Right as I set out to cover the Pennsylvania races for the AFL-CIO, I begged the readers of MyDD for suggestions on books that might help a progressive like me get a better handle on the history of labor in the U.S. I second Ezra Klein when he objects to "progressivism's strange indifference towards labor issues." Building a sustainable movement, I think, requires that we understand our labor past and present at least as well as we do the history of the civil rights struggle. The readers of MyDD came through beautifully, suggesting a range of books that not only delve into labor and the union movement but get at the roots of American populism:

Strike! -- Jeremy Brecher (suggested by nathanhj and kofu)
"Since its original publication in 1972, no book has done as much as Jeremy Brecher's Strike! to bring American labor history to a wide audience. Strike! narrates the dramatic story of repeated, massive, and often violent revolts by ordinary working people in America."

Three Strikes: Labor's Heartland Losses and What They Mean for Working Americans -- Stephen Franklin (nathanhj)
"Chicago Tribune labor writer Franklin vividly describes the impact of three strikes on union workers in Decatur, IL. Union members who had worked their entire lives for Caterpillar, Staley, or Bridgestone/Firestone were forced out on strike, threatened with permanent replacement, and, if lucky, called back to work under a company-imposed contract full of concessions. Franklin tells the story from the viewpoint of production workers caught between aggressive corporations and an aging union bureaucracy."

Ravenswood: The Steelworkers' Victory and the Revival of American Labor -- Tom Juravich and Kate Bronfenbrenner (nathanhj)
"Over the past two decades, Americans have seen their workplaces downsized and streamlined, their jobs out-sourced, sped up, and, all too often, eliminated. Unions have seemed powerless to defend their members, with big defeats in the strikes at PATCO, Eastern Airlines, International Paper, and Hormel. Ravenswood recounts how the United Steelworkers of America, in a battle waged over an aluminum plant in West Virginia, proved that organized labor can still win--even against a company controlled by one of the world's richest and most powerful men."

From the Ashes of the Old: From the Ashes of the Old: American Labor and America's Future -- Stanley Aronowitz (nathanhj)
"In the last few years, histories have squeezed the most minute details out of the rise and fall of the 20th-century labor movement. Aronowitz (The Death and Rebirth of American Radicalism) takes the tack that "the future of American labor is directly tied to America's future" and, after extensive exposition of union diversity and interaction, he finds future union potential in the millions of white-collar workers and professionals and among production and service workers in the South."

Poor Workers' Unions -- Vanessa Tait (nathanhj)
"Finally, the book we've all been waiting for! With gripping tales of grassroots experiments in social justice unionism from the 1960s to the present, Vanessa Tait cracks wide open our concept of what a labor movement looks like, and shows how it can be part and parcel of movements for racial and gender justice."

Homestead: The Glory and Tragedy of an American Steel Town -- William Serrin (phillydem)
"A profoundly moving elegy on the death of a legendary Pennsylvania steel town--and, by extension, the end of a century of Smokestack America--from Serrin (Journalism/NYU), a former labor correspondent for The New York Times. The Homestead Steel Works was the site of the epic 1892 strike and lockout that saw steel chieftains Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick use the Pinkertons to crush the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel, and Tin Workers and set back the cause of unionism several decades."

Wobblies!: A Graphic History of the Industrial Workers of the World -- Paul Buhle (Editor), Nicole Schulman (Texas Nate)
"The Wobblies, as members of the Industrial Workers of the World were known, were influential in the labor movement at the dawn of the 20th century. A grassroots organization that fought for equality and safe working conditions, the Wobblies also had ties to women's rights and socialism. This book attempts to encapsulate the rich history of the movement through comics (and connective essays) by such contributors as Peter Kuper, Harvey Pekar and Seth Tobocman."

Joe Hill: The IWW & The Making Of A Revolutionary Working Class Counterculture -- Franklin Rosemont (Texas Nate)
"A monumental work, expansive in scope, and not only the life, times, and culture of that most famous of the Wobblies (songwriter, poet, hobo, thinker, humorist, martyr), but crucially - and in great detail - the issues that he raised then - capitalism, white supremacy, gender, religion, wilderness, law, prison, industrial unionism - and their enduring relevance, and impact in the century since his death."

Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist -- Nick Salvatore (Texas Nate)
"Eugene Victor Debs was one of the most prominent labor activists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was, perhaps, the most admired openly radical public figure in America's history, running for president on the Socialist ticket in five separate elections, including a 1920 campaign conducted from prison."

The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America -- Lawrence Goodwyn (Texas Nate)
"He was the largest landholder...in one county and Justice of the Peace in the next and election commissioner in both, and hence the fountainhead if not of law at least of advise and suggestion. ...He was a farmer, a usurer, a veterinarian; Judge Benbow of Jefferson once said of him that a milder mannered man never bled a mule or stuffed a ballot box."

Death in the Haymarket: A Story of Chicago, the First Labor Movement, and the Bombing That Divided Gilded Age America -- James Green (Texas Nate)
"As Green thoroughly documents, the bloody Haymarket riot of May 4, 1886, changed the history of American labor and created a panic among Americans about (often foreign-born) "radicals and reformers" and union activists. The Haymarket demonstration, to protest police brutality during labor unrest in Chicago, remained peaceful until police moved in, whereupon a bomb was thrown by an individual never positively identified, killing seven policemen and wounding 60 others."

Which Side Are You On? Trying to Be for Labor When It's Flat on Its Back -- Thomas Geoghagen (Nathan Newman via eRobin)
"Based on his experiences as a Chicago labor lawyer, Geoghegan contends persuasively that post-industrial Reaganomics have caused a widening rift between the working and professional middle classes. In related episodes, he demonstrates how the combined effects of steel mill closings, leveraged buyouts and Third World competitive labor have contributed to the decline of American organized labor."

Labor Will Rule: Sidney Hillman and the Rise of American Labor -- Steve Fraser (Nathan Newman via eRobin)
"Onetime radical revolutionary from a Lithuanian village, Sidney Hillman (1887-1946) eked out a living as a cutter in Chicago's garment trade, then rose to become an influential labor leader and a member of FDR's inner circle. Due to his efforts, the Democratic Party of the mid-1930s came close to becoming the recognized party of organized labor."

Reds or Rackets: The Making of Radical and Conservative Unions on the Waterfront -- Howard Kimeldorf (Nathan Newman via eRobin)
"Kimeldorf's historical narrative manages to capture the tragedy and romance of dock labor on our two principal coasts at the same time as it provides an impressive analysis of the events. . . . An excellent contribution to our literature on labor history."

The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit: Walter Reuther and the Fate of American Labor --Nelson Lichtenstein (Nathan Newman via eRobin)
"Onetime Ford Motor die-maker Walter Reuther launched a sit-down strike in 1937 that forced General Motors to bargain with a multiplant union. Another key strike against GM, led by the indefatigable, self-confident United Automobile Workers (UAW) president from Wheeling, W.Va., ended in 1946 in a Pyrrhic victory for labor, setting off a wage-price upward spiral and marking the onset of the fragmentation of union power. Liberal, ex-socialist Reuther (1907-1970), who, as Congress of Industrial Organizations president, helped engineer that group's merger with the American Federation of Labor in 1955, was a magnetic figure to the noncommunist left."

Working Class New York -- Joshua B. Freeman (Nathan Newman via eRobin)
"In this absorbing and beautifully detailed history, Freeman charts the postwar rise and eventual fall of Manhattan working-class life and culture: "a story of massive movements of population and industry, tenacious struggle for rights and equality and ongoing discrimination and inequity." In 1946, 2.6 million men and women (out of 3.3 million employed) were working-class or blue-collar workers, many belonging to strong unions."

The Copper Crucible: : How the Arizona Miners' Strike of 1983 Recast Labor-Management Relations in America (Nathan Newman via eRobin)
"The 1981 firing and replacing of striking air traffic controllers by President Ronald Reagan is considered the start of labor's current decline. Legal protection of employees' right to join unions is now often ineffective and the strike, once labor's most potent weapon, has been defanged by employers who use permanent replacements for striking workers. In his first book, lawyer and journalist Rosenblum argues convincingly that the crucial struggle over permanent replacements came not with PATCO (Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization) but in the lesser-known 1983-1986 strike by the United Steelworkers of America against the Phelps Dodge copper company in Arizona and Texas."

Teamster Rebellion -- Farrell Dobs (MikeB)
"The 1934 strikes that built the industrial union movement in Minneapolis and helped pave the way for the CIO, recounted by a central leader of that battle. The first in a four-volume series on the class-struggle leadership of the strikes and organizing drives that transformed the Teamsters union in much of the Midwest into a fighting social movement and pointed the road toward independent labor political action."

The Bending Cross: A Biography of Eugene Victor Debs -- Ray Ginger (MikeB)
"This moving biography presents the definitive story of the life and legacy of the most eloquent spokesperson and leader of the US labor and socialist movements."

Them and Us: Struggles of a Rank-and-File Union -- James Matles (MikeB)
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John L. Lewis: An Anauthorized Biography -- Saul David Alinsky (MikeB)
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A long list, indeed. I'm gonna start with Geoghagen's Which Side are You On, on the recommendation of both Ezra and Nathan Newman.