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THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN IN DETROIT

WALTER REUTHER AND THE FATE OF AMERICAN LABOR

Labor historian Lichtenstein (Univ. of Virginia) offers United Auto Workers president Reuther's life as a microcosm of the rise and fall of American unionism. The son of a socialist, working-class German immigrant who organized brewery workers in Wheeling, W. Va., Reuther (190770) was even born on Labor Day eve. A skillful tool-and-die maker, he would end up following in his father's footsteps on a national scale, rising through the organizing ranks to become a major power in the budding UAW and eventually its longest-serving and most dynamic president. Reuther and his brothers, Victor and Roy, were at the heart of one of the most progressive and spirited of American unions during the Depression and WW II eras. Lichtenstein tells Reuther's story intelligently and engagingly, from his visit with Victor to the Soviet Union in the early 1930s through the brutal battles to organize in the auto industry, Walter's inventive ideas on using the industry in the war effort, the clashes within the union during the '50s witch hunts, Walter's role in the civil rights movement in the early 1960s, and the painful schisms in both the labor movement and the nation over the Vietnam war, about which Reuther was unable to express his misgivings for fear of losing LBJ's favor. Especially interesting is Lichtenstein's description of the way in which the Reuthers worked around the multitude of ethnic cliques in order to create a unified labor group. This is a balanced biography in the best sense of the word, highlighting Reuther's magnificent achievements while not stinting in its analysis of his political and personal failures. The author is particularly good at relating his protagonists' actions to the larger historical picture, with the result that Reuther emerges as a man of his era as well as one who stood above it. A major biography of an important figure in American history.

Pub Date: Nov. 22, 1995

ISBN: 0-465-09080-X

Page Count: 592

Publisher: Basic Books

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1995

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GOOD ECONOMICS FOR HARD TIMES

Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.

“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.

It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.

Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.

Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0

Page Count: 432

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019

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THE NEW GEOGRAPHY OF JOBS

A welcome contribution from a newcomer who provides both a different view and balance in addressing one of the country's...

A fresh, provocative analysis of the debate on education and employment.

Up-and-coming economist Moretti (Economics/Univ. of California, Berkeley) takes issue with the “[w]idespread misconception…that the problem of inequality in the United States is all about the gap between the top one percent and the remaining 99 percent.” The most important aspect of inequality today, he writes, is the widening gap between the 45 million workers with college degrees and the 80 million without—a difference he claims affects every area of peoples' lives. The college-educated part of the population underpins the growth of America's economy of innovation in life sciences, information technology, media and other areas of globally leading research work. Moretti studies the relationship among geographic concentration, innovation and workplace education levels to identify the direct and indirect benefits. He shows that this clustering favors the promotion of self-feeding processes of growth, directly affecting wage levels, both in the innovative industries as well as the sectors that service them. Indirect benefits also accrue from knowledge and other spillovers, which accompany clustering in innovation hubs. Moretti presents research-based evidence supporting his view that the public and private economic benefits of education and research are such that increased federal subsidies would more than pay for themselves. The author fears the development of geographic segregation and Balkanization along education lines if these issues of long-term economic benefits are left inadequately addressed.

A welcome contribution from a newcomer who provides both a different view and balance in addressing one of the country's more profound problems.

Pub Date: May 5, 2012

ISBN: 978-0-547-75011-8

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Review Posted Online: April 3, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2012

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