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Published Sep 2010
784 pages
Genre: History, Current Affairs and Religion
Publication Information
From the textile mills of Lowell, Massachusetts, the first real factories in America, to the triumph of unions in the twentieth century and their waning influence today, the contest between labor and capital for their share of American bounty has shaped our national experience. Philip Dray’s ambition is to show us the vital accomplishments of organized labor in that time and illuminate its central role in our social, political, economic, and cultural evolution.
There Is Power in a Union is an epic, character-driven narrative that locates this struggle for security and dignity in all its various settings: on picket lines and in union halls, jails, assembly lines, corporate boardrooms, the courts, the halls of Congress, and the White House. The author demonstrates, viscerally and dramatically, the urgency of the fight for fairness and economic democracy—a struggle that remains especially urgent today, when ordinary Americans are so anxious and beset by economic woes.
"Packed with vivid characters and dramatic scenes, Dray's fine recap of a neglected but vital tradition has much to say about labor's current straits." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review." - Kirkus
"Philip Dray’s big and bold history of organized labor in America splendidly retells a story – or a multitude of stories – badly in need of retelling. The labor movement’s decline in recent decades has accompanied a great national amnesia about all that the movement achieved for the nation. That amnesia threatens those achievements, so Dray’s book is timely as well as gripping." - Sean Wilentz, Sidney and Ruth Lapidus Professor of History at Princeton University and author of Chants Democratic: New York City and The Rise of the American Working Class and the forthcoming Bob Dylan in America.
"Any union leader working to define and strengthen the role of organized labor in the 21st century must read There Is Power in a Union, a comprehensive and fascinating history of the American labor movement." - Michael Winship, President, Writers Guild of America, East
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Philip Dray is the author of At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America, which won the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award and made him a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and Stealing God’s Thunder: Benjamin Franklin’s Lightning Rod and the Invention of America, and the coauthor of the New York Times Notable Book We Are Not Afraid: The Story of Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney, and the Civil Rights Campaign for Mississippi. He lives in Brooklyn.
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