Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939.

In Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939. Lizabeth Cohen deals with an epoch of U.S. labor history dealt with many times before, though certainly not from her perspective. Unlike nineteenth century labor history, the 1919-1939 years have been the subject of many books and articles, though no treatment, until now, has attempted to tell the story as social history. Cohen does so with such skill and effectiveness that she is able to weave a cultural history of American society into a narrative of the Great Depression and the eruption of the industrial union movement as experienced by industrial workers in Chicago.

The first four chapters of Making a New …