For more than thirty years Nelson Lichtenstein has deployed his scholarship—on labor, politics, and social thought—to chart the history and prospects of a progressive America. A Contest of Ideas collects and updates many of Lichtenstein's most provocative and controversial essays and reviews.

These incisive writings link the fate of the labor movement to the transformations in the shape of world capitalism, to the rise of the civil rights movement, and to the activists and intellectuals who have played such important roles. Tracing broad patterns of political thought, Lichtenstein offers important perspectives on the relationship of labor and the state, the tensions that sometimes exist between a culture of rights and the idea of solidarity, and the rise of conservatism in politics, law, and intellectual life. The volume closes with portraits of five activist intellectuals whose work has been vital to the conflicts that engage the labor movement, public policy, and political culture.

| Cover Title Page Copyright Contents Acknowledgments Introduction Part I. Shaping Myself, Shaping History Chapter 1. Writing and Rewriting Labor's Narrative Chapter 2. Supply-Chain Tourist; or, How Globalization Has Transformed the Labor Question Chapter 3. Historians as Public Intellectuals Part II. Capital, Labor, and the State Chapter 4. Tribunes of the Shareholder Class Chapter 5. "The Man in the Middle" Chapter 6. From Corporatism to Collective Bargaining Chapter 7. Communism on the Shop Floor and Off Part III. The Rights Revolution Chapter 8. Opportunities Found and Lost Chapter 9. The Lost Promise of the Long Civil Rights Movement Chapter 10. A New Era of Global Human Rights Part IV. The Specter on the Right Chapter 11. The United States in the Great Depression Chapter 12. Market Triumphalism and the Wishful Liberals Chapter 13. Did 1968 Change History? Chapter 14. Bashing Public Employees and Their Unions Part V. Intellectuals and Their Ideas Chapter 15. C. Wright Mills Chapter 16. Harvey Swados Chapter 17. B. J. Widick Chapter 18. Jay Lovestone Chapter 19. Herbert Hill in History and Contention Chapter 20. Do Graduate Students Work? Chapter 21. Why American Unions Need Intellectuals Notes Index |"Nelson Lichtenstein assembles a series of representative essays to form a kind of intellectual and political biography of the labor movement, its intellectual ers, and its attackers. . . . Lichtenstein's focus is firmly planted on the transformation of the labor movement from the late 1930s through the early 1970s—the decisive period during which the initial promise of the Congress of Industrial Organizations unions to transform the American political economy floundered and then failed."—Labor Studies Journal
"Historians, political scientists, and sociologists interested in class struggle will find this book provocative. Recommended."—Choice

"The depth and breadth of Nelson Lichtenstein's work over more than three decades have distinguished him as one of our most influential and accomplished historians. The extraordinarily insightful essays in this volume illuminate the thinking of an engaged analyst at the top of his craft. They are required reading for anyone who wishes to understand recent U.S. labor history."—Joseph A. McCartin, author of Collision Course: Ronald Reagan, the Air Traffic Controllers, and the Strike that Changed America
|Nelson Lichtenstein is MacArthur Foundation Professor in History at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he also directs the Center for the Study of Work, Labor, and Democracy. His books include The Retail Revolution: How Wal-Mart Created a...

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