Gutman's path-breaking contributions to the study of American
social history are vividly reflected in this posthumous collection
of his works. Together, these 15 published and unpublished essays,
editor Berlin's insightful intellectual biography of Gutman, and a
comprehensive bibliography provide a deep understanding of Gutman's
ideas and their development. The three themes that dominated
Gutman's work - working-class culture, Afro-American history, and
the need for historians to reach a broad audience - are given
center stage here. In each area, the previously unpublished essays
extend and refine many of Gutman's arguments. Those who have read
"The Workers" Search for Power" (reprinted here), for instanee,
will be eager to explore "Labor in the Land of Lincoln" and "The
Labor Policies of the Large Corporation in the Gilded Age: The Case
of the Standard Oil Company." Both are full of rich detail and
flavor that was the fruit of Gutman's extensive research, and they
mark his early attempts to give substance to his claim that the
strength of working-class culture and politics dramatically
influenced America's political and economic development. In "Class
Composition and the Development of the American Working Class,
1840-1890," co-authored with Berlin in 1981, it is clear how the
older Gutman viewed the "reformation" of the American working class
in a way that placed immigrant and black workers at the heart of
that experience, rather than as interlopers who retarded class
development. Likewise, in "Schools for Freedom" and "The Black
Family in Slavery and Freedom: A Revised Perspective," Gutman's
controversial research into the nature of the black family is
broadened to include new information and an approach that will
enhance our understanding of how blacks maintained their dignity
under slavery. Finally, Gutman's concern with the increasing
irrelevance of history to American society is addressed in a
reprinted interview and in the previously unpublished "Historical
Consciousness in Contemporary America." In both, Gutman stresses
the need to teach an American history that incorporates the
findings of the "new social history" and utilizes all available
media. A worthy legacy - challenging, committed, and erudite - from
perhaps our most influential labor historian. (Kirkus Reviews)
Finally available in paperback, "Power and Culture" is the last
work by America's most influential labor and social historian, the
late Herbert Gutman. Edited and introduced by Gutman's colleague
Ira Berlin, the book includes original, unpublished essays from
throughout Gutman's career and important but unavailable works from
journals and periodicals, as well as an extended interview with
Gutman and a comprehensive bibliography of his works.
"Power and Culture" features essays on the lives of workers and
the formation of class during the "Gilded Age" of American
corporations, and on the lives of African American slaves and
freedmen--the studies for which Gutman became famous. But it also
shows the range of his thought on such subjects as "Roots "and
popular historical awareness. With Berlin's critical and
biographical introduction, "Power and Culture" is an important
reappraisal of a major scholar.
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