Economic-union Books

I ordered Phlip Vera Cruz: A Personal History of Filipino Immigrants and the Farmworkers Movement to gain insight into Filipino farm worker culture in America. What I got was more than I ever expected. I learned about the differences between generations, of the vast sea of Central Valley and Delano culture, and the history of Filipinos in America, whose hardships were endured by transplanted and misunderstood culture.

I've since learned that generational gaps in understanding Filipino culture exist that tear the rooted fabric of Filipino culture, making its historic transformation to Americanism nearly forgotten by many of the younger generation. Craig Scharlin's book of Cruz's memoirs provided a means through which I could research and begin to understand what many Filipino youth have never gained.

I am often dismayed when college aged Filipina/o Americans, many of whom are the children and grandchildren of post-1965 immigrants, cannot appreciate the lives of the Manongs, early Filipino immigrants from the the 1920's & 30's. I realize that it was a long time ago and there are many other Fil-Ams to recognize and honor, but I believe that this first large wave of immigrants to the U.S. is a part of Fil-Am history that should not be ignored. The life of Philip Vera Cruz epitomizes the lives of many of these immigrants who came to the U.S. as migratory and service sector laborers but became activists by protesting labor exploitation. Further, Vera Cruz and other Filipinos played an integral part in the formation of the United Farm Workers. Young Filipinos often complain about not knowing their history or the role Filipinos have played in U.S. society. This biography is a good place to start learning about where we've been and what we've done.

I picked up this book because I am a Filipino-American and knew little of the contributions of Filipino-Americans to American society and even had non-Filipino friends tell me of this man and the contributions to the UFW and labor laws in America. It's a sincere story of an honest man who bridged people and cultures and stood up for what was right and worth fighting for. I read it over one weekend and had a hard time putting it down. It's a great read for anyone interested in the UFW, Cesar Chavez, Filipino-American contributions, labor laws, and/or inter-racial relations.

As the american people see their standard of living decline, as fewer and fewer of us have health care, as pensions crumble into dusts and the social safety net becomes a fond memory, we wonder: Why is this happening? Fifty six million people would join a Labor union tommorrow if it wouldn't cost them their job. The most serious problem facing the country is the decline of Labor unions, and Dr. Tait knows why. Unions became bureaucratized and inflexible and could not withstand the onslaught of government and institutional persecution. Out of this wreckage, Dr. Tait explains why and how some unions and organizations were able to succeed in a time of failure. She has an encyclopedic knowledge of recent economic and social history, she has a shrewd insight into politics and group dynamics and she writes clearly and lucidly. This book ought to be required reading for every working person in the country. With American workers under attack on virtually every front, the time to stand up is now and this book shows how and where.

A wonderful tour through movements for economic justice since the 1960s, covering decades of good organizing work by civil rights, feminist, immigrant and anti-poverty groups. Many of these worked outside the boundaries of the "official" labor movement, creating inventive local and sometimes national unions to fight for improved wages and working conditions along with issues like affordable housing, decent health care, and social and economic equality for women, immigrants and people of color. The author pays careful attention to the dynamics of race, ethnicity and gender within labor and community groups, and shows how diversity can be a great asset in building stronger movements. This important book should be read by anyone trying to understand labor's historical development and future direction. An enjoyable read!

As the american people see their standard of living decline, as fewer and fewer of us have health care, as pensions crumble into dusts and the social safety net becomes a fond memory, we wonder: Why is this happening? Fifty six million people would join a Labor union tommorrow if it wouldn't cost them their job. The most serious problem facing the country is the decline of Labor unions, and Dr. Tait knows why. Unions became bureaucratized and inflexible and could not withstand the onslaught of government and institutional persecution. Out of this wreckage, Dr. Tait explains why and how some unions and organizations were able to succeed in a time of failure. She has an encyclopedic knowledge of recent economic and social history, she has a shrewd insight into politics and group dynamics and she writes clearly and lucidly. This book ought to be required reading for every working person in the country. With American workers under attack on virtually every front, the time to stand up is now and this book shows how and where.

This is the best kind of academic writing: direct, technically accurate and concise, yet intriguing, lively and infomative. Segal clearly has affection for his subject, yet does not hedge on Ford's notoriously disagreeable qualities. A clear-eyed look at a complex man and his ideals.

This book is fabulous! It captures this topic better than any I've ever read. It's very interesting to me, and I'm not in the least way associated with Ford. Great book and enjoyable read!!

Henry Ford is famous for setting up the basic concepts of mass production. And some of his factories Highland Park, River Rouge and Willow Run to name three were truly huge facilities producing huge numbers of vehicles, even aircraft. Yet at the same time he was concerned about the social aspects of the businesses.

In the early 1920's he was instrumental in Ford setting up nineteen smaller 'village industries.' Each of these industries were set up to provide some kind of easily specified component that would be used in Ford vehicles or manufacturing. These included things like voltage regulators, twist drills, manufacturing test equipment, etc.

After his death, in the late 1940's and early 1950's these nineteen was shut down, usually merged into a large factory in the newly formed parts division. This effort cannot be considered a failure. All in all, the nineteen plants were too small, too hard to manage.

Now similar outside suppliers provide such sub component manufacturing, but they are larger, and independently owned. This same concept is also followed closely in Japan where smaller independent suppliers make components for automobiles and other products.

I have looked through a lot of books on the former Soviet Union and its collapse. Very often, Western authors show clear misunderstanding of the process and how it evolved. I was pleasantly surprised to find a very good analysis in this book. Being a Russian citizen, I discover that it truthfully depicts the history of my country and gives a very thorough picture of what has happened in it before, during, and after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The authors go to great lengths in order to convey their knowledge to the reader and I very much appreciate their work and effort.

Kotz and Weir start this book with a long detour through Soviet economic history, which is worthy on its own in explaining an often mythologized subject, but really pays off when it explains how the Soviet Union had a very distinct class structure that laid the grounds for the current era. With intelligent sociological analysis they show how the coordinators and bureaucrats who inhabited an allegedly "socialist" system did so for predominantly personal gain, and how they eventually sought and found even more gain in ending that system altogether. Crucial reading for understanding class conflict in Russia today.

review by illinois reader missed the main points of the book in my opinion. 1-gorbachev tried to reform system thru democratizing(he succeeded)the system and retaining some aspects of socialism(he failed) 2-Democatization allowed the option for a return to capitalism,formerly outlawed,to be considered as an option. 3-The elite opposed early moves toward perostroika because they feared loss of priveleges when decentralization was attempted 4-The elite then embraced the move to capitalism, despite the opposition of 60+percent of the citizenry,hence the title "Revolution From Above" 5-The USSR did not collapse because it was moribund,but because the elite felt that they could enrich themselves more under capitalism than they already had under the soviets. 6-Socialism may not be dead because it failed in the USSR.The author considers that as a first attempt from which future generation can learn. 7-This is well documented academic work well written and with an unconventional view point.

This brilliant book is indispensable reading for any labor activist worth their salt. Get it and clear your schedule for the next 24 hours while you soak up the electrifying history of working-class radicalism in the United States.

Smith's case is meticulous and convincing: The American working-class is far more combative and ingenuitive than its given credit for by the mainstream. And the author's conclusions are provocative: The working-class is a juggernaut in need of an independent, democratic leadership that can fully realize its class interests.

This book is worth it for the highlights of class struggle alone from Toledo, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Birmingham, Detroit, New York, Seattle and beyond. But what makes it truly valuable is its political analysis of the current labor movement slump. Smith is no labor cheerleader nor academic arm-chair quarterback, she's the salt of the movement.

Sharon Smith's Subterranean Fire: A History of Working-Class Radicalism in the United States is a critical history of the U.S. labor movement and workers' resistance from the nineteenth century to the present day. From class struggle, to the uphill battle for industrial unions, to the harsh retaliation of employers, to the dismantling of the New Deal labor laws by Neoliberal presidents and the rise of the Neocons, Subterranean Fire explores a fierce battle on both sides for power, wealth, and legitimacy. A very heavily researched history that not only chronicles worker efforts to fight back, but also warns against the uncertain future that excessive compliance can and might bring, Subterranean Fire is informative reading, especially for students of the American labor movement.

There are stories in this book that should be part of every textbook in the United States. The attacks on the miners in the Appalachians, the Ludlow massacre of women and children in Colorado, the police and military attacks on striking textile workers in Gastonia, NC, the remarks of various capitalists regarding their opinion of those that made them their riches, the persecution of labor and other radicals throughout the past 150 years, and the manipulation of the public by the two-party system--a manipulation that means the worker gets screwed no matter who he or she votes for. Women on the barricades and the Wobblies. Likewise, the tales of racial and ethnic prejudices that caused strikes and solidarity to fall apart should be told. This latter aspect of US labor history is very important today as immigrants flex their political muscle in the streets of the country and the power elites attempt to create and widen divisions between these immigrants and those US workers that were born here. If workers don't learn from history and oppose these attempts to divide us, Subterranean Fire makes it abundantly clear that all workers will suffer. And only the bosses will win. When lessons from our history are common knowledge we can move ahead in a manner that will bring a movement back onto US soil that protects the lives and rights of the working people in this country.
Smith's book is the perfect vehicle for such an endeavor. It is a readable, lively tale of the worker's movement in the United States. A collection of statistics and anecdotal stories combined with a critical analysis, it is at times despairingly downbeat and at other times exhilaratingly hopeful. Subterranean Fire's a piece of agitational literature. If there's one message that exists in its pages, it is this: Don't just read, organize.

I picked this book up after hearing Gail Buyske speak in New York. What a fascinating read. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in how microfinance is changing. It is equally excellent as an overview of Russian banking (big and small) since the fall of Communism.

Although I lived and worked in Russia and Ukraine from 1993 to 1998, I learned a great deal about what "really" happened in Russian business and economy, and what forces are shaping the landscape currently.

In particular, I enjoyed the juxtaposition of the objective analysis in the first part of the book with the personal observations of the final chapter. Quite unexpectedly, I found myself gripped by her narrative of KMB's development. If you ask me, anyone who can make a book on banking a page-turner deserves to lauded!

Congratulations on an excellent addition to the literature on Russian banking and on microfinance.

Whether you are a micro or traditional banker or a regional specialist interested in small and medium enterprise (SME) lending in the opaque and tumultuous Russian business sector, I highly recommend "Banking on Small Business: Microfinance in Contemporary Russia" by Gail Buyske.

Buyske knows what she's writing about, having held significant positions in international banking (with Chase Manhattan Bank) and in the Russian banking sector, including serving as the chairperson of the Board of Directors of Russia's KMB Bank for six years. Her first hand experience as an independent practitioner makes her perspective objective, balanced, and compelling.

"Banking on Small Business" expresses a vote of confidence for Russia's independent SME entrepreneurs and argues for the importance of their role in transforming and democratizing Russia - a role which will grow as SMEs continue to generate a larger share of Russian GDP.

Key conclusions which emerge this book include:
- Russian microcredit/SME lending is different quantitatively and qualitatively from microcredit in other parts of the developing world. Sprouting from the remnants of economic crisis of Russia's industrialized, highly educated society with existing infrastructure, microcredit/SME lending started with larger loan sizes and SMEs grew quickly beyond informal income generation and poverty alleviation. This trajectory enables microcredit/SME lending to serve as an engine of growth, employment generation, and therefore the growth of a Russian middle class and needs to be supported.
- Microcredit/SME lending in Russia has great potential for profit, growth, and therefore much-needed international and domestic investment as market demand remains significantly unmet and the Russian economy continues on its overall growth path.
- The Russian banking sector has evolved chaotically, but ultimately independently, to include servicing SMEs; the primary threat to further growth in microcredit/SME lending is state-subsidized SME lending.
- KMB Bank, the Russian Small Business Bank, provides an excellent example of the potential for SME/microcredit in Russia, as well as its appeal to Western investors.

One of the most valuable aspects of this book is that it provides a detailed and synthesized history of the challenging development of the banking and SME sectors in contemporary Russia from the era of perestroika through today. It represents a formidable compilation of most relevant facts and statistics from the past 15+ years, produced from painstaking research gathered from leading Russian and international publications, in-person interviews with leading Russian bankers, and the ripe perspective of personal experience. The result is a very lucid and digestible analysis of the past pitfalls and future possibilities of this sector.

Amazingly, this is the first comprehensive work written on a key event in American labor history -- an event that was headline news in the mid 1940's, and that among many other things set the stage for the passage of Taft-Hartley and propelled Ronald Reagan into politics. While countless historians have left no stone unturned in examining the Hollywood Blacklist, the story of the Hollywood studio strikes has long been relegated to footnotes and chapters in more general works. With this work Gerald Horne has shined a relentless light of painstaking scholarship on what may well be the most neglected event in American labor history. The footnotes alone are worth the price of the book and will no doubt entice many readers to follow these myriad paths deeper into the hidden corners of Hollywood history.

This book belongs on the shelf of anyone interested in Hollywood history, labor history, the Hollywood Blacklist, American radical history, and the history of organized crime in America. It should especially be read by anyone who earns their living as a worker in the film and television industry or is a member of IATSE and wishes to know the true story of their union's dark history.

Reviewer Everitt's remarks capture the book's essential value. Several points however merit emphasis. First, Horne's book brings out the symbiotic relation between the studios' desire for non-independent company unions, on one hand, and organized crime's desire for corrupt unions, on the other. By taking in one another's washing during the tumultuous events of '45 - '47, these two representatives of private capital maintained an alliance that defeated efforts by the Conference of Studio Unions to emerge as an independent union of movie-making employees. Horne the historian is detailed about this sinister and under-reported alliance. Second, by using abundant primary sources, the author debunks the nurtured image of CSU as a communist-led movement, a scare tactic still in its infancy following the anti-fascist WWII and, as the book shows, a tactic used to increasing effect by the corporate-owned press of the day. Belated communist support for CSU strikers was willfully twisted by these flacks into communist domination. Third, the inability of the CSU to cross racial and gender lines of the day is emphasized. This had the unfortunate effect of reducing potential for attracting outside allies, especially among aggrieved African-Americans and women's groups, though it's hardly surprising that prejudices within the union would reflect those of the larger society from which it sprang. It's fascinating to follow this dark underside of the Hollywood dream factory, though I did find time shifts in the narrative confusing at times. Nonetheless, Horne has focused his word-camera on a worthy and neglected real life drama.

The book is brand new...well...not anymore:) but it was in perfect condition when i got it

This extensively researched book shows the birth of a new breed of passive resistance in this country, in front of the backdrop of the 1960s and earlier. An essential text for anyone interested in the 1960s. (Also a great research paper resource . . .)

It is for scratching three words on a map of the southwestern part of the country he had recently explored, along with writing a short descriptive paragraph of the same area, that has condemned Stephen Long in the annals of western history. Those three words were Great American Desert, and the description said in part that "this section ... is almost wholly unfit for cultivation and [is] uninhabitable ...." Nichols and Halley try to correct, or at least shed a less damning light on, this harsh view of Long's opinion (for one thing, Zebulon Pike had pretty much the same impression after visiting that section of the country 10 years earlier). Long was also much criticized for not finding the source of the Red River, and the authors deal with that brouhaha as well. But they are not trying to make a wronged saint out of Long either, and are quick to point out his inefficiencies as an explorer, i.e. not exploring the headwaters of the Platte River and going into the Rockies.

After a brief summary of Long's apprentice years (1784-1817), the authors recount his major explorations: the 1817 exploration of the Fox and Minnesota Rivers, the 1818 exploration into Arkansas and the founding of Fort Smith, the 1819 expedition to the Rockies, the longer 1820 exploration of the plains along the South Platte and the Front Range (Long's Peak being named and Pike's Peak first climbed) to the Canadian and Red Rivers (this being the Great American Desert voyage), and the 1823 exploration of the upper Minnesota region. Their narrative of Long's life and career does not go beyond the Minnesota expedition.

The authors are impressed with what Long's expeditions accomplished, but believe with better organization and leadership could have done more. They place much of the blame on Long himself, but feel there "is little evidence upon which to base an examination of his personality or character traits," though at times he quarreled bitterly with his men and more than once subordinate officers refused to obey his orders. But details of these incidents are lacking. Their book is clearly written and fairly presented. It's an excellent, straightforward account of Long's explorations and their contribution to the scientific development of the country. Highly recommended.

The authors do justice in refuting the many pessimistic views of Stephen Long's career as an explorer in this great little book. Long received a plethora of negative criticism, especially after his 1819-1820 expedition across the plains to the Rocky Mountains. Some of this may be justifiable, such as not searching out the sources of the Platte, Arkansas and Red Rivers, which he had orders to do; or his nomenclature of "The Great American Desert", referring to his return trip from the Rockies. The scientific contributions from his expeditions speak for themselves. Along with publications by Long himself, there were innummerable papers and a few books from the likes of Thomas Say (zoologist), Edwin James (botanist), William Keating (geologist) and art work from Titian Peale and Samuel Seymour to vindicate the efforts of these early nineteenth century explorers. The book was easy to follow and comprehend, and a total pleasure to read.

If you wonder what XO or Fine Champagne stands for this book is for you. The Cognac Companion provides helpful information on how to read Cognac labels, what glassware to use, and if your favorite Cognac house accepts visitors. The Cognac house listing is a great way to expand your knowledge beyond what you might find in your local retailer. I would recommend this book to the casual consumer as well as the connoisseur.

I love this book! Cognac is my favorite drink and this little book packs so much info. I love reading about the popular AND obscure cognac houses. The pictures are great and I would like to use it as my tour guide for France one day!