Review by Choice Review
There is a distinctly old-fashioned feel to this newly published survey of working-class life. Material experience once again is wielded as the preeminent analytical tool for working-class history, while readers barely glimpse the contributions of studies based upon language and discourse. This is not entirely a bad thing. Chapters on working-class living conditions, labor conditions, leisure activities, and political participation are all models of clarity and conciseness, and should be extremely useful to lower-level undergraduates as introductions to those topics. Obviously, concerning such a short book there are going to be those who quibble over which topics were put in and which left out. However, after more than a decade of debate, August (Abington College, Penn State Univ.) at the very least might have attempted to make readers aware that a good many historians have questioned the methodology that assumes that material experience translates directly into class position. Moreover, given the fact that the author relies heavily on numerous contemporary observations, more advanced students certainly would have benefited from a more critical approach to the contextual and discursive influences that shaped both contemporary descriptions and personal memories of working-class behavior and custom. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduate collections. J. A. Jaffe University of Wisconsin--Whitewater
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
