Robert W. Cherny

Victor Arnautoff reigned as San Francisco's leading mural painter during the New Deal era. Yet that was only part of an astonishing life journey from Tsarist officer to leftist painter. Robert W. Cherny's masterful biography of Arnautoff braids the artist's work with his increasingly leftist politics and the tenor of his times. Delving into sources on Russian émigrés and San Francisco's arts communities, Cherny traces Arnautoff's life from refugee art student and assistant to Diego Rivera to prominence in the New Deal's art projects and a faculty position at Stanford University. As Arnautoff's politics moved left, he often incorporated working people and people of color into his treatment of the American past and present. In the 1950s, however, his participation in leftist organizations and a highly critical cartoon of Richard Nixon landed him before the House Un-American Activities Committee and led to calls for his dismissal from Stanford. Arnautoff eventually departed America, a refugee of another kind, now fleeing personal loss and the disintegration of the left-labor culture that had nurtured him, before resuming his artistic career in the Soviet Union that he had fought in his youth to destroy.

Victor Arnautoff and the Politics of Art

The iconic leader of one of America’s most powerful unions, Harry Bridges put an indelible stamp on the twentieth century labor movement. Robert Cherny’s monumental biography tells the life story of the figure who built the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) into a labor powerhouse that still represents almost 30,000 workers. An Australian immigrant, Bridges worked the Pacific Coast docks. His militant unionism placed him at the center of the 1934 West Coast Waterfront Strike and spurred him to expand his organizing activities to warehouse laborers and Hawaiian sugar and pineapple workers. Cherny examines the overall effectiveness of Bridges as a union leader and the decisions and traits that made him effective. Cherny also details the price paid by Bridges as the US government repeatedly prosecuted him for his left-wing politics. Drawing on personal interviews with Bridges and years of exhaustive research, Harry Bridges places an extraordinary individual and the ILWU within the epic history of twentieth-century labor radicalism.

Labor Radical, Labor Legend

Harry Bridges

Christopher L. Miller

Carol Berkin

James L. Gormly

W. Thomas Mainwaring

A History of the United States Since 1865

Making America

A History of the United States

Often Gilded-Age politics has been described as devoid of content or accomplishment, a mere spectacle to divert voters from thinking about the real issues of the day. But by focusing too closely on dramatic scandals and on the foibles of prominent politicians, many historians have tended to obscure other aspects of late nineteenth-century politics that proved to be of great and long-term significance. With the latest scholarship in mind, Professor Cherny provides a deft and highly readable analysis that is certain to help readers better understand the characteristics and important products of Gilded-Age politics. Topics covered include: voting behavior; the relation between the popular will and the formation of public policy; the cause and effect of the deadlock in national politics that lasted from the mid-1870s to the 1890s; the sources of political innovation at state and local levels; and the notable changes wrought during the 1890s that ushered in important new forms of American politics.

1868 - 1900

American Politics in the Gilded Age

Mary Ann Irwin

Ann Marie Wilson

In 1911 as progressivism moved toward its zenith, the state of California granted women the right to vote. However, women?s political involvement in California?s public life did not begin with suffrage, nor did it end there. ø Across the state, women had been deeply involved in politics long before suffrage, and?although their tactics and objectives changed?they remained deeply involved thereafter. California Women and Politics examines the wide array of women?s public activism from the 1850s to 1929?including the temperance movement, moral reform, conservation,øtrade unionism, settlement work, philanthropy, wartime volunteerism, and more?and reveals unexpected contours to women?s politics in California. The contributors consider not only white middle-class women?s organizing but also the politics of working-class women and women of color, emphasizing that there was not one monolithic ?women?s agenda,? but rather a multiplicity of women?s voices demanding recognition for a variety of causes.

From the Gold Rush to the Great Depression

California Women and Politics

William Issel

Kieran Walsh Taylor

The American labor movement seemed poised on the threshold of unparalleled success at the beginning of the post-World War II era. Fourteen million strong in 1946, unions represented thirty five percent of non-agricultural workers. Why then did the gains made between the 1930s and the end of the war produce so few results by the 1960s? This collection addresses the history of labor in the postwar years by exploring the impact of the global contest between the United States and the Soviet Union on American workers and labor unions. The essays focus on the actual behavior of Americans in their diverse workplaces and communities during the Cold War. Where previous scholarship on labor and the Cold War has overemphasized the importance of the Communist Party, the automobile industry, and Hollywood, this book focuses on politically moderate, conservative workers and union leaders, the medium-sized cities that housed the majority of the population, and the Roman Catholic Church. These are all original essays that draw upon extensive archival research and some upon oral history sources.

Grassroots Politics and Postwar Political Culture

American Labor and the Cold War

Robert W. Cherny

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