Examines the income inequality and declining social mobility endured by today's workers, along with the decades of worker power reductions and the increasing political and economic control of the wealthy.

"Goddess of Anarchy is the biography of the formidable radical activist, writer, and orator Lucy Parsons (1853-1942), also known as Lucia Eldine Gonzalez Parsons, whose long life was entwined with the major radical labor struggles of her turbulent era. Born to an enslaved woman in Virginia in 1851, Parsons became the wife of Confederate veteran and anarchist organizer Albert R. Parsons, who was unjustly imprisoned and eventually hanged in 1887 for...

"From legendary historian Adam Hochschild, a groundbreaking reassessment of the overlooked but startlingly resonant period between World War I and the Roaring Twenties, when the foundations of American democracy were threated by war, pandemic, and violence fueled by battles over race, immigration, and the rights of labor "A riveting, resonant account of the fragility of freedom."-Kirkus, STARRED review The nation was on the brink. Mobs burned Black...

"The thrilling and true account of racketeering and union corruption in mid-century New York, when unions and the mob were locked in a power struggle that reverberates to this day. In 1949, in New York City’s crowded Garment District, a union organizer named William Lurye was stabbed to death by a mob assassin. Through the lens of this murder case, prize-winning authors David Witwer and Catherine Rios explore American labor history at its critical...

"Between 1865 and 1937, Pinkerton's National Detective Agency was at the center of countless conficts between capital and labor, bandits and railroads, strikers and state power. Some believed that the detectives were protecting society from dangerous criminal conspiracies, others thought that armed Pintertons were capital's tool to crush worker dissent. Yet the image of the Pinkerton detective also inspired romantic and sensationalist novels, reflected...

"It seemed like no force in the world could slow J. P. Morgan's drive to power. In the summer of 1901, the financier was assembling his next mega-deal: Northern Securities, an enterprise that would affirm his dominance in America's most important industry-the railroads. Then, a bullet from an anarchist's gun put an end to the business-friendly presidency of William McKinley. A new chief executive bounded into office: Theodore Roosevelt. He was convinced...

"The shocking assassination of a major rival to UMWA president Tony Boyle catalyzed groundbreaking reform in the coal mining industry. In the early hours of New Year's Eve 1969, in the small soft-coal mining borough of Clarksville, Pennsylvania, longtime trade union insider Joseph "Jock" Yablonski and his wife and daughter were brutally murdered in their old stone farmhouse. Seven months earlier, Yablonski had announced his campaign to oust the corrupt...

"It's not your father's working class anymore. It's more female, more diverse racially, and it doesn't wear Carhartt's and a hard hat anymore. Sleeping Giant is the first major examination of this dynamic and increasingly activist class and the role it will play in our political and economic future. What does "working class" mean in today's America? Today's workers don't just man the assembly lines. They watch our children and aging parents, park...

"Fascinating and groundbreaking: a talented young journalist goes undercover to work as a casino labor-union organizer in Florida in this rare, smart look at the ongoing struggle between the haves and the have-nots. Salting is a simple concept--get hired at a non-union company, do the job you were hired to do, and, with the help of organizers on the outside, unionize your coworkers from the inside. James Walsh spent almost three years as a "salt"...