By Jane F. McAlevy

For decades, intractable social and economic problems have been eating away at the social and political fabric of the United States. There is a single, obvious weapon whose effectiveness has been proven repeatedly throughout US history: unions. Jane McAlevy explains in detail the context of unions and how useful they are as a tool in combating worker opression.

By Katherine Patterson

When Lyddie and her younger brother are hired out as servants to help pay off their family farm's debts, Lyddie is determined to find a way to reunite her family once again. Hearing about all the money a girl can make working in the textile mills in Lowell, Massachusetts, she makes her way there, only to find that her dreams of returning home may never come true.

By Margaret Peterson Haddix

The fire at the Triangle Waist Company in New York City, which claimed the lives of 146 young immigrant workers, is one of the worst disasters since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, and the disaster, which brought attention to the labor movement in America, is part of the curriculum in classrooms throughout the country. Uprising, from different points of view, shows the experiences of young women at the center of this tragedy.

By Steven Greenhouse

Beaten Down, Worked Up is a stirring and essential look at labor in America, poised as it is between the tumultuous struggles of the past and the vital, hopeful struggles ahead.