During the 1960s I began to discover the then little-studied history of American labor. During the 1970s and 1980s, I wrote or co-wrote several books on working-class movements including Strike!, Common Sense for Hard Times, Root & Branch: The Rise of the Workers’ Movements, and Brass Valley: The Story of Working People’s lives and Struggles in an American Industrial Region. This work was motivated by my hope that it might help social movements break out of their isolation from the working class and might help workers reconnect with their own traditions of solidarity and self-organization.[1]
[1] Save the Humans?, 96.