Frank Allaun who has died just short of his ninetieth birthday was the first and only President of the Working Class Movement Library.
He and Edmund Frow formed a friendship in the 1930's when Frank was looking after the Communist Party bookshop in Hanging Ditch and Eddie used to cycle to collect his Left Book Club monthly volumes which he then distributed among his workmates and the A.E.U. members.
A new book on Comintern
Espionage and the Roots of the Cold War
By David McKnight, Frank Cass & Co, London 2002
I am writing to alert you to my new book which I thought might interest you. The book uses little known archives from Comintern to give a scholarly explanation of the circumstances which lead to Cold War ‘witch hunts’ and accusations of treachery. In their opposition to these allegations, the Left and their liberal allies scorned the possibility that there could be any truth to the charges of espionage.
Call for Papers: Gender, Socialism and Globalization in Contemporary Vietnam and China
The theme of the North West Labour History journal for 2003 will be Women in the North. We invite contributions, covering the period from the late C18th to last week, which take a look at women as political, industrial, social, cultural and community activists. We would like to cover the broadest range of topics:- from suffragettes to punkettes, Clarion cyclists to sit-ins, Chartists to feminists, barmaids to MPs and so forth.
The Ambiguities of Work: Controlling Knowledge, Controlling Outcomes
A conference at the Hagley Museum and Library, Wilmington, Delaware, Nov. 7-8, 2003
From Adam Smith and Karl Marx through Harry Braverman and Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., issues of knowledge and control over economic activity have been central to the fields of labor and business history. The famous aphorism attributed to Big Bill Haywood, "The boss's brains are under the workman's cap" captures these tensions, as do recent social science explorations of embedded and tacit knowledge.
The Newberry Library Labor History Seminar co-sponsored by the University of Illinois at Chicago and Urbana.
"How the Suburbs Saved the City: A Reconsideration of Working-Class Housing in the Metropolitan Region"
Joseph Bigott
Purdue University Calumet
December 6, 2002, 3:00-5:00 pm
Evelyn Nakano Glenn. Unequal Freedom: How Race and Gender Shaped American Citizenship and Labor. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2002. ix + 306 pp. Notes index. $39.95 (cloth), ISBN 0-674-00732-8.
Reviewed by Melissa Walker, Department of History and Politics, Converse College. Published by H-Women (August, 2002)
Interlocking Systems of Control
Pem Davidson Buck. Worked to the Bone: Race, Class, Power, and Privilege in Kentucky. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2001. Viii + 279 pp. Notes index. $55.00 (cloth), ISBN 1-58367-047-5.
Reviewed by Penny Messinger, St. Bonaventure University. Published by H-Appalachia (August, 2002)
Whiteness Study Plumbs Kentucky
The Allan K. Wildman Group for the Study of Russian Workers and Society is pleased to announce the appearance of the article collection, New Labor History: Worker Identity and Experience in Russia, 1840-1918 (paperback, 248 pp., $25.99, ISBN: 0-89357-303-5). The volume, edited by Michael Melancon and Alice K. Pate, is published by Slavica Publishers (www.slavica.com) and includes the following contributions by American and Russian scolars:
Donna J. Rilling. Making Houses, Crafting Capitalism: Builders in Philadelphia, 1790-1850. Series on Early American Studies. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001. xii + 261 pp. Tables, maps, notes, bibliography, index. $45.00 (cloth), ISBN 0-8122-3580-0.
Reviewed for H-SHEAR by Joshua R. Greenberg, Department of History, American University, June 2002
House as a Life
