A distinguished roster of contributors considers the state of the art of the field at the turn of the 21st century and charts an ambitious agenda for the future. Following what the editors describe as an `evolutionist' approach to the study of labor markets, the chapters address issues of continuity and discontinuity in a wide range of topics including: markets and institutional structures; employment relations and work structures; patterns of stratification in the United States; and public policies, opportunity structures, and economic outcomes.

This volume collects the voices of the critics, the defenders, the revolutionaries, and especially the workers who have testified to the value of work and the organization of labor throughout history. The book addresses a wide range of labor themes and includes brief profiles of prominent labor leaders, archival photographs, drawings, and contemporary cartoons.

Twice the Work of Free Labor is both a study of penal labor in the southern United States, and a revisionist analysis of the political economy of the South after the Civil War.