Ardis Cameron focuses on the textile workers' strikes of 1882 and 1912 in this examination of class and gender formation as drawn from the experience and language of the working-class neighborhoods of Lawrence. She shows clearly that the working women who unionized and fought for equality were considered the "worst sort" because they challenged both economic and sexual hierarchies, providing alternative models for turn-of-the-century women.

Spanning two hundred years of history from the nineteenth century to the 1990s, Sisters or Strangers? explores the complex lives of immigrant, ethnic, and racialized women in Canada. The volume deals with a cross-section of peoples - including Japanese, Chinese, Black, Aboriginal, Irish, Finnish, Ukrainian, Jewish, Mennonite, Armenian, and South Asian Hindu women - and diverse groups of women, including white settlers, refugees, domestic servants, consumer activists, nurses, wives, and mothers. The central themes of Sisters or Strangers? include discourses of race in the context of nation-building, encounters with the state and public institutions, symbolic and media representations of women, familial relations, domestic violence and racism, and analyses of history and memory. In different ways, the authors question whether the historical experience of women in Canada represents a 'sisterhood' of challenge and opportunity, or if the racial, class, or marginalized identity of the immigrant and minority women made them in fact 'strangers' in a country where privilege and opportunity fall according to criteria of exclusion. Using a variety of theoretical approaches, this collaborative work reminds us that victimization and agency are never mutually exclusive, and encourages us to reflect critically on the categories of race, gender, and the nation.

In Liberal White Supremacy, Angie Beeman argues that white supremacy is maintained not only by right-wing conservatives or stereotypically uneducated working-class racial bigots but also by progressives who operate from a liberal ideology of color-blindness, racism-evasiveness, and class elitism. This distinction provides insight on divisions among progressives at the local level, in community organizations, and at the national level, in the Democratic Party. By distinguishing between liberal and radical approaches to racism, class oppression, capitalism, and social movement tactics, Beeman shows how progressives continue to be limited by liberal ideology and perpetuate rather than dismantle white supremacy, all while claiming to be antiracist. She conceptualizes this self-serving process as “liberal white supremacy,” the tendency for liberal European Americans to constantly place themselves in the superior moral position in a way that reinforces inequality. Beeman advances what she calls action-oriented and racism-centered intersectional approaches as alternatives to progressive organizational strategies that either downplay racism in favor of a class-centered approach or take a talk-centered approach to racism without developing explicit actions to challenge it.

Radical History Review presents innovative scholarship and commentary that looks critically at the past and its history from a non-sectarian left perspective.

The Belles of New England is a masterful, definitive, and eloquent look at the enormous cultural and economic impact on America of New England's textile mills. The author, an award-winning CBS producer, traces the history of American textile manufacturing back to the ingenuity of Francis Cabot Lodge. The early mills were an experiment in benevolent enlightened social responsibility on the part of the wealthy owners, who belonged to many of Boston's finest families. But the fledgling industry's ever-increasing profits were inextricably bound to the issues of slavery, immigration, and workers' rights. William Moran brings a newsman's eye for the telling detail to this fascinating saga that is equally compelling when dealing with rags and when dealing with riches. In part a microcosm of America's social development during the period, The Belles of New England casts a new and finer light on this rich tapestry of vast wealth, greed, discrimination, and courage.

A “well researched and vigorously written” account of social activism, radical politics, and the failed War on Poverty in 1960s Appalachia (Journal of American History). In 1964, a group of young social activists formed the Appalachian Volunteers with the intention of eradicating poverty in eastern Kentucky and the rest of the Southern mountains. In Reformers to Radicals, author Thomas Kiffmeyer documents the history of this organization as their youthful enthusiasm led to radicalism and controversy. These reformers sought to improve the lives of the Appalachian poor while making strides toward economic change in the region. Their efforts included refurbishing schools and homes and offering educational opportunities. But in time, these volunteers faced nationwide accusations that they were “seditious” and “un-American.” After losing the support of the federal and state governments and of many Appalachian people, the group to disband in 1970. Reformers to Radicals examines the various factors that led to the Appalachian Volunteers’ ultimate failure, from infighting within their ranks to tensions with the very people they sought to help. It chronicles a critical era in Appalachian history and investigates the impact the 1960s' reform attitude on the region.

For over a century, the sweatshop has evoked outrage and moral repugnance. Once cast as a type of dangerous and immoral garment factory brought to American shores by European immigrants, today the sweatshop is reviled as emblematic of the abuses of an unregulated global economy. This collection unites some of the best recent work in the interdisciplinary field of sweatshop studies. It examines changing understandings of the roots and problems of the sweatshop, and explores how the history of the American sweatshop is inexorably intertwined with global migration of capital, labor, ideas and goods. The American sweatshop may be located abroad but remains bound to the United States through ties of fashion, politics, labor and economics. The global character of the American sweatshop has presented a barrier to unionization and regulation. Anti-sweatshop campaigns have often focused on local organizing and national regulation while the sweatshop remains global. Thus, the epitaph for the sweatshop has frequently been written and re-written by unionists, reformers, activists and politicians. So, too, have they mourned its return.