Recommended by The Nation, the New Republic, Current Affairs, Bustle, In These Times

An entertaining, tough-minded, and strenuously argued (The Nation) account of ten moments when workers fought to change the balance of power in America

A brilliantly recounted American history through the prism of major labor struggles, with critically important lessons for those who seek a better future for working people and the world. -Noam Chomsky

Powerful and accessible, A History of America in Ten Strikes challenges all of our contemporary assumptions around labor, unions, and American workers. In this brilliant book, labor historian Erik Loomis recounts ten critical workers' strikes in American labor history that everyone needs to know about (and then provides an annotated list of the 150 most important moments in American labor history in the appendix). From the Lowell Mill Girls strike in the 1830s to Justice for Janitors in 1990, these labor uprisings do not just reflect the times in which they occurred, but speak directly to the present moment.

For example, we often think that Lincoln ended slavery by proclaiming the slaves emancipated, but Loomis shows that they freed themselves during the Civil War by simply withdrawing their labor. He shows how the hopes and aspirations of a generation were made into demands at a GM plant in Lordstown in 1972. And he takes us to the forests of the Pacific Northwest in the early nineteenth century where the radical organizers known as the Wobblies made their biggest inroads against the power of bosses. But there were also moments when the movement was crushed by corporations and the government; Loomis helps us understand the present perilous condition of American workers and draws lessons from both the victories and defeats of the past.

In crystalline narratives, labor historian Erik Loomis lifts the curtain on workers' struggles, giving us a fresh perspective on American history from the boots up.

Strikes include:

Lowell Mill Girls Strike (Massachusetts, 1830-40)

Slaves on Strike (The Confederacy, 1861-65)

The Eight-Hour Day Strikes (Chicago, 1886)

The Anthracite Strike (Pennsylvania, 1902)

The Bread and Roses Strike (Massachusetts, 1912)

The Flint Sit-Down Strike (Michigan, 1937)

The Oakland General Strike (California, 1946)

Lordstown (Ohio, 1972)

Air Traffic Controllers (1981)

Justice for Janitors (Los Angeles, 1990)

From the acclaimed author of A History of America in Ten Strikes, a sweeping account of the impact of organizers on United States history

We are living through a time when real social change seems to be in the rearview mirror. But this rousing new book offers a beacon of hope: the stories of organizers who have shown America the way forward in the darkest of times.

Author of the celebrated A History of America in Ten Strikes (a Kirkus Reviews best book of 2018), Erik Loomis uncovers a rich and revealing history of social change activism with immediate relevance to our present. In twenty short biographies, Organizing America tells the story of America through its most important organizers. A chronological story with a vast sweep, Organizing America considers a cross section of social justice activists across time, race, gender, and movement, examining lives as varied as Benjamin Lay, Ida B. Wells, Eugene V. Debs, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Bob Moses, Yuri Kochiyama, Daniel Berrigan, Dolores Huerta, Barbara Gittings, and many more.

With an introduction that explains what organizing is and how collective action works--and how we should think about the power of organizing in 2025 and beyond--Loomis sets a tone that is both practical and historical, providing context and inspiration for anyone seeking to step into the work of changing America for the better.

The battles to protect ancient forests and spotted owls in the Northwest splashed across the evening news in the 1980s and early 1990s. Empire of Timber re-examines this history to demonstrate that workers used their unions to fight for a healthy workplace environment and sustainable logging practices that would allow themselves and future generations the chance to both work and play in the forests. Examining labor organizations from the Industrial Workers of the World in the 1910s to unions in the 1980s, Empire of Timber shows that conventional narratives of workers opposing environmental protection are far too simplistic and often ignore the long histories of natural resource industry workers attempting to protect their health and their futures from the impact of industrial logging. Today, when workers fear that environmental restrictions threaten their jobs, learning the history of alliances between unions and environmentalists can build those conversations in the present.

A provocative analysis of labor, globalization, and environmental harm by the award-winning historian and author of A History of America in Ten Strikes.

In the current state of our globalized economy, corporations have no incentive to protect their workers or the environment. Jobs moves seamlessly across national borders while the laws that protect us from rapacious behavior remain bound by them. As a result, labor exploitation and toxic pollution remain standard practice.

In Out of Sight, Erik Loomis--a historian of both the labor and environmental movements--follows a narrative that runs from the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City to the collapse of the Rana Plaza factory outside of Dhaka, Bangladesh, in 2013. He demonstrates that our modern systems of industrial production are just as dirty and abusive as they were during the Industrial Revolution and the Gilded Age. The only difference is that the ugly side of manufacturing is now hidden in faraway places where workers are most vulnerable.

In this Choice Outstanding Academic Title, Loomis shows that the great environmental victories of twentieth-century America--the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the EPA--were actually union victories. Using this history as a call to action, Out of Sight proposes a path toward regulations that follow corporations wherever they do business, putting the power back in workers' hands.

The story told here is tragic and important. --Bill McKibben

Erik Loomis prescribes how activists can take back our country--for workers and those who care about the health of our planet. --Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH)

The battles to protect ancient forests and spotted owls in the Northwest splashed across the evening news in the 1980s and early 1990s. Empire of Timber re-examines this history to demonstrate that workers used their unions to fight for a healthy workplace environment and sustainable logging practices that would allow themselves and future generations the chance to both work and play in the forests. Examining labor organizations from the Industrial Workers of the World in the 1910s to unions in the 1980s, Empire of Timber shows that conventional narratives of workers opposing environmental protection are far too simplistic and often ignore the long histories of natural resource industry workers attempting to protect their health and their futures from the impact of industrial logging. Today, when workers fear that environmental restrictions threaten their jobs, learning the history of alliances between unions and environmentalists can build those conversations in the present.