In the definitive history of a twentieth-century public health disaster, Alan Derickson recounts how for decades after methods of prevention were known hundreds of thousands of American miners suffered and died from black lung, a respiratory illness caused by the inhalation of coal mine dust. The combined failure of government, medicine, and industry to halt the spread of this disease—and even to acknowledge its existence—resulted in a national tragedy, the effects of whic...

Fighting Toxic Ignorance explores conflict over access to information regarding health hazards encountered in the US workplace during the first three-quarters of the twentieth century. Alan Derickson considers risks posed by toxic chemicals and physical and biological agents of disease. By the 1970s, occupational disease was estimated to kill up to 100,000 Americans a year. Derickson unravels the social and political forces and the conflictual pro...

Workers in the United States are losing sleep. In the global economy a growing number of employees hold jobs—often more than one at once—with unpredictable hours. Even before the rise of the twenty-four-hour workplace, the relationship between sleep and industry was problematic: sleep is frequently cast as an enemy or a weakness, while constant productivity and flexibility are glorified at the expense of health and safety.Dangerously Sleepy is the first book to track the l...

Workers in the United States are losing sleep. In the global economy a growing number of employees hold jobs—often more than one at once—with unpredictable hours. Even before the rise of the twenty-four-hour workplace, the relationship between sleep and industry was problematic: sleep is frequently cast as an enemy or a weakness, while constant productivity and flexibility are glorified at the expense of health and safety.Dangerously Sleepy is the first book to track the l...

“The nation needs to be confronted with the crime that we’re committing and the promises we are betraying. This is a book about betrayal of the young, who have no power to defend themselves. It is not intended to make readers comfortable.”Over the past several years, Jonathan Kozol has visited nearly 60 public schools. Virtually everywhere, he finds that conditions have grown worse for inner-city children in the 15 years since federal courts began dismantling the landmark ruling in...

In her groundbreaking history of 175 years of American education, Dana Goldstein finds answers in the past to the controversies that plague our public schools today.Teaching is a wildly contentious profession in America, one attacked and admired in equal measure. In The Teacher Wars, a rich, lively, and unprecedented history of public school teaching, Dana Goldstein reveals that teachers have been similarly embattled for nearly two centuries. From the gent...

Over twenty-five years and through five editions, Walter I. Trattner's From Poor Law to Welfare State has served as the standard text on the history of welfare policy in the United States. The only comprehensive account of American social welfare history from the colonial era to the present, the new sixth edition has been updated to include the latest developments in our society as well as trends in social welfare.Trattner provides in-depth examination of developments in ch...

**PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • No book before this one has rendered the story of cigarettes—mankind's most common self-destructive instrument and its most profitable consumer product—with such sweep and enlivening detail."A great battleship of a book—formidable, majestic.”—The New York Times Book Review**Here for the first time, in a story full of the complexities and contradictions of human nature, all the strands of the historical process—financial, social, psychologi...

The invention of mass marketing led to cigarettes being emblazoned in advertising and film, deeply tied to modern notions of glamour and sex appeal. It is hard to find a photo of Humphrey Bogart or Lauren Bacall without a cigarette. No product has been so heavily promoted or has become so deeply entrenched in American consciousness. And no product has received such sustained scientific scrutiny. The development of new medical knowledge demonstrating the dire harms of smoking ultimately sha...

The legendary man recounts his journey from a childhood in Oklahoma to an Presidential Medal of Honor–winning African American historian."An astonishing beautiful, deeply intelligent record of an extraordinary life. Required reading lest we forget what is possible in a race-based society." —Toni Morrison, winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature"John Hope Franklin's story is the stuff of American legend." — ...

An examination of how the concept of “family” has been transformed over the last three centuries in the U.S., from its function as primary social unit to today’s still-evolving model.Based on a wide reading of letters, diaries and other contemporary documents, Mintz, an historian, and Kellogg, an anthropologist, examine the changing definition of “family” in the United States over the course of the last three centuries, beginning with the modified European model of...

Company town: The very phrase sounds un-American. Yet company towns are the essence of America. Hershey bars, Corning glassware, Kohler bathroom fixtures, Maytag washers, Spam -- each is the signature product of a company town in which one business, for better or worse, exercises a grip over the population. In The Company Town, Hardy Green, who has covered American business for over a decade, offers a compelling analysis of the emergence of these communities and their role in shap...