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Taking Back Our Lives: A Call to Action for the Feminist Movement

By Ann Russo

This book examines the ongoing threat and reality of violence in its many forms and how that violence distorts and disfigures women’s lives.
… Sue Straus

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Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By In America

By Barbara Ehrenreich

Ehrenreich in this book calls attention to the millions of Americans working full-time, year-round, for poverty-level wages.  In her research, Ehrenreich took minimum-wage jobs in 1998 (inspired by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform promising that any job was a ticket to a better life) in three cities to see if survival was possible.  Her first-hand investigation and discouraging findings have caught the attention of the media and finally brought national attention to the plight of the working poor.

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Rima Schultz, Chicago historian spent ten years researching and editing her new book
Women Building Chicago 1790-1990: A Biographical Dictionary (Indiana University Press, 2001)

There are as many “stories” about how researchers, writers and editors collaborated to complete “Women Building Chicago 1790 -1990: A Biographical Dictionary” as there are individual biographies contained in the volume. Some of these anecdotes are about the strategies we employed to get at hard-to-research subjects.

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Mollie’s Job:  A Story of Life and Work on the Global Assembly Line

By  William M. Adler, NY: Scribner, 2000.  HD6068 .2 U6 A33

One of the best books ever, explaining what happened to one company. I highly recommend the book to gain understanding of global capitalism.

This history of Universal Manufacturing Co., moving from Paterson, NJ to Mississippi to Mexico, is a history of “Free Trade,” as it affected one company and several individual workers. Mollie was the first woman to run a stamping machine, and become union steward in Paterson, and one of the last to loose her job. Her company goes from local to global; and the book is excellent as it explains what happens, and how, at each stage.  Not only the workers, but management lose at each level.