Life and Labor in the Colonies -- Workers, Politics, and Revolution -- The Origins of Worker Organization -- Early Unions -- Law versus Labor -- The Growth of Labor Organization -- Workingmen's Parties -- Leadership -- Political Action -- Union Growth -- A National Labor Movement? -- An Urge to Strike -- An Employer Counterattack -- The National Trades' Union -- The Decline of Unionism -- Industrialism, Technological Change, and Reform -- Rebuilding a Union Movement -- The Coming of War -- The National Labor Union -- The NLU and Social Reform -- Depression and Union Decline -- Unrest and Conflict -- The Great Railroad Strikes -- The Haymarket Square Riot -- The Origins of the Knights of Labor -- The Rise of the Knights -- The Decline of the Knights -- The Triumph of Business Unionism -- Samuel Gompers and the New Union Model -- The Emergence of the AFL -- The Principles and Policies of the AFL -- Worker Resistance and Industrial Conflict

Labor, Populism, and Socialism -- Labor at Ebb Tide -- Employers and Unions Experiment with Accommodation -- The Anthracite Coal Strike of 1902 -- The Employers Fight Back -- AFL Political Action and a Nascent Labor-Democratic Alliance -- Organizing Immigrant Workers -- The Rise of the IWW -- The Spirit of the IWW -- The Lawrence Strike -- The Decline, Repression, and Lasting Legacy of the IWW -- Postwar Labor Upheaval -- The Last Throes of Postwar Labor Militancy, 1919 to 1922 -- The American Plan and the Open Shop -- Welfare Capitalism -- The Failure of Insurgent Politics, 1922 to 1924 -- The AFL after Gompers -- The Demoralization of Organized Labor -- Section 7(a) and the Revival of Organizing -- The Wagner Act -- The New Deal Political Order -- John L. Lewis and the CIO -- The Impact of the CIO -- War, Lewis, and the Election of 1940 -- The NWLB and Labor Politics -- Wartime Racial Conflict -- The Postwar Strike Wave, 1945 and 1946

A New Industrial Relations System -- Labor, Taft-Hartley, and Politics -- The Purge of Labor's Left Wing -- A United Labor Movement -- AFL-CIO: A "Sleepy Monopoly" -- The Onset of Organized Labor's Decline -- Corruption and Deepening Conflict -- Automation and Alienation -- Labor, Civil Rights, and the Great Society -- The Rise of Public Employee Unionism -- War and Division -- Economic Crisis and Its Aftermath -- Restructuring the Labor Force -- The Rise of Conservative Politics and Neoliberal Policy -- The Emerging Crisis of Unionism -- Harbingers of Deepening Crisis: Mass Production and Transportation -- Rising Resistance and Its Limitations -- A Change of Direction for Labor -- Economic Troubles, Political Setbacks, and War -- Improvising in Difficult Times -- Walmart, the "Fissured Workplace," and Weakened Regulation -- Dissension, Schism, and Political Breakthrough -- Bailouts, Job Insecurity, and Lowered Labor Standards

Toward an Unequal Society -- The Obama Presidency's Mixed Legacy -- A Renewed Assault on Unions and Collective Bargaining -- Death Throes or Birth Pangs?