Hard Work encapsulates the evolving thought of one of American labor history's most prominent scholars. Juxtaposing Melvyn Dubofsky's early and recent writings, this collection forcefully suggests how present and past interact in the writing of history.An exploration of some of American labor's central themes by a giant in the field, Hard Work is also a narrative of how one scholar was drawn to labor history as a subject of study and how his approach to it changed over time. In addition to solid essays on various aspects of labor history, including western working-class radicalism, U.S. labor history in transnational and comparative settings, and the impact of technological change on the American worker movements, this volume provides an invaluable "I was there" perspective on the academic and political climate of the 1960s and early 1970s and on the development of labor history as a discipline over the past four decades.