Which Side Are You On?: Trying to Be for Labor When It’s Flat on Its Back, Revised Edition
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Product Description
The comic, poignant, one-of-a-kind book that “reads like an enchanting novel” (Studs Terkel).
When it first appeared in hardcover, Which Side Are You On? received widespread critical accolades, and was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction. In this new paperback edition, Thomas Geoghegan has updated his eloquent plea for the weight of organized labor in America with an afterword covering the labor movement through the 1990s.
A amusing, sharp, unsentimental career memoir, Which Side Are You On? pairs a compelling history of the rise and near-fall of labor in the United States with an idealist’s disgruntled exercise in self-evaluation. Writing with the honesty of an embattled veteran still hoping for the best, Geoghegan offers an entertaining, accessible, and literary introduction to the labor movement, as well as an indispensable touchstone for anyone whose hopes have run up against the unaccommodating facts on the ground. Wry and inspiring, Which Side Are You On? is the ideal book for anyone who has ever woken up and realized, “You must change your life.”
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Never mind that Geohogan was dead incorrect about the future of organized labor or that his pre-Clinton paleoliberalism is dated and painfully overwrought or even that he would have deep and abiding personal contempt for a conservative like me. This guy can flat-out write like a dream.
Lacking a doubt, every anecdote in this book is exaggerated and twisted for rhetorical effect. But what a memoir it is, alternately melancholy and amusing, by a fantastic storyteller who has the self-awareness to mock his own martyr complex.
A classic of style over substance.
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5
How can you be “for labor” these days?
Some realities:
1. Union membership as a percentage of the workforce continues its four-decade decline.
2. The public reputation of unions has never recovered from the corruption scandals of the 1950s.
3. Michael Moore has done everything he can to revitalize unions, to no aim. He won a Golden Globe; if HE can’t do it…
4. The very recent splintering of the AFL-CIO could be the beginning of the end.
5. We’ve become too isolated and self-centered as a society for this stuff to work here in the foreseeable future.
That said, T.G. personifies the idealistic young lawyer who really wants to help. I was that person once, too. I perceived union leaders as thuggish, power-centric, retrograde, defensive and whatever the exact opposite of visionary is. Leadership makes or breaks human endeavor; I interpreted this to mean that unions were hopeless.
PS – I want to know whether this book trades on E-Bay; the irony would be irresistable.
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5
This is an brilliant book about labor unions which sides with labor from a fresh perspective. Pro free trade, the leader is not just peddling the same ancient protectionist line. From the first line of the book, you realize this leader knows what he’s talking about and speaks for no one but himself. Also a excellent book for anyone interested in the fortunes of the Democratic party.
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5
This is an outstanding book, full of heart and voice. I’ve begun using it in my Business Reporting class at Boston University.
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5
Far and away the best book I’ve ever read on the labor movement, *highly* recommended. It’s fleeting, and perfectly written, combining:
1/ the leader’s 1960s coming-of-age tale: his ’60s romance was the labor movement rather than civil rights or antiwar; he went on to Harvard law school to do (and still does) labor law;
2/ a basic primer of US labor history, of which Americans (me included) are woefully (and not accidentally!) ignorant; and
3/ a stark report from the trenches on how terribly effective people have been getting shafted in our lifetimes. (Surprise: a key villain is the allegedly “liberal” Warren Court.)
A must-read, both for the news it brings and for the power and effect of its writing.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5