In this classic interpretation of the 1930s rise of industrial unionism, Gary Gerstle challenges the popular historical notion that American workers’ embrace of ‘Americanism’ and other patriotic sentiments in the post-World War I years indicated their fundamental political conservatism. He argues that Americanism was a complex, even contradictory, language of nationalism that lent itself to a wide variety of ideological constructions in the years between World War I and the onset of the Cold War. Using the rich and textured material left behind by New England’s most powerful textile union–the Independent Textile Union of Woonsocket, Rhode Island–Gerstle uncovers for the first time a more varied and more radical working-class discourse.
About the author
Gary Gerstle is Professor of History and Director of the Center for Historical Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is the author of the forthcoming book
American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century (Princeton).
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