From the Roaring Twenties through to the Great Depression, Irving Bernstein presents a comprehensive history of the American workforce. The Lean Years is the first instalment of Bernstein's critically acclaimed trilogy on the American labour movement which charts how the New Deal and labour unions preserved democracy and capitalism at a time when the survival of both was unclear. This classic text revolutionises social history, vividly narrating an era of wrenching hardships but also great victories in the workers' movement.

About the Author
Frances Fox Piven is faculty at the Graduate Center of CUNY. She is the author of several books on the social history of the Great Depression, including Regulating the Poor and Poor People's Movements, co-authored with Richard Cloward. More recently, she has written The War at Home, Challenging Authority: How Ordinary People Change America, and Keeping the Black Vote Down.

Reviews
"A lively, knowledgeable book about the state of labor in the years prior to the New Deal. The author has accomplished an expert blend of illustrative detail and meaningful summary reliable in scholarship and shorn of pedantry and pretense." --Industrial and Labor Relations Review "A skillful blending of economic activity, legislative inactivity, biographical sketches, and the increasing demoralization of the worker and labor organization." --The Journal of Economic History "An unusually perceptive dissection."



Book Information
ISBN 9781608460632
Author Frances Fox Piven
Format Paperback
Page Count 577
Imprint Haymarket Books
Publisher Haymarket Books
Weight(grams) 540g