America's Working Man

America's Working Man PDF Author: David Halle
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022622936X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 380

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Book Description
“An unusually deep and wide-ranging study” by a sociologist who spent years listening to and living among workers at a New Jersey chemical plant (Journal of American Studies). Over a period of six years during the late 1970s, at factory and warehouse, at the tavern across the road, in their homes and union meetings, on fishing trips and social outings, David Halle talked and listened to workers of an automated chemical plant in New Jersey’s industrial heartland—white, male, and mostly Catholic. He has emerged with an unusually comprehensive and convincingly realistic picture of blue-collar life in America during this era. Throughout the book, Halle illustrates his analysis with excerpts of workers’ views on everything from strikes, class consciousness, politics, job security, and toxic chemicals to marriage, betting on horses, God, home-ownership, drinking, adultery, the Super Bowl, and life after death. Halle challenges the stereotypes of the blue-collar mentality and provides a detailed, in-depth portrait of one community of workers at a time when it was relatively affluent and secure. “Absorbing reading.”—Business Week

America's Working Man

America's Working Man PDF Author: David Halle
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022622936X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 380

Get Book Here

Book Description
“An unusually deep and wide-ranging study” by a sociologist who spent years listening to and living among workers at a New Jersey chemical plant (Journal of American Studies). Over a period of six years during the late 1970s, at factory and warehouse, at the tavern across the road, in their homes and union meetings, on fishing trips and social outings, David Halle talked and listened to workers of an automated chemical plant in New Jersey’s industrial heartland—white, male, and mostly Catholic. He has emerged with an unusually comprehensive and convincingly realistic picture of blue-collar life in America during this era. Throughout the book, Halle illustrates his analysis with excerpts of workers’ views on everything from strikes, class consciousness, politics, job security, and toxic chemicals to marriage, betting on horses, God, home-ownership, drinking, adultery, the Super Bowl, and life after death. Halle challenges the stereotypes of the blue-collar mentality and provides a detailed, in-depth portrait of one community of workers at a time when it was relatively affluent and secure. “Absorbing reading.”—Business Week

America's Working Man

America's Working Man PDF Author: David Halle
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226313665
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
Over a period of six years, at factory and warehouse, at the tavern across the road, in their homes and union meetings, on fishing trips and social outings, David Halle talked and listened to workers of an automated chemical plant in New Jersey's industrial heartland. He has emerged with an unusually comprehensive and convincingly realistic picture of blue-collar life in America. Throughout the book, Halle illustrates his analysis with excerpts of workers' views on everything from strikes, class consciousness, politics, job security, and toxic chemicals to marriage, betting on horses, God, home-ownership, drinking, adultery, the Super Bowl, and life after death. Halle challenges the stereotypes of the blue-collar mentality and argues that to understand American class consciousness we must shift our focus from the "working class" to be the "working man."

The Working Man's Reward

The Working Man's Reward PDF Author: Elaine Lewinnek
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199769222
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
"Between the 1860s and 1920s, Chicago's working-class immigrants designed the American dream of home-ownership. They imagined homes as small businesses, homes that were simultaneously a consumer-oriented respite from work and a productive space that workers hoped to control. Leapfrogging out of town along with Chicago's assembly-line factories, Chicago's early suburbs were remarkably diverse. These suburbs were marketed with the elusive promise that homeownership might offer some bulwark against the vicissitudes of industrial capitalism, that homes might be "better than a bank for a poor man, " in the words of one evocative advertisement, and "the working man's reward." This promise evolved into what Lewinnek terms "the mortgages of whiteness:" the hope that property values might increase if that property could be kept white. Suburbs also developed through nineteenth-century notions of the gendered respectability of domesticity, early ideas about city planning and land economics, as well as an evolving twentieth-century discourse about the racial attributes of property values. Because Chicago presented itself as a paradigmatic American city and because numerous Chicago-based experts eventually instituted national real-estate programs, Chicago's early growth affected the growth of twentieth-century America. Framed by two working-class riots against suburbanization in 1872 and 1919, spurred from both above and below, this work shows how Chicagoans helped form America's urban sprawl and examines the roots of America's suburbanization, synthesizing the new suburban history into the diversity of America's suburbs"--

The Hardest Working Man

The Hardest Working Man PDF Author: James Sullivan
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9781592403905
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
Acclaimed journalist Sullivan tells the story of the night James Brown kept the peace in the wake of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.--and delivered hope with an immortal performance in Boston.

Letters to Judd, an American Workingman

Letters to Judd, an American Workingman PDF Author: Upton Sinclair
Publisher: Good Press
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 101

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Book Description
Pulitzer Prize winner Upton Sinclair wrote this fascinating non-fiction epistolary to Judd, an old carpenter who has done odd jobs in his place for a decade. Sinclair uses his letter format to talk about the hardships experienced by the working class, from the backbreaking labor to the low wages and contrasts their life to ones lived by the captains of the industry.

The Last American Man

The Last American Man PDF Author: Elizabeth Gilbert
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408806878
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 239

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Book Description
_____________ 'It is almost impossible not to fall under the spell of Eustace Conway ... his accomplishments, his joy and vigor, seem almost miraculous' - New York Times Review of Books 'Gilbert takes a bright-eyed bead on Eustace, hitting him square with a witty modernist appraisal of folkloric American masculinity' - The Times 'Conversational, enthusiastic, funny and sharp, the energy of The Last American Man never ebbs' - New Statesman _____________ A fascinating, intimate portrait of an endlessly complicated man: a visionary, a narcissist, a brilliant but flawed modern hero At the age of seventeen, Eustace Conway ditched the comforts of his suburban existence to escape to the wild. Away from the crushing disapproval of his father, he lived alone in a teepee in the mountains. Everything he needed he built, grew or killed. He made his clothes from deer he killed and skinned before using their sinew as sewing thread. But he didn't stop there. In the years that followed, he stopped at nothing in pursuit of bigger, bolder challenges. He travelled the Mississippi in a handmade wooden canoe; he walked the two-thousand-mile Appalachian Trail; he hiked across the German Alps in trainers; he scaled cliffs in New Zealand. One Christmas, he finished dinner with his family and promptly upped and left - to ride his horse across America. From South Carolina to the Pacific, with his little brother in tow, they dodged cars on the highways, ate road kill and slept on the hard ground. Now, more than twenty years on, Eustace is still in the mountains, residing in a thousand-acre forest where he teaches survival skills and attempts to instil in people a deeper appreciation of nature. But over time he has had to reconcile his ambitious dreams with the sobering realities of modernity. Told with Elizabeth Gilbert's trademark wit and spirit, The Last American Man is an unforgettable adventure story of an irrepressible life lived to the extreme. The Last American Man is a New York Times Notable Book and National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist.

Man Out

Man Out PDF Author: Andrew L. Yarrow
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 0815732759
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
The story of men who are hurting—and hurting America by their absence Man Out describes the millions of men on the sidelines of life in the United States. Many of them have been pushed out of the mainstream because of an economy and society where the odds are stacked against them; others have chosen to be on the outskirts of twenty-first-century America. These men are disconnected from work, personal relationships, family and children, and civic and community life. They may be angry at government, employers, women, and "the system" in general—and millions of them have done time in prison and have cast aside many social norms. Sadly, too many of these men are unsure what it means to be a man in contemporary society. Wives or partners reject them; children are estranged from them; and family, friends, and neighbors are embarrassed by them. Many have disappeared into a netherworld of drugs, alcohol, poor health, loneliness, misogyny, economic insecurity, online gaming, pornography, other off-the-grid corners of the internet, and a fantasy world of starting their own business or even writing the Great American novel. Most of the men described in this book are poorly educated, with low incomes and often with very few prospects for rewarding employment. They are also disproportionately found among millennials, those over 50, and African American men. Increasingly, however, these lost men are discovered even in tony suburbs and throughout the nation. It is a myth that men on the outer corners of society are only lower-middle-class white men dislocated by technology and globalization. Unlike those who primarily blame an unjust economy, government policies, or a culture sanctioning "laziness," Man Out explores the complex interplay between economics and culture. It rejects the politically charged dichotomy of seeing such men as either victims or culprits. These men are hurting, and in turn they are hurting families and hurting America. It is essential to address their problems. Man Out draws on a wide range of data and existing research as well as interviews with several hundred men, women, and a wide variety of economists and other social scientists, social service providers and physicians, and with employers, through a national online survey and in-depth fieldwork in several communities.

White Working Class

White Working Class PDF Author: Joan C. Williams
Publisher: Harvard Business Press
ISBN: 1633693791
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 151

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Book Description
"I recommend a book by Professor Williams, it is really worth a read, it's called White Working Class." -- Vice President Joe Biden on Pod Save America An Amazon Best Business and Leadership book of 2017 Around the world, populist movements are gaining traction among the white working class. Meanwhile, members of the professional elite—journalists, managers, and establishment politicians--are on the outside looking in, left to argue over the reasons. In White Working Class, Joan C. Williams, described as having "something approaching rock star status" by the New York Times, explains why so much of the elite's analysis of the white working class is misguided, rooted in class cluelessness. Williams explains that many people have conflated "working class" with "poor"--but the working class is, in fact, the elusive, purportedly disappearing middle class. They often resent the poor and the professionals alike. But they don't resent the truly rich, nor are they particularly bothered by income inequality. Their dream is not to join the upper middle class, with its different culture, but to stay true to their own values in their own communities--just with more money. While white working-class motivations are often dismissed as racist or xenophobic, Williams shows that they have their own class consciousness. White Working Class is a blunt, bracing narrative that sketches a nuanced portrait of millions of people who have proven to be a potent political force. For anyone stunned by the rise of populist, nationalist movements, wondering why so many would seemingly vote against their own economic interests, or simply feeling like a stranger in their own country, White Working Class will be a convincing primer on how to connect with a crucial set of workers--and voters.

Workin' Man Blues

Workin' Man Blues PDF Author: Gerald W. Haslam
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 052092262X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 393

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Book Description
California has been fertile ground for country music since the 1920s, nurturing a multitude of talents from Gene Autry to Glen Campbell, Rose Maddox to Barbara Mandrell, Buck Owens to Merle Haggard. In this affectionate homage to California's place in country music's history, Gerald Haslam surveys the Golden State's contributions to what is today the most popular music in America. At the same time he illuminates the lives of the white, working-class men and women who migrated to California from the Dust Bowl, the Hoovervilles, and all the other locales where they had been turned out, shut down, or otherwise told to move on. Haslam's roots go back to Oildale, in California's central valley, where he first discovered the passion for country music that infuses Workin' Man Blues. As he traces the Hollywood singing cowboys, Bakersfield honky-tonks, western-swing dance halls, "hillbilly" radio shows, and crossover styles from blues and folk music that also have California roots, he shows how country music offered a kind of cultural comfort to its listeners, whether they were oil field roustabouts or hash slingers. Haslam analyzes the effects on country music of population shifts, wartime prosperity, the changes in gender roles, music industry economics, and television. He also challenges the assumption that Nashville has always been country music's hometown and Grand Ole Opry its principal venue. The soul of traditional country remains romantically rural, southern, and white, he says, but it is also the anthem of the underdog, which may explain why California plays so vital a part in its heritage: California is where people reinvent themselves, just as country music has reinvented itself since the first Dust Bowl migrants arrived, bringing their songs and heartaches with them.

Aaron Copland

Aaron Copland PDF Author: Howard Pollack
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252069000
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 734

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Book Description
Features the biography of Aaron Copland, his life, and his music.