Critique de Choice

Jones, an award-winning historian, has written a synthesis of recent research in labor and working-class history that is staggering in scope. She covers labor that is "waged and unwaged, men and women, black and white, native-born and immigrant, agricultural and industrial." Designed as a text to be used in history classes, this book interweaves brief narratives with more sweeping analyses. The first half of the book offers a comprehensive and intellectually satisfying survey from the dawn of the Colonial era to the Civil War. But from the post-Civil War period on, this book becomes downright depressing. The workers who receive attention labor at the bottom of the heap. Although the US became the world's preeminent economy over the last century and a half, no mention is given to rising real wages or dramatic gains in educational attainment. Instead Jones focuses on "diverse stories of hardship that affected working families all over the United States." Documentation includes footnotes and brief chapter-end bibliographies. Recommended for all levels of college readers. D. Lindstrom University of Wisconsin--Madison