Labour History

Labor Day is more than a three-day weekend, backyard barbecue, or end-of-summer sale. This book reveals the powerful struggles, sacrifices, and victories behind the holiday —and explains why workers’ rights, fair wages, workplace safety, dignity, and the future of work still matter to every American today. It changes how we celebrate.

London Labour and the London Poor is a rare and fascinating insight into the lives and struggles of the 19th-century poor. Written by journalist and reformer Henry Mayhew, a founder and editor of the satirical magazine Punch, it collects hundreds of testimonials from the lower strata of Victorian society. We encounter street entertainers, 'pure finders', cabinetmakers, gingerbread sellers, 'screeve-fakers', swindlers, and burglars. We hear accounts from toshers finding items in sewers, people attempting to train pigs to dance, and witness the sale of everything from gilt watches and chickweed to needles, dog collars, and eel soup.

It has often been said that the greatest invention of all time was the sail, which facilitated the internationalization of the globe and thus ushered in the modern era. Columbus' contact with the New World, alongside European maritime contact with the Far East, transformed human history, and in particular, the history of Africa. It was the sail that linked the continents of Africa, Asia, and Europe, and thus it was also the sail that facilitated the greatest involuntary human migrations in history.

In the British Museum's Mesopotamian galleries, behind glass, sits a clay mask approximately three thousand eight hundred years old. The face was made to terrify. Hooded sockets sink the eyes into darkness, intestinal coils wrap the brow, and a chipped tooth grins from the left side of the mouth. The mask was paid for. Somebody walked silver from a temple administrator's hand to a workshop, where an artisan converted clay and several days of labor into a working monster, and the figure left the workshop on a delivery cart for a fee. The specific contract has not survived.

Dive into the gripping history of organized labor and the relentless underdog fight for essential workers' rights. Perfect for an educational commute, this thought-provoking narrative traces the epic clash between everyday employees and powerful industrial titans. Witness the dangerous...

Uncover the defiant history of collective action and labor rights that empowered everyday workers to reshape our modern world. Whether commuting to your job or seeking a thought-provoking dive into social justice, this empowering narrative shifts the focus from palace balconies to gritty shop...

Labor's War at Home examines a critical period in American politics and labor history, beginning with the outbreak of war in Europe in 1939 through the wave of major industrial strikes that followed the war and accompanied the reconversion to a peacetime economy. Nelson Lichtenstein is concerned both with the internal organizations and social dynamics of the labor movement - especially the Congress of Industrial Organizations - and with the relationship between the CIO, as well as other bodies of organized labor, and the Roosevelt administration.

Secrets, lies, lawyers and covert recordings. If you thought the 2019 election was just about a death tax that didn't exist, you're in for a surprise. From the dark arts of the dirt units to the role of billionaire Clive Palmer, this is the untold story of an election debacle. The Labor Party...

Named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker and Esquire This revelatory and inclusive book “unearths the stories of the people—farm laborers, domestic workers, factory employees—behind some of the labor movement’s biggest successes” (The New York Times) from independent journalist...

In this classic account, historian Philip Foner traces the radical history of black workers’ contribution to the American labor movement.

As labor unions and movements began to form and coalesce in the 19th century, the tensions between workers and companies led to demonstrations, encounters, and even conflicts that descended into violence. Among those, none were larger than the colloquially known Battle of Blair Mountain, which pitted West Virginian miners against authorities in 1921. It represented the largest labor uprising in American history and the largest armed uprising in the country since the Civil War, and it would have lasting ramifications on unions and labor moving forward.

One of the most idiosyncratic horrors of Soviet Russia was the Gulag system, an extensive network of forced labor and concentration camps. Part of the rationale behind this system was that it could serve as slave labor in the drive for industrialization, while also serving as a form of punishment. The name Gulag is in fact an acronym, approximating to “Main Administration of Camps” (in Russian: Glavnoe Upravlenie Lagerei) and operated by the Soviet Union’s Ministry of the Interior.

The Atlantic Slave Trade is a crucial examination of one of history’s most horridly significant epochs, detailing its impact on the world, particularly in West Africa. You will be taken on an emotional and intellectual voyage, examining the horrifying ocean passages suffered by millions, the sociopolitical tides in West Africa, and the ultimate act of abolition.

Discover the gripping labor history of how ordinary workers fought brutal conditions to win the modern weekend. Perfect for your daily commute, this inspiring historical narrative transports you from nineteenth-century coal mines to today's high-tech gig platforms. Experience the David versus...

Uncover the fierce labor history and class struggles that forged our modern economy, from village farms to digital gigs. Perfect for an eye-opening commute, this narrative reveals how ordinary weavers, enslaved people, and programmers fought back against institutions controlling their time and...

In Programmed Inequality, Marie Hicks explores the story of labor feminization and gendered technocracy that undercut British efforts to computerize. Women were a hidden engine of growth in high technology from World War II to the 1960s. As computing experienced a gender flip, labor problems grew into structural ones, and gender discrimination caused the nation's largest computer user to make decisions that were disastrous for the British computer industry and the nation as a whole.

For readers of Stamped and An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States for Young People, Albert J. Mann’s Shift Happens: The History of Labor in the United States is an accessible and comprehensive YA history of the way the labor movement has shaped America and how it intersects with...

Uncover the medical history of childbirth, where the fight for maternal health and bodily autonomy reshaped human society. Whether you are preparing for pregnancy or seeking an eye-opening educational commute, this narrative delivers an empowering perspective on reproduction. Journey from...

In this, the first broad historical overview of labor in the United States in 20 years, Philip Nicholson examines anew the questions, the villains, the heroes, and the issues of work in America. Unlike recent books that have covered labor in the 20th century, Labor's Story in the United States looks at the broad landscape of labor since before the Revolution. Throughout, the audiobook focuses on the integral relationship between the strength of labor and the growth of democracy, painting a vivid picture of the strength of labor movements.

Lakes, Labor, and Long Memory traces the real history beneath the politeness, from Indigenous governance and broken treaties to logging camps, iron mines, labor movements, cities shaped by paperwork, and a political culture built on memory rather than myth. This is not a brochure and it is not an apology. It is an irreverent, unsentimental look at how people in Minnesota learned to survive through cooperation, argue without disengaging, and build systems because isolation failed them again and again. Niceness here was never softness. It was strategy.