American Work by Jacqueline Jones
This is history at its best--the epic, often tragic story of success and failure on the uneven playing fields of American labor, rooted in painstaking research and passionately alive to its present-day implications for a just society. Jacqueline Jones shows unmistakably how nearly every significant social transformation in American history (from bound to free labor, from farm work to factory work, from a blue-collar to a white-collar economy) rolled back the hard-won advances of those African Americans who had managed to gain footholds in various jobs and industries. This is a story not of simple ideological racism but of politics and economics interacting to determine what kind of work was suitable for which groups. Here is a useful and sobering (Kirkus Reviews) account of why the connection between success and the work ethic was severed long ago for a substantial number of Americans. American Work goes far beyond the easy sloganeering of the current debates on affirmative action and welfare versus workfare to inform those debates with rich historical context and compelling insight.At the University of Texas at Austin, Jacqueline Jones holds the Walter Prescott Webb Chair in History and Ideas and is the Mastin Gentry White Professor of Southern History. She lives in Austin, Texas, and is the author of Saving Savannah, American Work, and The Dispossessed.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780393318333 |
| ISBN 10 | 0393318338 |
| Title | American Work |
| Author | Jacqueline Jones |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | W. W. Norton and Company, Inc. |
| Year published | 1999-01-28 |
| Number of pages | 548 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |