All the Books We Reviewed in 2014

It’s a chilly 30 degrees today outside our Brooklyn office… and if you’re like us, when the weather outside turns frightful, your thoughts turn to curling up indoors with a mug of something warm and an interesting book.

You might start with Labor Notes’ books, of course! But beyond that, below we’ve rounded up 19 provocative books we reviewed in 2014. They include fascinating, unsung labor histories and sharp takes on today’s debates.

Did you read any of these? What other worker-themed books did you appreciate in 2014? Let us know in the comments—and count on plenty more Labor Notes book reviews in the new year.

UNDERSTANDING OUR AWFUL ECONOMY

‘Them That’s Got Are Them That Gets’: Piketty’s Lessons for Activists: Toni Gilpin reviewed Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Thomas Piketty). The book offers plenty of ammunition activists can use to expose inequality’s scope and force. But don’t look to Piketty for solutions.

How the U.S. Economy Was Built on Slavery: Tim Sheard reviewed the poignant and rigorous The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism (Edward Baptist), a book that should summon our collective will to finally redress the lingering injustices created by this most American institution.

Private Equity Pillages the Economy: Eric Blair reviewed the informative Private Equity at Work: When Wall Street Manages Main Street (Eileen Appelbaum and Rosemary Batt), which argues that private equity ownership of companies has led to fewer jobs, lower wages, weaker pensions, and rising inequality.

A Dream Foreclosed: Black America and the Fight for a Place to Call Home: Jerome Q. Cullors reviewed A Dream Foreclosed: Black America and the Fight for a Place to Call Home (Laura Gottesdiener), which captures the true stories of fear, faith, stress, and redemption as four families fight the banks—and win.

The Right to Stay Home: Teófilo Reyes reviewed The Right to Stay Home: How US Policy Drives Mexican Migration (David Bacon). Eleven percent of Mexico’s population lives north of the border, but the decision to migrate is rarely voluntary.

VOICES FROM MINES AND FACTORIES

How Coal Miners Fought the Railroad Barons: Tim Sheard reviewed Fueling the Gilded Age: Railroads, Miners, and Disorder in Pennsylvania Coal Country (Andrew Arnold), which reveals how 19th-century coal miners used their leverage in a wildly profitable supply chain to demand a living wage. They also invented dues check-off, by the way.

Sixteen Tons: David Markwell reviewed Sixteen Tons (Kevin Corley). Mother Jones once proclaimed Illinois to be “the best-organized labor state in America,” and the people of the Illinois coalfields—where this novel takes place—were always at the center of the action.

The Making of an Auto Worker Activist: Gregg Shotwell reviewed A Fighter All My Life (Sam Johnson), the memoir of a black man from the South who became a Detroit auto worker and dissident union activist.

In Shop Floor Newsletter, Voice of the Barking Underdog: Shotwell also reviewed The Barking Dog (Caroline Lund), a collection of auto plant newsletters. It offers a rank-and-file history of lean production from inside the beast, an exposé of corporate corruption and union capitulation, and a template to invigorate a new generation.

DEBUNKING FALSE SOLUTIONS

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The Sham of School Reform: Joseph Zeccola reviewed Schoolhouse Shams: Myths and Misinformation in School Reform (Peter Downs), which calls out the lies and distortions of the so-called school reform movement.

Why Privatization Fails: Steve Downs reviewed Plundering London Underground: New Labour, private capital and public service, 1997-2010 (Janine Booth). It’s a story that anyone concerned about attacks on the public sector should know. This book shows not only how transit privatization failed in London, but why it had to fail.

How Good Is Costco, Anyway?: Eric Blair reviewed The Good Jobs Strategy: How the Smartest Companies Invest in Employees to Lower Costs and Boost Profits (Zeynep Ton). It’s not often that a business professor at an elite university argues in favor of investing in workers. So this book on what Costco and Trader Joe’s do right is useful... but also frustrating, for what it leaves out.

THOSE TUMULTUOUS ‘70S

To Understand Ford-U.S., Study the Ford Empire: Ron Lare reviewed Notoriously Militant: The Story of a Union Branch at Ford Dagenham (Sheila Cohen). At Britain’s Ford-Dagenham plant, workers did not submit gently to labor-management cooperation. They locked managers in their offices, marched through the plant setting off fire alarms, threw tea mugs at windows, and turned fire hoses on police.

Hardhats, Hippies, and Hawks: Jane Slaughter reviewed Hardhats, Hippies, and Hawks: The Vietnam Antiwar Movement as Myth and Memory (Penny Lewis). Investigating the myth of the pro-war hardhat, Lewis asks, “Who caused the greatest disruption to the US capacity to fight in Vietnam?” and makes the case that “working people were at the forefront.”

How Wildcat Strikes Made Public Worker Unions Grow and Thrive: Robert Ovetz reviewed Strike Back: Using the Militant Tactics of Labor’s Past to Reignite Public Sector Unionism Today (Joe Burns), which examines the little-known wave of illegal strikes that swept the U.S. during the 1960 and ‘70s, reshaping the labor movement.

Cesar Chavez Remembered, Warts and All: Mark R. Day reviewed The Crusades of Cesar Chavez: A Biography (Miriam Pawel), plus two films about the UFW leader. Chavez in the new biopic is a flat, one-dimensional character who does everything unassisted; the organizers on whose shoulders he stood are ignored or reduced to bit players. But a documentary and this comprehensive biography do a better job of assessing this complex character.

GLOBAL UNION STRATEGIES

Alt-Labor or Not, It Will Take Rank-and-File Power to Revive Us: Eric Dirnbach reviewed New Forms of Worker Organization: The Syndicalist and Autonomist Restoration of Class-Struggle Unionism (ed. Immanuel Ness). Can recent experiments with alternative forms of organizing, such as worker centers and minority strikes, offer a solution to the labor movement’s long half-century of decline?

Security Guard Campaign Reveals the Promise and Pitfalls of Global Union Cooperation: Katy Fox-Hodess reviewed Global Unions, Local Power: The New Spirit of Transnational Labor Organizing (Jamie K. McCallum), a case study of the international union campaign against the world’s largest private security firm—essential reading for would-be global activists.

Behind China’s Wildcat Strike Wave: Jane Slaughter reviewed Insurgency Trap: Labor Politics in Postsocialist China (Eli Friedman), which shows why China's rising wave of workplace protests sometimes wins concrete gains, yet stops short of forming lasting organizations that could alter the balance of power.

Can't get enough? Check out the books we reviewed in 2013, too.