Grace Palladino

Skilled Hands, Strong Spirits follows the history of the Building and Construction Trades Department from the emergence of building trades councils in the age of the skyscraper; through treacherous fights over jurisdiction as new building materials and methods of work evolved; and through numerous Department campaigns to improve safety standards, work with contractors to promote unionized construction, and forge a sense of industrial unity among its fifteen (and at times nineteen) autonomous and highly diverse affiliates. Arranged chronologically, Skilled Hands, Strong Spirits is based on archival research in Department, AFL-CIO, and U. S. government records as well as numerous union journals, the local and national press, and interviews with former Department officers. Grace Palladino makes the history of the building trades come alive. By investigating the sources of conflict and unity within the Building and Construction Trades Department over time, and demonstrating how building trades unions dealt with problems and opportunities in the past, she provides a historical context for the current generation of workers and leaders as they devise new strategies to suit their current situation.

Looking around him in 1906, Samuel Gompers saw a labor movement beset by opponents who, he said, "represent neither conscience nor humanity, but rather greed and avarice." This installment in the multivolume documentary history of the nation's premier labor leader spotlights a pivotal period in the AFL's development. "The editors have done their job well, succeeding admirably in their aim of presenting a multidimensional portrait of Gompers and his era." -- Bernard Elbaum, Journal of Economic History "A distinguished and invaluable collection." -- Bruce Laurie, Industrial and Labor Relations Review Supported by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission and the University of Maryland at College Park

Nobody worried about teenagers" prior to the 1940s. In fact, as a culturally or economically defined entity they did not exist. But in the 50 years since the last world war, when the term was first coined, teenagers have had an enormous impact on American culture. They have reshaped our language, our music, our clothes. They have changed forever the way we respond to authority. They have become a 200 billion consumer group avidly courted by marketers. And they have changed our culture, which will never again treat their demographic group merely as young adults. Teenagers ranges widely across American culture of the middle twentieth century to depict the shifting characterizations of teens from invisible young adults to young soldiers in training, to bobby soxers and zoot suiters, to rock 'n' rollers and juvenile delinquents, from hippies to savvy consumers. Grace Palladino examines everything from Andy Hardy and Elvis Presley to Seventeen magazine and MTV. She challenges those who decry teenage hedonism and immorality today, showing that modern disaffected teenagers, as in the past, are responding just as much to hypocritical adult behaviour as to a commercial cult of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll.