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City of Workers, City of Struggle brings together essays by leading historians of New York and a wealth of illustrations, offering rich descriptions of work, life, and political struggle. It recounts how workers have built formal and informal groups not only to advance their own interests but also to pursue a vision of what the city should be.
List of contents
Director’s Foreword, by Whitney W. Donhauser
Introduction: Workers’ Movements, Workers’ Struggles in New York, by Sarah M. Henry
Workers in the City of Commerce: 1624–1898
1. Artisan Labor in Colonial New York and the New Republic, by Simon Middleton
2. Slave Labor in New York, by Leslie M. Harris
3. Sailors Ashore in New York’s Sailortown, by Johnathan Thayer
4. Housework and Homework in 19th-Century New York City, by Elizabeth Blackmar
5. Victims, B’hoys, Foreigners, Slave-Drivers, and Despots: Picturing Work, Workers, and Activism in 19th-Century New York, by Joshua Brown
Union City: 1898–1975
6. The Needle Trades and the Uprising of Women Workers: 1905–1919, by Annelise Orleck
7. Sex Work and the Underground Economy, by LaShawn Harris
8. Here Comes the CIO, by Joshua B. Freeman
9. Puerto Rican Workers and the Struggle for Decent Lives in New York City: 1910s–1970s, by Aldo A. Lauria-Santiago
10. Labor and the Fight for Racial Equality, by Martha Biondi
11. Public Workers, by William A. Herbert
Crisis and Transformation: 1975– 2018
12. The Fiscal Crisis and Union Decline, by Kim Phillips-Fein
13. Health-care Workers and Union Power, by Brian Greenberg
14. Chinatown, the Garment and Restaurant Industries, and Labor, by Kenneth J. Guest and Margaret M. Chin
15. Domestic Workers, by Premilla Nadasen
16. New Forms of Struggle: The “Alt-labor” Movement in New York City, by Ruth Milkman
Conclusion: How Labor Shaped New York and New York Shaped Labor, by Joshua B. Freeman
For Further Reading
Index
Image Credits
About the author
Joshua B. Freeman is Distinguished Professor of History at Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. His books include Behemoth: A History of the Factory and the Making of the Modern World (2018); American Empire, 1945–2000: The Rise of a Global Power; the Democratic Revolution at Home (2012); and Working-Class New York: Life and Labor Since World War II (2000).
Summary
City of Workers, City of Struggle brings together essays by leading historians of New York and a wealth of illustrations, offering rich descriptions of work, life, and political struggle. It recounts how workers have built formal and informal groups not only to advance their own interests but also to pursue a vision of what the city should be.
Additional text
A richly illustrated work . . . in 16 well-written chapters, various scholars trace labor's role from the Colonial era through the rise of a new contemporary militant labor movement.
