Industrial History

SHADOWBOSSES unfolds like an organized crime novel, but it's actually a true story of how labor unions are infiltrating our government and corrupting our political process. This compelling and insightful book exposes how unions have organized federal, state, and local government employees without their consent, and how government employee unions are now a threat to our workers' freedoms, our free and fair elections, and even our American way of life.

As labor unions and movements began to form and coalesce in the 19th century, the tensions between workers and companies led to demonstrations, encounters, and even conflicts that descended into violence. Among those, few were as notorious as the fight that took place on April 20, 1914 at Ludlow in the Southern Colorado coalfields between the Colorado National Guard and striking miners at a United Mine Workers camp. In the previous several decades, there had been a number of violent incidents during strikes, but in 1914, the Ludlow tragedy deeply shocked the nation.

As labor unions and movements began to form and coalesce in the 19th century, the tensions between workers and companies led to demonstrations, encounters, and even conflicts that descended into violence. Among those, none were larger than the colloquially known Battle of Blair Mountain, which pitted West Virginian miners against authorities in 1921. It represented the largest labor uprising in American history and the largest armed uprising in the country since the Civil War, and it would have lasting ramifications on unions and labor moving forward.

In May 1970, four days after Kent State, construction workers chased students through downtown Manhattan, beating scores of protesters bloody. As hardhats clashed with hippies, it soon became clear that something larger was underway - Democrats were at war with themselves. In The Hardhat Riot, David Paul Kuhn tells the fateful story of when the white working class first turned against liberalism, when Richard Nixon seized the breach, and America was forever changed.

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).

Standing at Armageddon is a comprehensive and lively historical account of America's shift from a rural and agrarian society to an urban and industrial society.

For Jobs and Freedom: Race and Labor in America since 1865 describes the African American struggle to obtain equal rights in the workplace and organized labor's response to their demands. Award-winning historian Robert H. Zieger asserts that the promise of jobs was similar to the 40-acres-and-a-mule restitution pledged to African Americans during the Reconstruction era. The inconsistencies between rhetoric and action encouraged workers, both men and women, to organize themselves into unions to fight against unfair hiring practices and workplace discrimination.

The Upper Midwest and Great Lakes region became the "arsenal of democracy" - the greatest manufacturing center in the world-in the years during and after World War II, thanks to natural advantages and a welcoming culture. Decades of unprecedented prosperity followed, memorably punctuated by riots, strikes, burning rivers, and oil embargoes. A vibrant, quintessentially American character bloomed in the region's cities, suburbs, and backwaters.

En Fragmentados Andrés Hatum describe, analiza y ejemplifica las distintas formas en que el trabajo nos arruinó y fragmentó la vida. Arruinar, por lo inhumano de ciertos trabajos, en particular en momentos como la Revolución Industrial; fragmentar porque, en vez de estar integrados en nuestra vida, los trabajos se metieron como una cuña para complicárnosla.