Steelworker Alley: How Class Works in Youngstown (Ilr Press Books)
Bruno, an assistant professor in the Chicago Labor Education Program at the University of Illinois, blends personal memory, oral history, and archival research to document the social, economic, and political ties that bound Youngstown steelworkers to their fellow workers, families, communities, and class. Bruno argues that the postwar academic picture of "highly paid" manual laborers contentedly assuming middle-class values does not square with the workers' own perception of their lives. His steelworker father and friends defined themselves as working classAthey did hard physical labor, lived and socialized with other steelworkers in plant-gate neighborhoods, and had little in common with the middle-class foremen, plant managers, and owners. This book combines the immediacy of personal recollection with scholarly analysis to describe a working-class life that "unfolds on the plant floor, in the union hall, and throughout the neighborhood." Recommended for academic libraries with labor or oral history collections.ADuncan Stewart, State Historical Society of Iowa Lib., Iowa CityCopyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.