Only One Thing Can Save Us: Why America Needs a New Kind of Labor Movement - Hardcover

Geoghegan, Thomas

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1595588361 ISBN 13: 9781595588364

Publisher: The New Press, 2014

Synopsis

Is labor’s day over or is labor the only real answer for our time? In his new book, National Book Critics Circle Award finalist and labor lawyer Thomas Geoghegan argues that even as organized labor seems to be crumbling, a revived but different labor movement is the only way to stabilize the economy and save the middle class.

But the inequality now reshaping the country goes beyond money and income: the places we work have become ever more rigid hierarchies. Geoghegan makes his argument for labor with stories, sometimes humorous but more often chilling, about the problems working people like his own clients from cabdrivers to schoolteachers now face, increasingly powerless in our union-free economy. He explains why a new kind of labor movement (and not just more higher education) is the real program the Democrats should push not just to save the middle class from bankruptcy but to revive Keynes’s original and sometimes forgotten ideas for getting the rich to invest and reducing our balance of trade, and to promote John Dewey’s vision of a democratic way of life,” one that would start in the schools and continue in our places of work.

A public policy” book that is compulsively readable, Only One Thing Can Save Us is vintage Geoghegan, blending acerbic, witty commentary with unparalleled insight into the real dynamics (and human experience) of working in America today.

About this title

About the Author:

Thomas Geoghegan is a practicing labor lawyer and the author of several books, including See You in Court; In America’s Court; the National Book Critics Circle Award finalist Which Side Are You On?; and, most recently, Were You Born on the Wrong Continent? (all available from The New Press). He has written for The Nation, the New York Times, and Harper’s Magazine. He lives in Chicago.

Review:

Praise for Thomas Geoghegan's previous books:

"From his first, magnificent book straight through to this one, Tom Geoghegan has written about the labor movement in America with truly unmatched eloquence, self-reflection, and even wit (not easy, that last one). All that and he is right. I hope the right people listen."
Michael Tomasky

"Tom Geoghegan has now spent four decades in one of America’s most unusual dual careers. On the one hand, he is a labor lawyer (on the side of the good guys), fighting to protect workers’ rights in a severely antiunion era. On the other hand, he is a skilled essayist and memoirist, who has chronicled the lives of baby-boomers with elegance and wistful humor. In Only One Thing Can Save Us, he argues for a new kind of labor movement.’ But argues’ is really the wrong word, as he makes his case in his usual manner and distinctive voice."
Michael Kinsley

"Which Side Are You On? is one of the finest nonfiction books by a contemporary author I’ve ever read. It’s incredibly informative, frequently moving, loaded with fresh insights, and often laugh-out-loud funny. A delightful book about the labor movement: it sounds like an oxymoron, but in Geoghegan’s case it’s an accomplishment."
Hendrik Hertzberg, NewYorker.com

"Most diverting [Geoghegan] has the great virtue of being witty and ironic and to the point A necessary primer."
Jurek Martin, Financial Times

"Clever and immensely appealing."
Katha Pollitt, The Nation

"Quirky, brilliant Inspiring unparalleled in the literature of American labor."
The New York Times

"A brilliant book."
The Washington Post

"Delightful reading."
Barbara Ehrenreich

"So skillfully written, so witty and so scathing that it seems bound to grip even those who find the labor movement boring."
Businessweek

About this edition

• Publisher: The New Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1595588361
• ISBN 13: 9781595588364
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272