From the Folks Who Brought You the Weekend

A Short, Illustrated History of Labor in the United States

by Arthur Ben Chitty, Priscilla Murolo

Hardcover, 364 pages

English language

Published Sept. 3, 2001 by New Press.

ISBN:: 978-1-56584-444-5

(4 reviews)

Hailed in a starred Publishers Weekly review as a work of impressive even-handedness and analytic acuity . . . that gracefully handles a broad range of subject matter, From the Folks Who Brought You the Weekend is the first comprehensive look at American history through the prism of working people. From indentured servants and slaves in the seventeenth-century Chesapeake to high-tech workers in contemporary Silicon Valley, the book [puts] a human face on the people, places, events, and social conditions that have shaped the evolution of organized labor (Library Journal). From the Folks Who Brought You the Weekend also thoroughly includes the contributions of women, Native Americans, African Americans, immigrants, and minorities, and considers events often ignored in other histories, writes Booklist, which adds that thirty pages of stirring drawings by 'comic journalist' Joe Sacco add an unusual dimension to the book.

2 editions

Ben Waber reviewed From the Folks Who Brought You the Weekend by Arthur Ben Chitty

A Rapid-Fire, Labor-Infused US History

4 stars

This book mostly functions as a rapid-fire distillation of US labor history facts - names, dates, and brief descriptions with little analysis or macro perspective. These facts are certainly useful and interesting, but the lack of context makes it a bit much. The choices of where to focus also strike me as bizarre - approximately 1 page on the Haymarket Affair, a paragraph on the Clayton Act and the Wagner Act, but an entire chapter devoted to the 2010s? Macro trends are mostly mentioned in passing, which makes it difficult to understand how muted the US labor movement became in the late 20th century. The AFL and CIO get the most consistent attention, and the sections that follow their winding history are exceptional and insightful. Highly recommend