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The public perception of the making of the atomic bomb is y ... Read more

The public perception of the making of the atomic bomb is yet an image of the dramatic efforts of a few brilliant male scientists. However, the Manhattan Project was not just the work of a few and it was not just in Los Alamos. It was, in fact, a sprawling research and industrial enterprise that spanned the country from Hanford in Washington State to Oak Ridge in Tennessee, and the Met labs in Illinois. The Manhattan Project also included women in every capacity. During World War II the manpower shortages opened the laboratory doors to women and they embraced the opportunity to demonstrate that they, too, could do 'creative science'. Although women participated in all aspects of the Manhattan Project, their contributions are either omitted or only mentioned briefly in most histories of the project. It is this hidden story that is presented in "Their Day in the Sun" through interviews, written records, and photographs of the women who were physicists, chemists, mathematicians, biologists, and technicians in the labs. Authors Ruth H. Howes and Caroline L. Herzenberg have uncovered accounts of the scientific problems the women helped solve as well as the opportunities and discrimination they faced. "Their Day in the Sun" describes their abrupt recruitment for the war effort and includes anecdotes about everyday life in these clandestine improvised communities. A chapter about what happened to the women after the war and about their attitudes now, so many years later, toward the work they did on the bomb is included. Author note: Ruth H. Howes is George and Frances Ball Distinguished Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Ball State University. She is Vice President of the American Association of Physics Teachers and President Elect of the Indiana Academy of Science. She is also co-editor of "The Energy Sourcebook" and "Women and the Use of Military Force". Caroline L. Herzenberg, a physicist at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, is past president of the Association for Women in Science. She is author of "Women Scientists from Antiquity to the Present". Minimize

Spanning the period between the Chicago World's Fair of 189 ... Read more

Spanning the period between the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 and the years just after World War I, this novel moves from the labor troubles in Colorado to turn-of-the-century New York, to London and Gottingen, Venice and Vienna, the Balkans, Central Asia, Siberia at the time of the mysterious Tunguska Event, Mexico during the Revolution, postwar Paris, silent-era Hollywood, and one or two places not strictly speaking on the map at all. With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead, it is a time of unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places. No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred. The sizable cast of characters includes anarchists, balloonists, gamblers, corporate tycoons, drug enthusiasts, innocents and decadents, mathematicians, mad scientists, shamans, psychics, and stage magicians, spies, detectives, adventuresses, and hired guns. There are cameo appearances by Nikola Tesla, Bela Lugosi, and Groucho Marx.As an era of certainty comes crashing down around their ears and an unpredictable future commences, these folks are mostly just trying to pursue their lives. Sometimes they manage to catch up; sometimes it's their lives that pursue them. Meanwhile, the author is up to his usual business. Characters stop what they're doing to sing what are for the most part stupid songs. Strange sexual practices take place. Obscure languages are spoken, not always idiomatically. Contrary-to-the-fact occurrences occur. If it is not the world, it is what the world might be with a minor adjustment or two. According to some, this is one of the main purposes of fiction. Let the reader decide, let the reader beware. Good luck. -Thomas Pynchon Minimize

Our Own Time retells the history of American labor by focus ... Read more

Our Own Time retells the history of American labor by focusing on the politics of time and the movements for a shorter working day. It argues that the length of the working day has been the central issue for the American labor movement during its most vigorous periods of activity, uniting workers along lines of craft, gender and ethnicity. The authors hold that the workweek is likely again to take on increased significance as workers face the choice between a society based on free time and one based on alienated work and employment. Minimize

The public perception of the making of the atomic bomb is y ... Read more

The public perception of the making of the atomic bomb is yet an image of the dramatic efforts of a few brilliant male scientists. However, the Manhattan Project was not just the work of a few and it was not just in Los Alamos. It was, in fact, a sprawling research and industrial enterprise that spanned the country from Hanford in Washington State to Oak Ridge in Tennessee, and the Met labs in Illinois. The Manhattan Project also included women in every capacity. During World War II the manpower shortages opened the laboratory doors to women and they embraced the opportunity to demonstrate that they, too, could do 'creative science'. Although women participated in all aspects of the Manhattan Project, their contributions are either omitted or only mentioned briefly in most histories of the project. It is this hidden story that is presented in "Their Day in the Sun" through interviews, written records, and photographs of the women who were physicists, chemists, mathematicians, biologists, and technicians in the labs. Authors Ruth H. Howes and Caroline L. Herzenberg have uncovered accounts of the scientific problems the women helped solve as well as the opportunities and discrimination they faced. "Their Day in the Sun" describes their abrupt recruitment for the war effort and includes anecdotes about everyday life in these clandestine improvised communities. A chapter about what happened to the women after the war and about their attitudes now, so many years later, toward the work they did on the bomb is included. Author note: Ruth H. Howes is George and Frances Ball Distinguished Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Ball State University. She is Vice President of the American Association of Physics Teachers and President Elect of the Indiana Academy of Science. She is also co-editor of "The Energy Sourcebook" and "Women and the Use of Military Force". Caroline L. Herzenberg, a physicist at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, is past president of the Association for Women in Science. She is author of "Women Scientists from Antiquity to the Present". Minimize

ISBN13: 9780812971613. ISBN10: 0812971612. by David Gates. ... Read more

ISBN13: 9780812971613. ISBN10: 0812971612. by David Gates. Published by Random House, Inc.. Edition: 04 Minimize

The public perception of the making of the atomic bomb is y ... Read more

The public perception of the making of the atomic bomb is yet an image of the dramatic efforts of a few brilliant male scientists. However, the Manhattan Project was not just the work of a few and it was not just in Los Alamos. It was, in fact, a sprawling research and industrial enterprise that spanned the country from Hanford in Washington State to Oak Ridge in Tennessee, and the Met labs in Illinois. The Manhattan Project also included women in every capacity. During World War II the manpower shortages opened the laboratory doors to women and they embraced the opportunity to demonstrate that they, too, could do "creative science." Although women participated in all aspects of the Manhattan Project, their contributions are either omitted or only mentioned briefly in most histories of the project.It is this hidden story that is presented in "Their Day in the Sun" through interviews, written records, and photographs of the women who were physicists, chemists, mathematicians, biologists, and technicians in the labs. Authors Ruth H. Howes and Caroline L. Herzenberg have uncovered accounts of the scientific problems the women helped solve as well as the opportunities and discrimination they faced. "Their Day in the Sun" describes their abrupt recruitment for the war effort and includes anecdotes about everyday life in these clandestine improvised communities. A chapter about what happened to the women after the war and about their attitudes now, so many years later, toward the work they did on the bomb is included.Ruth H. Howes is George and Frances Ball Distinguished Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Ball State University. She is Vice President of the American Association of Physics Teachers and President Elect of the Indiana Academy of Science. She is also co-editor of "The Energy Sourcebook" and "Women and the Use of Military Force". Caroline L. Herzenberg, a physicist at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, is past president of the Association for Women in Science. She is author of "Women Scientists from Antiquity to the Present". Minimize

Today, 95 percent of all labor contracts in the United Stat ... Read more

Today, 95 percent of all labor contracts in the United States provide for arbitration. Indispensable to sound contract management, arbitration orchestrates the resolution of disputes by a neutral third party. Since parties who reach the process of arbitration are no longer interested in compromise or mutual accommodation, arbitrators, unlike mediators, do not have to work out arguments or propose possible solutions. They simply hear evidence and make a decision based on the facts as presented-without being bound by rules of evidence or precedents. For both sides, the key to a successful outcome lies in their advocates ability to present and document their case. Providing guidance for labor and management advocates, this resource guide contains a practical analysis of arbitration from the participant side with a view to avoiding the problems and pitfalls of the process. Written for those who do not deal with the intricacies of arbitration on a day-to-day basis yet have a responsibility to their company should such situations arise, it begins with the very basics of the arbitration concept, including discipline and discharge procedures. It then provides detailed guidelines for presenting an organization's position effectively, and it discusses important principles and practices every advocate should know. Additional topics include grievance procedure time limits; methods for researching and selecting the arbitrator; and recommendations regarding witness conduct. Practices of the actual arbitration such as objections, admissible evidence and credibility of evidence are also discussed. Extensive references to pertinent statutes and case law round out this informative guide. Minimize

Harold Robbins, the world's most popular and captivating st ... Read more

Harold Robbins, the world's most popular and captivating storyteller, has created what may well be the most significant book ever written about the rise of the labor unions. The 1979 novel, freshly re-released, is the saga of Daniel Boone "Big Dan" Huggins, who rises from poverty and the mines of West Virginia to become the most respected and feared labor organizer in the nation. Daniel's life and death are tied to the challenges and fortunes of American labor. Once he is gone, his youngest son Jonathan must take up the reins of his father's cause, returning to Daniel's roots to better understand the path that led him to his destiny. Robbins has a gift for combining popular fiction with the most pertinent subjects of the twentieth century, to create a snapshot of the time. Relevant, respectful, and very readable, Memories of Another Day proves once again why Harold Robbins' books have sold more copies than any other American writer in history. Minimize

In this moving memoir a young man comes of age in an age of ... Read more

In this moving memoir a young man comes of age in an age of violence, brutality, and war. Recounting his experiences during the Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies, this account brings to life the shocking day-to-day conditions in a Japanese labor camp and provides an intimate look at the collapse of Dutch colonial rule.As a boy growing up on the island of Java, John Stutterheim spent hours exploring his exotic surroundings, taking walks with his younger brother and dachshund along winding jungle roads. His father, a government accountant, would grumble at the pro-German newspaper and from time to time entertain the family with his singing. It was a fairly typical life for a colonial family in the Dutch East Indies, and a peaceful and happy childhood for young John. But at the age of 14 it would all be irrevocably shattered by the Japanese invasion.With the surrender of Java in 1942, John's father was taken prisoner. For over three years the family would not know if he was alive or dead. Soon thereafter, John, his younger brother, and his mother were imprisoned. A year later he and his brother were moved to a forced labor camp for boys, where they toiled under the fierce sun while disease and starvation slowly took their toll, all the while suspecting they would soon be killed.Throughout all of these travails, John kept a secret diary hidden in his handmade mattress, and his memories now offer a unique perspective on an often overlooked episode of World War II. What emerges is a compelling story of a young man caught up in the machinations of a global war-struggling to survive in the face of horrible brutality, struggling to care for his disease-wracked brother, and struggling to put his family back together. It is a story that must not be forgotten. Minimize

Although numerous international treaties and organizations ... Read more

Although numerous international treaties and organizations work tirelessly to improve conditions for children, there are still 320 million children under the age of sixteen working around the world—150 million of those in the most harmful industries, such as prostitution and forced military service. This is their story, in words and photographs.Physician and photographer David L. Parker takes us beyond the headlines and into the textile factories, stone quarries, and garbage dumps where children are forced—by unscrupulous adults or by lack of any other economic opportunity—into the desperate cycle of child labor. His haunting and sensitive portrayal of these children preserves their dignity and humanity while exposing their often tragic circumstances. The hazards of harsh working conditions are visited exponentially on still-growing bodies and minds, whether they are cleaning elephant stables in India, picking cotton in Turkey, or extracting gold from Nicaraguan mines. Mercury used in mining causes brain damage; stone dust destroys young lungs; circus contortions cause serious muscular harm. But even beyond the disastrous physical consequences of child labor, simply having to work means that children are deprived of the education, nurturing, and socialization that are the necessary foundations of lasting health, development, and progress. Dr. Parker's riveting portraits of children continues in the brave documentary tradition of Lewis Hine, Milton Rogovin, and Sebastião Salgado, who have contributed to the legal and humanitarian advances of previous generations. We can only hope, as Hine said in the early twentieth century, that one day soon heartbreaking images like these will simply be "records of the past." Until then, Before Their Time is an essential call to action. 135 duotone photographs Minimize

In a manner evoking Ian McEwan's "Atonement" and Nick Hornb ... Read more

In a manner evoking Ian McEwan's "Atonement" and Nick Hornby's "About a Boy," acclaimed author Maynard weaves a beautiful, poignant tale of love, sex, adolescence, and devastating treachery as seen through the eyes of a young teenage boy. Minimize

For expectant parents who want to know everything about the ... Read more

For expectant parents who want to know everything about their developing baby at every stage, Pregnancy Day by Day provides a daily countdown to the date of delivery. Covering each day of pregnancy in detail, as well as labor, birth, and life with a new baby, Pregnancy Day by Day is an unprecedented and comprehensive guide that is written by a team of experts and is the one resource no parent-to-be should be without. Minimize

Spanning the period between the Chicago World's Fair of 189 ... Read more

Spanning the period between the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 and the years just after World War I, this novel moves from the labor troubles in Colorado to turn-of-the-century New York, to London and Gottingen, Venice and Vienna, the Balkans, Central Asia, Siberia at the time of the mysterious Tunguska Event, Mexico during the Revolution, postwar Paris, silent-era Hollywood, and one or two places not strictly speaking on the map at all. With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead, it is a time of unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places. No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred. The sizable cast of characters includes anarchists, balloonists, gamblers, corporate tycoons, drug enthusiasts, innocents and decadents, mathematicians, mad scientists, shamans, psychics, and stage magicians, spies, detectives, adventuresses, and hired guns. There are cameo appearances by Nikola Tesla, Bela Lugosi, and Groucho Marx.As an era of certainty comes crashing down around their ears and an unpredictable future commences, these folks are mostly just trying to pursue their lives. Sometimes they manage to catch up; sometimes it's their lives that pursue them. Meanwhile, the author is up to his usual business. Characters stop what they're doing to sing what are for the most part stupid songs. Strange sexual practices take place. Obscure languages are spoken, not always idiomatically. Contrary-to-the-fact occurrences occur. If it is not the world, it is what the world might be with a minor adjustment or two. According to some, this is one of the main purposes of fiction. Let the reader decide, let the reader beware. Good luck. -Thomas Pynchon Minimize

This classic, step-by-step guide for anyone planning to hel ... Read more

This classic, step-by-step guide for anyone planning to help a woman through labor shows precisely what to do to reduce the mother's fear and pain during labor, support her through childbirth, and help her during the first days after the baby is born, enhancing parent-infant bonding as well as reducing the chance of postpartum blues. Sharing Birth gives the father the confidence to take an active part in this miracle, the birth of a child. Carl Jones is a certified childbirth educator and author of the best-selling Mind Over Labor and several other books in the field. He lectures to parents and professionals throughout the United States and Canada about using creative imagery (visualization) in labor, giving effective labor support, and prenatal intuition. He has attended over 100 births, helping couples to give birth naturally. Minimize

A century of union growth ended in the 1980s. Since then, d ... Read more

A century of union growth ended in the 1980s. Since then, declining union membership has undermined the Labor Movement’s achievements throughout the advanced capitalist world. As unions have lost membership, declining economic clout and political leverage has left them as weak props upholding wages and programs for social justice. Since the earliest days of the labor movement, activists have debated the appropriate strategy, the mix of revolutionary and reformist goals and the proper relationship between labor unions and broader social and political movements. So long as the labor movement was growing, moving from gain to gain, debates over strategy could remain abstract, safely confined to academic quarters. Decline and impending failure, however, have now made these urgent debates. Written in a readable style, this book uses information from sixteen countries including the UK, US, Germany and France to chart the fortunes of the labor movement over recent years. The author, based at one of the top centres for heterodox economics, examines the current debates over strategy and suggests ways of reigniting its fortunes. Minimize

In this moving memoir a young man comes of age in an age of ... Read more

In this moving memoir a young man comes of age in an age of violence, brutality, and war. Recounting his experiences during the Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies, this account brings to life the shocking day-to-day conditions in a Japanese labor camp and provides an intimate look at the collapse of Dutch colonial rule.As a boy growing up on the island of Java, John Stutterheim spent hours exploring his exotic surroundings, taking walks with his younger brother and dachshund along winding jungle roads. His father, a government accountant, would grumble at the pro-German newspaper and from time to time entertain the family with his singing. It was a fairly typical life for a colonial family in the Dutch East Indies, and a peaceful and happy childhood for young John. But at the age of 14 it would all be irrevocably shattered by the Japanese invasion.With the surrender of Java in 1942, John's father was taken prisoner. For over three years the family would not know if he was alive or dead. Soon thereafter, John, his younger brother, and his mother were imprisoned. A year later he and his brother were moved to a forced labor camp for boys, where they toiled under the fierce sun while disease and starvation slowly took their toll, all the while suspecting they would soon be killed.Throughout all of these travails, John kept a secret diary hidden in his handmade mattress, and his memories now offer a unique perspective on an often overlooked episode of World War II. What emerges is a compelling story of a young man caught up in the machinations of a global war-struggling to survive in the face of horrible brutality, struggling to care for his disease-wracked brother, and struggling to put his family back together. It is a story that must not be forgotten. Minimize

Though now a largely forgotten holiday in the United States ... Read more

Though now a largely forgotten holiday in the United States, May Day was founded here in 1886 by an energized labor movement as a part of its struggle for the eight-hour day. In ensuing years, May Day took on new meaning, and by the early 1900s had become an annual rallying point for anarchists, socialists, and communists around the world. Yet American workers and radicals also used May Day to advance alternative definitions of what it meant to be an American and what America should be as a nation.Mining contemporary newspapers, party and union records, oral histories, photographs, and rare film footage, America’s Forgotten Holiday explains how May Days celebrants, through their colorful parades and mass meetings, both contributed to the construction of their own radical American identities and publicized alternative social and political models for the nation.This fascinating story of May Day in America reveals how many contours of American nationalism developed in dialogue with political radicals and workers, and uncovers the cultural history of those who considered themselves both patriotic and dissenting Americans. Minimize

Primarily focusing on the organization of production and la ... Read more

Primarily focusing on the organization of production and labor use practices in the Caribbean's second largest sugar industry, this work's historical, macroeconomic, political, and sociocultural components depict the reality of today's Dominican sugar economy. The Dominican Republic has been radically altered by its internationally oriented sugar economy--its society and national culture transformed and its political, legal, and economic structures modified. This book describes the progressive replacement of national labor in the sugar industry by foreign workers. Comparing the three distinct sugar corporations, it concludes that all three exploited foreign labor. The study refutes modern slavery charges through social science theory and extensive field research. Depicting living and working conditions in the fields, it concludes that slavery charges are the result of superficial analyses of symbols. More in-depth analyses display one of the most extreme forms of superexploitation in the twentieth century. Addressing present-day labor utilization strategies in the Dominican Republic sugar plantation system, Martin Murphy focuses on three areas: the logic of production, foreign labor integration, and a comparative analysis of three corporations. His first two chapters provide an overview of the historic and contemporary Dominican sugar industry. Historical patterns of labor recruitment and use are then presented in Chapter 3. Chapter 4 describes the basic logic of production and use of various types of labor for the plantations of the 1980s. Murphy's last four chapters address the question of heavy reliance on Haitian labor: Chapter 5 provides a history of Haitian migration; Chapter 6 discusses factors of expulsion and attraction which condition present-day Haitian migration to Dominican fields; Chapters 7 and 8 conclude with questions of Haitian ethnicity and its relationship to production organization. Minimize

The Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, Washington’s Birthday, Me ... Read more

The Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, Washington’s Birthday, Memorial Day, Columbus Day, Labor Day, Martin Luther King’s Birthday, and other celebrations matter to Americans and reflect the state of American local and national politics. Commemorations of cataclysmic events and light, apparently trivial observances mirror American political and cultural life. Both reveal much about the material conditions of the United States and its citizens’ identities, historical consciousness, and political attitudes. Lying dormant within these festivals is the potential for political consequence, controversy, even transformation. American political fetes remain works in progress, as Americans use historical celebrations as occasions to reinvent themselves and their nation, often with surprising results. In six engaging chapters—assaying particular political holidays over the course of their histories, Red, White, and Blue Letter Days examines how Americans have shaped and been shaped by their calendar. Matthew Dennis explores this vast political and cultural terrain, charting how Americans defined their identities through celebration. Independence Day invited African Americans to demand the equality promised in the Declaration of Independence, for example, just as Columbus Day—celebrating the Italian, Catholic explorer—helped immigrants proclaim their legitimacy as Americans. Native Americans too could use public holidays, such as Thanksgiving or Veterans Day, to express dissent or demonstrate their claims to citizenship. Merchants and advertisers colonized the American calendar, moving in to sell their products by linking them, often tenuously, with holiday occasions or casting consumption as a patriotic act. Minimize

Enslaved mariners, white seamstresses, Irish dockhands, fre ... Read more

Enslaved mariners, white seamstresses, Irish dockhands, free black domestic servants, and native-born street sweepers all navigated the low-end labor market in post-Revolutionary Baltimore. Seth Rockman considers this diverse workforce, exploring how race, sex, nativity, and legal status determined the economic opportunities and vulnerabilities of working families in the early republic.In the era of Frederick Douglass, Baltimore's distinctive economy featured many slaves who earned wages and white workers who performed backbreaking labor. By focusing his study on this boomtown, Rockman reassesses the roles of race and region and rewrites the history of class and capitalism in the United States during this time. Rockman describes the material experiences of low-wage workers—how they found work, translated labor into food, fuel, and rent, and navigated underground economies and social welfare systems. He also explores what happened if they failed to find work or lost their jobs. Rockman argues that the American working class emerged from the everyday struggles of these low-wage workers. Their labor was indispensable to the early republic's market revolution, and it was central to the transformation of the United States into the wealthiest society in the Western world. Rockman's research includes construction site payrolls, employment advertisements, almshouse records, court petitions, and the nation's first "living wage" campaign. These rich accounts of day laborers and domestic servants illuminate the history of early republic capitalism and its consequences for working families. Minimize

In this thoughtful book, Dale W. Tomich explores the contes ... Read more

In this thoughtful book, Dale W. Tomich explores the contested relationship between slavery and capitalism. Tracing slavery's integral role in the formation of a capitalist world economy, he reinterprets the development of the world economy through the 'prism of slavery.' Through a sustained critique of Marxism, world-systems theory, and new economic history, Tomich develops an original conceptual framework for answering theoretical and historical questions about the nexus between slavery and the world economy. The author explores how particular slave systems were affected by their integration into the world market, the international division of labor, and the interstate system. He further examines the ways that the particular 'local' histories of such slave regimes illuminate processes of world economic change. His deft use of specific New World examples of slave production as local sites of global transformation highlights the influence of specific geographies and local agency in shaping different slave zones. Tomich's cogent analysis of the struggles over the organization of work and labor discipline in the French West Indian colony of Martinique vividly illustrates the ways that day-to-day resistance altered the relationship between master and slave, precipitated crises in sugar cultivation, and created the local conditions for the transition to a post-slavery economy and society. Minimize

One of the most extraordinary literary documents to have em ... Read more

One of the most extraordinary literary documents to have emerged from the Soviet Union, this is the story of labor camp inmate Ivan Denisovich Shukhov and his struggle to maintain his dignity in the face of Communist oppression..... Minimize

At St. John's Bread and Life, a soup kitchen in the Bedford ... Read more

At St. John's Bread and Life, a soup kitchen in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, over a thousand people line up for food five days a week. In this trenchant and groundbreaking work, author Bill DiFazio breathes life into the stories of the poor who have, in the wake of welfare reform and neoliberal retreats from the caring state, now become a permanent part of our everyday life. No longer is poverty a "war" to be won, as DiFazio laments. In a mixture of storytelling and analysis, DiFazio takes the reader through the years before and after welfare reform to show how poverty has become "ordinary," a fact of life to millions of Americans and to the thousands of social workers, volunteers and everyday citizens who still think poverty ought to be eradicated.Arguing that only a true program of living wages, rather than permanent employment, is the solution to poverty, DiFazio also argues a case for a true poor people's movement that links the interests of all social movements with the interests of ending poverty. Minimize

The labor costs of even a minor VCR repair are very high, a ... Read more

The labor costs of even a minor VCR repair are very high, and warranties typically only cover the first 90 days of ownership. The first four chapters of this practical guide allow do-it-yourselfers to take charge of maintaining and repairing their own VCRs for optimum performance. Basic VCR and recording principles are explained so you can gain a better understanding of how your machine operates. Advanced troubleshooting techniques covered in the later chapters allow technicians and advanced hobbyists to make more complex repairs and adjustments. Basic troubleshooting guidelines and flow charts aid in diagnosis, including chassis and mechanical failures.VCR Troubleshooting & Repair, focuses on preventative maintenance. Basic electronics principles are presented as they relate to VCR performance. THE AUTHORSGregory R. Capelo is the owner of a VCR and VTR repair facility in El Cajon, California. He has serviced broadcast, consumer, and industrial video equipment for more than 14 years. He has taught numerous technical courses to private, government, and industrial technicians on the theory and maintenance of video and television equipment. Currently a trainer for Panasonic, he has been an expert witness in VCR patent infringement cases.Robert C. Brenner is an engineer and lecturer with extensive experience in microcomputers and system repair. He has written several successful books, including earlier editions of VCR Troubleshooting and Repair. Revised with technical input from major VCR manufacturersStep-by-step details to maximize performanceHow to avoid breakdowns Minimize

Temporary agencies place approximately two and a half milli ... Read more

Temporary agencies place approximately two and a half million people in jobs each day in the United States. Every year, about twelve million people use these placement agencies to find temporary work. Many Americans, even those who desire permanent jobs, decide to enter the labor market through the portal of temporary agencies. Compared with the post-World War II era, when it was a marginal labor practice, temporary employment is today an entrenched feature of jobs and labor markets. How have temporary employment relationships become so widespread and normalized? In The Good Temp, Vicki Smith and Esther B. Neuwirth provide some novel answers to this question. Their provocative analysis is based on an insider's view of the interior dynamics of a temporary help agency in Silicon Valley. It incorporates a historical perspective on the rise of the temporary help service industry. Smith and Neuwirth document how this powerful industry not only created a new market for temporary labor but also played a fundamental role in the erosion of the permanent employment model. They analyze how agencies themselves came to manufacture and market this reinvented product-the good temp, an employee who is effective and efficient, committed, and sometimes preferable to a permanent staff member. Joining extensive participant observation data with historical analysis, The Good Temp contains some surprising findings about temporary employment today and fills a significant gap in our understanding of this important labor relationship. Minimize

Only by adopting a new style of high-performance union mana ... Read more

Only by adopting a new style of high-performance union management can labor recover and revitalize itself, says Thomas A. Hannigan, a 40-year member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. His book offers a practical, common sense understanding of how a successful management works and how it can be used in day-to-day union activities. For the first time, he links the nine basic union functions to the four basic management functions. Written specifically for union officers and upcoming leaders, the book provides them with a way to translate material customarily directed to business executives into language that labor people can understand and put to immediate use. The book also offers a potent alternative to today's slice and slash, centralize and downsize union style of management. In addition, it offers a blueprint for building new unions and making labor more effective, not only for its own benefit, but also for the benefit of American society. An important, readable, unique text for people at almost all levels of union administration and industrial relations. Students will be exposed to an entirely new dimension of the American labor movement. Hannigan redefines unions to focus attention on the interests of workers in the workplace, and on the importance of providing a sense of community between members of unions, between unions and other unions, and between unions and government. He maintains that a style of democratic, participative management will breathe new life into unions, and that a better understanding of management responsibilities by union leaders is essential for labor's survival as an effective representative of workers in the new American workplace. High-performance union managers will be able to explore, develop and use new technologies, and to build strong, autonomous, democratic, value-based, and mission-driven locals. Managing Tomorrow's High-Performance Unions includes innovative concepts such as the membership and leadership depth of participation models. It also proposes the creation of a new AFL-CIO executive board to lead organized labor into the 21st century, an institute for managing labor organizations, social research departments, lifetime membership, expanded membership bases, and the intense use of what Hannigan calls "enabling technologies." He sees adminstrative and support centers as practical alternatives to union mergers. Minimize

In Only One Place of Redress David E. Bernstein offers a bo ... Read more

In Only One Place of Redress David E. Bernstein offers a bold reinterpretation of American legal history: he argues that American labor and occupational laws, enacted by state and federal governments after the Civil War and into the twentieth century, benefited dominant groups in society to the detriment of those who lacked political power. Both intentionally and incidentally, claims Bernstein, these laws restricted in particular the job mobility and economic opportunity of blacks. A pioneer in applying the insights of public choice theory to legal history, Bernstein contends that the much-maligned jurisprudence of the Lochner era—with its emphasis on freedom of contract and private market ordering—actually discouraged discrimination and assisted groups with little political clout. To support this thesis he examines the motivation behind and practical impact of laws restricting interstate labor recruitment, occupational licensing laws, railroad labor laws, minimum wage statutes, the Davis-Bacon Act, and New Deal collective bargaining. He concludes that the ultimate failure of Lochnerism—and the triumph of the regulatory state—not only strengthened racially exclusive labor unions but contributed to a massive loss of employment opportunities for African Americans, the effects of which continue to this day. Scholars and students interested in race relations, labor law, and legalor constitutional history will be fascinated by Bernstein’s daring—and controversial—argument. Minimize

Small-scale fishing, a house-hold based enterprise in Puert ... Read more

Small-scale fishing, a house-hold based enterprise in Puerto Rico, rarely provides sufficient income for a family, but it anchors their culture and sense of themselves within that culture. Even when family members must engage in wage work to supplement house-hold income, they think of themselves as fishers. Liche typifies these wage workers: 'When he was quite young, he left the island to struggle in other lands, to work, to raise a family, to send home the money he earned. Ten, twenty, thirty years passed...during which he did not once fish or even see the ocean. But in a boat-building factory in New Jersey, in a bakery in the Bronx, on the production line of a chemical factory, on dozens of construction sites, every single day he made a mental review of the waters, the isles and cays ...and entertained no thought that was not related to his return.' "Fishers at Work, Workers at Sea" describes Puerto Rican fishing families as they negotiate homeland and diaspora. It considers how wage work affects their livelihoods and identities at home and how these independent producers move in and out of global commodity markets. Drawing on some 100 life histories and years of fieldwork, David Griffith and Manuel Valdes Pizzini have developed a complex, often moving portrait of the men and women who fiercely struggle to hang onto the coastal landscapes and cultural heritage tied to the Caribbean Sea. Author note: David Griffith is Professor of Anthropology and Senior Scientist at East Carolina University. He is the author of "Working Poor: Farmworkers in the United States" (Temple) and "The Estuary's Gift: An Atlantic Coast Cultural Biography". Manuel Valdes Pizzini is Professor of Anthropology and Sociology, Researcher at the Center of Applied Social Research, and Director of the University of Puerto Rico Sea Grant College Program at the University of Puerto Rico in Mayaguez. Minimize

From its founding, Martinique played an integral role in Fr ... Read more

From its founding, Martinique played an integral role in France's Atlantic empire. Established in the mid-seventeenth century as a colonial outpost against Spanish and English dominance in the Caribbean, the island was transformed by the increase in European demand for sugar, coffee, and indigo. Like other colonial subjects, Martinicans met the labor needs of cash-crop cultivation by establishing plantations worked by enslaved Africans and by adopting the rigidly hierarchical social structure that accompanied chattel slavery. After Haiti gained its independence in 1804, Martinique's economic importance to the French empire increased. At the same time, there arose questions, both in France and on the island, about the long-term viability of the plantation system, including debates about the ways colonists—especially enslaved Africans and free mixed-race individuals—fit into the French nation.Sweet Liberty chronicles the history of Martinique from France's reacquisition of the island from the British in 1802 to the abolition of slavery in 1848. Focusing on the relationship between the island's widely diverse society and the various waves of French and British colonial administrations, Rebecca Hartkopf Schloss provides a compelling account of Martinique's social, political, and cultural dynamics during the final years of slavery in the French empire. Schloss explores how various groups—Creole and metropolitan elites, petits blancs, gens de couleur, and enslaved Africans—interacted with one another in a constantly shifting political environment and traces how these interactions influenced the colony's debates around identity, citizenship, and the boundaries of the French nation.Based on extensive archival research in Europe and the Americas, Sweet Liberty is a groundbreaking study of a neglected region that traces how race, slavery, class, and gender shaped what it meant to be French on both sides of the Atlantic. Minimize