Explore the vast range of titles available.

The legislative attack on public sector unionism that gave rise to the uproar in Wisconsin and other union strongholds in 2011 was not just a reaction to the contemporary economic difficulties faced by the government. Rather, it was the result of a longstanding political and ideological hostility to the very idea of trade unionism put forward by a conservative movement whose roots go as far back as the Haymarket Riot of 1886. The controversy in Madison and other state capitals reveals that labor's status and power has always been at the core of American conservatism, today as well as a century ago. The Right and Labor in Americaexplores the multifaceted history and range of conservative hostility toward unionism, opening the door to a fascinating set of individuals, movements, and institutions that help explain why, in much of the popular imagination, union leaders are always \"bosses\" and trade union organizers are nothing short of \"thugs.\" The contributors to this volume explore conservative thought about unions, in particular the ideological impulses, rhetorical strategies, and political efforts that conservatives have deployed to challenge unions as a force in U.S. economic and political life over the century. Among the many contemporary books on American parties, personalities, and elections that try to explain why political disputes are so divisive, this collection of original and innovative essays is essential reading.

This volume explores how American conservatives, in business, law, politics, and academe, have come to understand the labor movement in the United States and sought to contain, defame, and defeat the union idea. Their multidecade effort requires examination for two reasons. First, that conservative project sheds much light on contemporary political controversies that have made the labor movement, indeed the very idea of unionism, a lightning rod for campaign invective and policy contestation. When the administration of Barack Obama took office, a significant reform of American labor law seemed once again on the political and legislative agenda. A liberal, union-friendly

Review(s) of: The right and labor in America: Politics, ideology and imagination, by Nelson Lichtenstein and Elizabeth Tandy Shermer, eds, (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), pp. viii + 422, US $49.95 cloth.