Labor Histories – Class, Politics, and the Working–Class Experience

Is class outmoded as a basis for understanding labor history? This collection emphatically answers, "No!" These thirteen essays delve into subjects like migrant labor, religion, ethnicity, agricultural history, and gender. Written by former students of preeminent labor figure and historian David Montgomery, the works advance the argument that class remains indispensable to the study of working Americans and their place in the broad drama of our shared national history.

Eric Arnesen is the James R. Hoffa Teamsters Professor of Modern American Labor History and Vice Dean for Faculty and Administration at George Washington University's Columbian College of Arts and Sciences. He is the author of Waterfront Workers of New Orleans: Race, Class, and Politics, 1863-1923. Julie Greene is a professor of history at the University of Maryland, College Park and the the author of The Canal Builders: Making America's Empire at the Panama Canal. Bruce Laurie is a professor emeritus in the Department of History at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and author of Rebels in Paradise: Sketches of Northampton Abolitionists.