill work making it easier to understand the complex historical relationships between work, gender, ethnicity, race, immigration and sex. (Sept.) Forecast: Accessible to high school students as well as adults, this extraordinarily fine addition to U.S. history and labor literature could become an evergreen paperback comparable to Howard Zinn's award-winningA People's History of the United States. Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Chitty (librarian systems officer, Queens Coll., CUNY) and Murolo (history, Sarah Lawrence Coll.) have constructed a useful but flawed history of labor in America, starting with the arrival of Columbus in 1492 and ending with the election of George Walker Bush to be the 43rd President of the United States. The book's greatest strength is in putting a human face on the people, places, events, and social conditions that have shaped the evolution of organized labor. Also useful is the book's list of suggested readings. Its greatest weaknesses include the authors' obvious bias against business for example, they focus on class privilege, industrial capitalism, and the accumulation of wealth by a limited number of individuals while ignoring the vast number of small business owners who, like their workers, are challenged to survive in a rapidly changing global economy and the lack of footnotes, citations, or a thorough bibliography, all of which could be useful for students, scholars, and citizens interested in increasing their knowledge of this very important topic. Perhaps a better buy for both academic and public libraries would be Rekindling the Movement: Labor's Quest for Relevance in the Twenty-First Century (LJ 7/01). Not a priority purchase. Norman B. Hutcherson, California State Univ., Bakersfield Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

From the Publisher

Praise for the first edition:
“A comprehensive history of American labor. . . . Enlivened and diverted by the humorous cartoon narratives of Joe Sacco.”
—The Washington Post

“Thoroughly includes the contributions of women, Native Americans, African Americans, immigrants, and minorities, and considers events often ignored in other histories.”
—Booklist

“An evergreen … comparable to Howard Zinn's award-winning A People's History of the United States.”
—Publishers Weekly

“A marvelously informed, carefully crafted, far-ranging history of working people.”
—Noam Chomsky

Product Details

BN ID:	2940174991002
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	01/24/2023
Edition description:	Unabridged

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