Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

A People's History of the United States

1492 - Present

by Howard Zinn

Known for its lively, clear prose as well as its scholarly research, A People's History of the United States is the only volume to tell America's story from the point of view of -- and in the words of -- America's women, factory workers, African-Americans, Native Americans, working poor, and immigrant laborers. This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews,... (more)

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: The American Classic, in Words and Photographs, of Three Tenant Families in the Deep South

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: The American Classic, in Words and Photographs, of Three Tenant Families in the Deep South

by James Agee, Walker Evans

A passionate literary innovator, eloquent in language and uncompromising in his social observation and his pursuit of emotional truth, James Agee (1909- 1955) excelled as novelist, critic, journalist, and screenwriter. In his brief, often turbulent life, he left enduring evidence of his unwavering intensity, observant eye, and sometimes savage wit. This volume collects his fiction along with his... (more)

Mary Barton

A Tale of Manchester Life

by Elizabeth Gaskell

The plot turns on Mary's romantic choice between the son of a rich industrialist and a working-class lover. The class-divide and the widening gap between rich and poor are central themes in a novel originally named after Mary Barton's father, John Barton.

Kids at Work: Lewis Hine and the Crusade Against Child Labor

Kids at Work: Lewis Hine and the Crusade Against Child Labor

by Russell Freedman

Photobiography of early twentieth-century photographer and schoolteacher Lewis Hine, using his own work as illustrations. Hines's photographs of children at work were so devastating that they convinced the American people that Congress must pass child labor laws.

Rebel Voices: An Iww Anthology

Originally published in 1964 and long out of print, Kornbluh's Rebel Voices remains by far the biggest and best source on IWW history, fiction, songs, art and lore. Besides the full text and illustrations of the original, this new and expanded edition includes 32 pages of additional material: a new introduction and updated bibliography by old-time Wobbly organizer and scholar Fred Thompson; an informative essay on... (more)

Iron in Her Soul: Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and the American Left

Iron in Her Soul: Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and the American Left

by Helen C. Camp

Camp has written an informative study of one of the most important radicals to emerge out of the American labor movement. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (1890-1964) first made her mark as an organizer and speaker for the Industrial Workers of the World. She joined the Communist Party in the mid-1930s and was a leading member for many years. Also active in the area of free speech, Flynn was a founding member of the... (more)

The Wobblies: The Story of the IWW and Syndicalism in the United States

The Wobblies: The Story of the IWW and Syndicalism in the United States

by Patrick Renshaw

The story of how the Wobblies, the Industrial Workers of the World, planned to combine the American working class into one big labor union.

The Rebel Girl;: An autobiography, my first life (1906-1926)Elizabeth Gurley Flynn

The Rebel Girl;: An autobiography, my first life (1906-1926)

by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn

A Leader Becomes a Leader: Inspirational Stories of Leadership for a New Generation

A Leader Becomes a Leader: Inspirational Stories of Leadership for a New Generation

by J. Kevin Sheehan

A Leader Becomes a Leader opens with a window on history: Henry David Thoreau riding a borrowed horse and wagon into the woods around Concord, Massachusetts to Walden Pond in 1845. There, he writes a classic work that has a powerful effect on the lives and philosophies of seminal leaders in the next century as diverse as Mohandas Gandhi, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Nelson Mandela. Thoreau believed that a... (more)

How the Other Half Lived: A People's Guide to American Historical SitesPhilip Burnham

How the Other Half Lived: A People's Guide to American Historical Sites

by Philip Burnham

Burnham, a teacher and freelance writer, liberally applies a healthy dose of political correctness to the many national historic sites located throughout the United States. The author looks at "history as we like to think it was" and gives us "history as we wish it had been." Taking several broad headings-plantations, missions, railroads, etc.-and offering his own personal reflections following visits, Burnham... (more)

Meet You in Hell: Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and the Bitter Partnership That Changed America

Meet You in Hell: Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and the Bitter Partnership That Changed America

by Les Standiford

Two founding fathers of American industry.One desire to dominate business at any price. The author of Last Train to Paradise tells the riveting story of Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and the bloody steelworkers’ strike that transformed their fabled partnership into a furious rivalry. Set against the backdrop of the Gilded Age, Meet You in Hell captures the majesty and danger of steel manufacturing, the... (more)

Autobiographies of the Haymarket Martyrs

Autobiographies of the Haymarket Martyrs

by Philip S. Foner

"A carefully prepared and useful study of the bombing event in Chicago in May, 1886, which marked a bloody turn in the American labor history. As such it is pertinent to all courses in American labor history... It is an important piece of American social history ..." -- KLIATT, Fall 1978

Salt

A World History

by Mark Kurlansky

Mark Kurlansky, the bestselling author of Cod and The Basque History of the World , here turns his attention to a common household item with a long and intriguing history: salt. The only rock we eat, salt has shaped civilization from the very beginning, and its story is a glittering, often surprising part of the history of humankind. A substance so valuable it served as currency, salt has influenced the... (more)

Blood Passion: The Ludlow Massacre and Class War in the American West

Blood Passion: The Ludlow Massacre and Class War in the American West

by Scott Martelle

By early April 1914, Colorado Governor Elias Ammons thought the violence in his state's strike-bound southern coal district had eased enough that he could begin withdrawing the Colorado National Guard, deployed six months earlier as military occupiers. But Ammons misread the signals, and on April 20, 1914, a full-scale battle erupted between the remaining militiamen and armed strikers living in a tent colony at... (more)

The Haymarket Tragedy

by Paul Avrich

What makes <this book> so valuable is that Avrich has shown us a time when anarchism breathed life into American politics, and not simply when it drew its last breath in Chicago. -- Review

A History of American Labor

by Joseph G. Rayback

paperback copy, 491 pages

Sacco and Vanzetti: The Anarchist Background

Sacco and Vanzetti: The Anarchist Background

by Paul Avrich

The Sacco-Vanzetti affair is the most famous and controversial case in American legal history. It divided the nation in the 1920s, and it has continued to arouse deep emotions, giving rise to an enormous literature. Few writers, however, have consulted anarchist sources for the wealth of information available there about the movement of which the defendants were a part. Now Paul Avrich, the preeminent American... (more)

Who Built America?: Volume Two: From 1877 to Present (Who Built America)

Who Built America?: Volume Two: From 1877 to Present (Who Built America)

by American Social History Project, Joshua Freeman, Nelson Lichtenstein, Stephen Brier, David Brundage, Susan Porter Benson, David Bensman, Bret Eynon, Bruce Levine, Bryan Palmer

At last, American history is more than presidents and robber barons, elections and battles, names and dates to memorize. Who Built America? is about working Americans -- artisans, servants, slaves, farm families, laborers, women working in the home, factory hands, and office clerks -- who played crucial roles in shaping modern America: what they thought, what they did, and what happened to them. The central focus... (more)

Workers on the Waterfront: Seamen, Longshoremen, and Unionism in the 1930s (Working Class in American History)

Workers on the Waterfront: Seamen, Longshoremen, and Unionism in the 1930s (Working Class in American History)

by Bruce Nelson

Autobiography of Mother Jones

by Jones

In this classic work of American nonfiction the greatest labor organizer in US history details her three quarters century fight for labor's liberation, and her unswerving belief in industrial unionism as the key to that struggle. In steel, railroading, metal mining, textiles, and above all, the coal industry, Mother Jones fought alongside strikers. Here too is the exciting story of her crusade against child labor,... (more)

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: labor history

1492 - Present

by Howard Zinn

by James Agee, Walker Evans

A Tale of Manchester Life

by Elizabeth Gaskell

by Russell Freedman

by Helen C. Camp

by Patrick Renshaw

by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn

by J. Kevin Sheehan

by Philip Burnham

by Les Standiford

by Philip S. Foner

A World History

by Mark Kurlansky

by Scott Martelle

by Paul Avrich

by Joseph G. Rayback

by Paul Avrich

by American Social History Project, Joshua Freeman, Nelson Lichtenstein, Stephen Brier, David Brundage, Susan Porter Benson, David Bensman, Bret Eynon, Bruce Levine, Bryan Palmer

by Bruce Nelson

by Jones