“In postwar America, fast food was seen as a ladder to the middle class,” says journalist and author Adam Chandler. “If you were part of a familiar chain, banks were willing to lend you money, and ...

In 1812, as English textile workers smashed the machines they believed were stealing their livelihoods, newspapers and Parliament framed the uprising starkly: machines versus men. Two centuries later, ...

The Declaration proclaimed all men created equal, yet the new nation’s economy depended on enslaved labor in the South and indentured servitude in the North. This contradiction would shape American ...

In Make Your Own Job, Erik Baker shows just how long Americans have scrambled to pile work on top of work—and at what cost. What is a “work ethic”? In its most common usage, the phrase connotes a ...

David Montgomery and the vitality of labor history. From his first book to his landmark account of the politics of the pre-WWI labor movement, Montgomery explored how people’s experiences of work ...

In Make Your Own Job, Erik Baker shows just how long Americans have scrambled to pile work on top of work—and at what cost. A woman moves to comfort a coworker who is slumped over her desk in despair, ...

Even as the pandemic continues to alter our work and education patterns, Labor Day still serves as marker of the transition from one season to the next. It began as a day of celebration of the ...