Economics & History

23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism

A concise blast of eye-opening economic truth-telling; essential reading to understand where free market thinking falls short and how we got to the mess we’re in today. 288 pages paperback

There is Power in a Union: The Epic Story of Labor in America

This sympathetic, thoughtful and highly readable history of the American labor movement traces unionism from the textile mills of Lowell, Massachusetts in the 1820s to organized labor’s decline in the 1980s and struggle for survival and growth today.Illustrated with dozens of photos, posters and more. 784 pages hardcover

All Labor Has Dignity

People forget that Dr. King was every bit as committed to economic justice as he was to ending racial segregation. He fought throughout his life to connect the labor and civil rights movements, envisioning them as twin pillars for social reform. 224 pages paperback

May Day: A Graphic History of Protest

May Day: A Graphic History of Protest traces the development of International Workers' Day, May 1st, against the ever-changing economic and political backdrop in Canada and across North America. Recognizing the importance of work and the historical struggles of workers to improve their lives, with a particular focus on the struggles of May 1st, the comic includes the reader as part of this history, and the story concludes that “We are all part of this historical struggle; it's our history and our future.” 32 pages paperback

Labor and the Environmental Movement: The Quest for Common Ground

Relations between organized labor and environmental groups are typically characterized as adversarial, most often because of the threat of job losses invoked by industries facing environmental regulation. 338 pages paperback

Immigrants, Unions and the New U.S. Labor Market

In recent years, New Yorkers have been surprised to see workers they had taken for granted—Mexicans in greengroceries, West African supermarket deliverymen and South Asian limousine drivers—striking, picketing, and seeking support for better working conditions. Suddenly, businesses in New York and across the nation had changed and were now dependent upon low-paid immigrants to fill entry-level jobs. 230 pages paperback

NAFTA From Below

Workers in the United States have long understood that NAFTA – the North American Free Trade Agreement – has been a disaster, with more than two million jobs leaving the country for lower-wage countries following the law’s passage in 1994. But relatively few Americans know what a nightmare NAFTA has been for Mexican workers – the people who, the agreement’s proponents argued, would be lifted from poverty and be turned into serious consumers of American goods. 177 pages paperback

May Day: A Short History of the Int’l Workers’ Holiday

This is the story of May Day, a day born out of Chicago’s Haymarket Massacre in 1886, and marked ever since as a workers’ holiday the world over. In this short history, noted labor scholar Philip Foner writes of the dramatic origins of the day and recounts highlights of May Day celebrations through the years and around the globe. 184 pages paperback

Live Working or Die Fighting: How the Working Class Went Global

Live Working or Die Fighting is a two-hundred-year story of the global working class and its many struggles for justice. The stories in the book come to life through the voices of remarkable individuals: child laborers in Charles Dickens’ England, visionary women on the barricades of Paris, gun-toting railway strikers in America’s Wild West, and beer-swilling German metalworkers who tried to stop the First World War. 305 pages paperback

Wage Theft in America: Why Millions Aren’t Getting Paid

Billions of dollars worth of wages are stolen from millions of workers in the United States every year—a grand theft that exceeds every other larceny category on record annually. Between two and three million workers are paid less than the legal minimum wage. More than three million are misclassified by their employers as independent contractors when they are really employees, allowing employers to shirk their share of payroll taxes and illegally deny workers overtime pay. Even the Economic Policy Foundation, a business-funded think tank, estimated that companies annually steal billion in unpaid overtime. 314 pages paperback

Agitate! Educate! Organize! American Labor Posters

In Agitate! Educate! Organize!, Lincoln Cushing and Timothy W. Drescher share their vast knowledge about the rich graphic tradition of labor posters. Here you will find lavish full-color reproductions of more than 250 of the best posters that have emerged from the American labor movement on topics ranging from core issues such as wages and working conditions to discrimination to international solidarity. 216 pages paperback

Strikes Around the World: Case Studies of 15 Countries

Are strikes going out of fashion or are they an inevitable feature of working life? This is a longstanding debate. The much-proclaimed ‘withering away of the strike’ in the 1950s was quickly overturned by the ‘resurgence of class conflict’ in the late 1960s and 1970s. The period since then has been characterized as one of ‘labor quiescence’. Commentators again predict the strike’s demise, at least in the former heartlands of capitalism. 384 pages paperback

Real World Labor: Economics, Politics & Social History, 2nd edition

New Edition! With more than 80 articles by leading writers and scholars of the labor movement, this essential anthology addresses recent changes in the nature of work and wages; discrimination by race, gender, and immigration status; militarism and its effects on the working class; union responses to the global financial meltdown; and new forms of rank-and-file organizing and resistance. This expanded second edition (2011) includes two dozen new articles on today’s changing labor movement. 413 pages paperback

Economics for Everyone: A Short Guide to Capitalism

Jim Stanford, an economist in the research department of the Canadian Auto Workers, thinks economics is too important to be left to economists. So, he wrote this concise and readable book to provide nonspecialist readers with all the information they need to understand how capitalism works – and how it doesn’t. 350 pages paperback

Solidarity Forever: An Oral History of the IWW

The IWW was the Industrial Workers of the World, also known as the Wobblies. Founded in 1905, the Wobblies aspired to bring all workers into a single, huge union that could be strong enough to do battle with the corporate giants of their time and help build an economic system in which production would be geared for the public good rather than for private profit. 248 pages paperback

Field Guide to the U.S. Economy

This funny, clever and crystal-clear guide to the American economy is just what the doctor ordered if you want to understand how it all works but the thought of "taking an economics course" makes you shudder. 237 pages paperback

A People’s History of the United States: 1492-Present

If your last serious read of American history was in high school -- or even in a standard college course -- you’ll want to read this amazing account of America as seen through the eyes of its working people, women and minorities. 688 pages paperback

From the Folks Who Brought You The Weekend

This is a sweeping, highly readable history of U.S. labor that will be welcomed by anyone interested in learning more about the struggle of American working people to better their lives through collective action. 364 pages paperback

Strike

This book tells you something your school history books almost certainly did not: how working Americans for the past 125 years have used the strike again and again to win a degree of justice and fair play. 420 pages paperback

From Blackjacks to Briefcases

This is the first book to document the systematic and extensive use by American corporations of professional unionbusters, an ugly profession that surfaced after the Civil War and has grown bolder and more sophisticated with the passage of time. 179 pages paperback