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September 2001 features
Labor books and links!
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- All that harms labor is treason to America. No line can be drawn between these two. If any man tells you he loves America, yet he
hates labor, he is a liar. If a man tells you he trusts America, yet fears labor, he is a fool.
---- Abraham Lincoln
Non-Fiction - Working
Class Fiction
Non-Fiction
Nickel
and Dimed: On (not) Getting by in America
by Barbara Ehrenreich
305.569 Ehr
Barbara Ehrenreich worked undercover as a waitress in Florida, a
housecleaner in Maine, and a Wal-Mart sales clerk in Minnesota to examine
living conditions for the working poor. Reveals low-wage America in all
its tenacity, anxiety, and generosity.
Working
by Studs Terkel
331.2 Ter
Chicago writer and radio host Studs Terkel has an amazing ability to draw
stories out of people in his oral histories. In this fascinating look at a
wide variety of folks on the job, "people talk about what they do all
day and how they feel about what they do."
Corporations
are gonna get your mama
edited by Kevin Danaher
338.88 Cor
A collection of essays by different writers on globalization, the rise of
corporate power, and the downsizing of the American Dream. With a forward
by Noam Chomsky.
The
rights of employees and union members
by Wayne N. Outten, Robert J. Rabin, & Lisa R. Lipman
342.085 Out
An American Civil Liberties Union handbook. Using a simple
question-and-answer format, the authors examine in detail a variety of
topics encompassing workplace protections, from hiring to firing and all
the hours in-between. Written for every working American, this book sets
forth individual rights under present law and offers suggestions on how
workers can exercise them.
Downsize
this!
by Michael Moore
818.54 Moo
Hardhitting and satirical essays on hard-pressed American workers,
economic conditions, and political policies.
The
girls are coming
by Peggie Carlson
977.6 Car
In 1974, due to passage of the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972,
Peggie Carlson was one of the first four women hired by Minnegasco for a
non-secretarial position. On the job, she met men who were hostile, men
who were helpful, and those who were simply confused to find women in
their midst.
Working Class Fiction
U.S.A.
by John Dos Passos
An epic trilogy of American life in the first half of the twentieth century.
"U.S.A. is the slice of a continent. U.S.A. is a group of holding
companies, some aggregations of trade unions, a set of laws bound in calf, a
radio network, a chain of moving picture theatres, a column of stock
quotations rubbed out and written in by a Western Union boy on a blackboard, a
public library full of old newspapers and dog-eared history books with
protests scrawled on the margins in pencil. U.S.A. is the world's greatest
river valley fringed with mountains and hills, U.S.A. is a set of bigmouthed
officials with too many bank accounts. U.S.A. is a lot of men buried in their
uniforms in Arlington Cemetery. U.S.A. is the letters at the end of an address
when you are away from home. But mostly U.S.A. is the speech of the
people"—from the novel.
Ironweed
by William Kennedy
Francis Phelan, ex-ballplayer, part-time gravedigger, full-time drunk, has hit
bottom. Years ago he left Albany in a hurry after killing a scab during a
trolley workers' strike; he ran away again after accidentally—and fatally—dropping
his infant son. Now, in 1938, Francis is back in town, roaming the old
familiar streets with his hobo pal, Helen, trying to make peace with the
ghosts of the past and present…
The
Naked and the Dead
by Norman Mailer
A Pacific battleground of the Second World War, as seen through the eyes of a
single platoon. Blighted by depression, divided by their parochialism and
ethnicity, often callously used by their superiors--the survival of democracy
nonetheless rests squarely on the shoulders of this generation of G.I.s.,
ordinary men called up for extraordinary duties.
The
Heart is a Lonely Hunter
by Carson McCullers
The story of five isolated, lonely people, in a sleepy Southern town, who come
together in their search for expression and spiritual integration with
something greater than themselves: John Singer, a deaf mute who moves into the
Kelly family boarding house; Mick Kelly, a thirteen-year-old tomboy who dreams
of a life in music; Biff Brannon, a café owner and recent widower; Dr.
Benedict Mady Copeland, the only black doctor in town; Jake Blount, a
ne'er-do-well who is torn apart by awareness of the injustices perpetrated
around him every day, but feels helpless and impotent.
Joe
College
by Tom Perrotta
Danny has survived his working-class adolescence and moved on to rarified air
of early 1980s Yale. But he still spends his vacations back home in New
Jersey, behind the wheel of his dad's lunch truck, pondering a complicated
love life and dodging a gang of thugs bent on muscling their way into his
dad's territory. A comic journey into the dark side of love, class, higher
education, and food service.
Giants
in the Earth
by O.E. Rolvagg
The saga of Norwegian immigrant Per Hansa, his family, and fellow settlers in
the Dakota prairie in the late 1800s. A tale of hard work and harsh
landscapes, hopes and homesickness, isolation and utter dependence on the
nature's whims.
Non-Fiction - Working
Class Fiction
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