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ABOUT THE BOOK
In a fresh and timely
reinterpretation, Nelson Lichtenstein examines how trade unionism has waxed and waned in the nation's
political and moral imagination, among both devoted partisans and intransigent foes. From the steel foundry
to the burger-grill, from Woodrow Wilson to John Sweeney, from Homestead to Pittston, Lichtenstein weaves
together a compelling matrix of ideas, stories, strikes, laws, and people in a streamlined narrative of
work and labor in the twentieth century.
The "labor
question" became a burning issue during the Progressive Era because its solution seemed essential to
the survival of American democracy itself. Beginning there, Lichtenstein takes us all the way to the
organizing fever of contemporary Los Angeles, where the labor movement stands at the center of the effort
to transform millions of new immigrants into alert citizen unionists. He offers an expansive survey of
labor's upsurge during the 1930s, when the New Deal put a white, male version of industrial democracy
at the heart of U.S. political culture. He debunks the myth of a postwar "management-labor
accord" by showing that there was (at most) a limited, unstable truce.
Lichtenstein argues
that the ideas that had once sustained solidarity and citizenship in the world of work underwent a radical
transformation when the rights-centered social movements of the 1960s and 1970s captured the nation's
moral imagination. The labor movement was therefore tragically unprepared for the years of Reagan and
Clinton: although technological change and a new era of global economics battered the unions, their real
failure was one of ideas and political will. Throughout, Lichtenstein argues that labor's most
important function, in theory if not always in practice, has been the vitalization of a democratic ethos,
at work and in the larger society. To the extent that the unions fuse their purpose with that impulse, they
can once again become central to the fate of the republic. State of the Union is an incisive history that tells the story of one of America's defining aspirations.
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Nelson Lichtenstein
is Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of Walter
Reuther: The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit and other books.
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ABOUT THE BOOK
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Praise for
STATE OF THE UNION
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a brilliant work of historical synthesis and
interpretation. No other historian has produced a narrative that cogently surveys intellectual developments,
economic change, political and legal conflict, and the complexities of labor's internal struggles and weaves
them into a compelling narrative that makes sense of the rise and fall of the working-class
movement."--Michael Kazin, Professor of History, Georgetown University
a uniquely important study of the
labor movement in twentieth-century American politics. Lichtenstein demonstrates both an intricate, grounded
knowledge of union dynamics and a finely nuanced, sophisticated understanding of American political history since
the New Deal. This book is a must read for anyone seriously interested in making sense of American politics during
the last three-quarters of a century."--Adolph Reed, Professor of Political Science on the Graduate Faculty of
Political and Social Science, New School University,
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