A celebration of America's workers and the nation they built. Narratives tell the stories, over time, of wheat growers and sharecroppers, mill girls and housemaids, gold miners and railway porters, farmwives and cowboys, newsboys and stenographers.

A plea--deeply personal and told through the lives of real Americans--to address the crisis in working-class America, while focusing on solutions to mend a half century of governmental failure. Through the lives of real Americans, Kristof and WuDunn address the crisis in working-class America, while focusing on solutions to mend a half century of governmental failure. Rural Yamhill, Oregon, prospered for much of the twentieth century but has been...

A journalist describes the years she worked in low-paying domestic work under wealthy employers, contrasting the privileges of the upper-middle class to the realities of the overworked laborers supporting them.

"Stories of passion, courage, and commitment, following individuals as they pursue the work they were born to do, from StoryCorps founder Dave Isay. In Callings, StoryCorps founder Dave Isay presents unforgettable stories from people doing what they love.Some found their paths at a very young age, others later in life; some overcame great odds or upturned their lives in order to pursue what matters to them. Many of their stories have never been broadcast...

"When Stephanie Land set out to write her memoir Maid, she never could have imagined what was to come. Maid was a story about a housecleaner, but it was also a story about a woman with a dream. In Class, Land takes us with her as she finishes college and pursues her writing career. Facing barriers at every turn including a byzantine loan system, not having enough money for food, navigating the judgments of professors and fellow students who didn't...

A compelling and complex story of one of the most convulsive and transformative eras in American history. In the closing decades of the nineteenth century, the U.S. population doubled in the span of a single generation, national wealth expanded, and two classes rose simultaneously, separated by a gulf of experience and circumstance that was unprecedented in American life.

"Spanning more than two hundred years, An African American and Latinx History of the United States is a revolutionary, politically charged narrative history, arguing that the "Global South" was crucial to the development of America as we know it. Scholar and activist Paul Ortiz challenges the notion of westward progress as exalted by widely taught formulations such as "manifest destiny" and "Jacksonian democracy," and shows how placing African American,...

A collection of interviews with working people in a wide variety of occupations.

"America has broken its contract with its laboring class. So, how do we get back to the American Dream? How do we once again become the land of opportunity, the promised land where hard work and commitment to family are enough to protect you from poverty? It's not that hard actually. All it would take, as this book illustrates, is for those in power to once again respect the dignity of work-and the American worker"--

From the Folks Who Brought You the Weekend has set the standard for viewing American history through the prism of working people. From indentured servants and slaves in seventeenth-century Chesapeake to high-tech workers in contemporary Silicon Valley. Now, the authors have added a wealth of fresh analysis of labor's role in American life, with new material on sex workers, disability issues, labor's relation to the global justice movement and the...