This comprehensive but pedestrian biography will be fairly useful for school reports but is unlikely to inspire 21st-century...
A biography of Samuel Gompers, leader of the American Federation of Labor.
A Jewish immigrant, Gompers had learned cigar-making in his London home and continued to work at this trade as an adult in the U.S. His interest in unions sprang from his experiences with fraternal organizations and his growing convictions that “the only way to improve working conditions was peacefully within the capitalist system.” In 1881, Gompers helped found the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions of the United States and Canada (later reorganized into the AFL), which promoted the eight-hour day, limitations on child and convict labor, cash payments for salaries, and strict immigration laws, a policy that Gompers strongly believed in and the irony of which receives scant comment from Finkelstein. In this fact-filled but interpretation-light account, Sam Gompers was a workaholic and a person who loved public speaking. Readers get little sense of Gompers as a person, and they may struggle with his dismissive attitude toward unskilled workers, his realpolitik approach to race, and his hypocrisy toward immigrants. There is excellent research here, but the lackluster writing, the double-column format, and the hazy quality of some of the black-and-white archival photos produce an unexciting volume; some gaps in the index further limit its use.
This comprehensive but pedestrian biography will be fairly useful for school reports but is unlikely to inspire 21st-century labor activists. (author’s note, timeline, source notes, bibliography, index) (Biography. 11-14)Pub Date: June 11, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-62979-638-3
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Calkins Creek/Boyds Mills
Review Posted Online: April 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2019
If Freedman wrote the history textbooks, we would have many more historians. Beginning with an engrossing description of the Boston Tea Party in 1773, he brings the reader the lives of the American colonists and the events leading up to the break with England. The narrative approach to history reads like a good story, yet Freedman tucks in the data that give depth to it. The inclusion of all the people who lived during those times and the roles they played, whether small or large are acknowledged with dignity. The story moves backwards from the Boston Tea Party to the beginning of the European settlement of what they called the New World, and then proceeds chronologically to the signing of the Declaration. “Your Rights and Mine” traces the influence of the document from its inception to the present ending with Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. The full text of the Declaration and a reproduction of the original are included. A chronology of events and an index are helpful to the young researcher. Another interesting feature is “Visiting the Declaration of Independence.” It contains a short review of what happened to the document in the years after it was written, a useful Web site, and a description of how it is displayed and protected today at the National Archives building in Washington, D.C. Illustrations from the period add interest and detail. An excellent addition to the American history collection and an engrossing read. (Nonfiction. 9-13)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-8234-1448-5
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2000
Logically pointing out that the American cowboy archetype didn’t spring up from nowhere, Sandler, author of Cowboys (1994) and other volumes in the superficial, if luxuriously illustrated, “Library of Congress Book” series, looks back over 400 years of cattle tending in North America. His coverage ranges from the livestock carried on Columbus’s second voyage to today’s herding-by-helicopter operations. Here, too, the generous array of dramatic early prints, paintings, and photos are more likely to capture readers’ imaginations than the generality-ridden text. But among his vague comments about the characters, values, and culture passed by Mexican vaqueros to later arrivals from the Eastern US, Sadler intersperses nods to the gauchos, llaneros, and other South American “cowmen,” plus the paniolos of Hawaii, and the renowned African-American cowboys. He also decries the role film and popular literature have played in suppressing the vaqueros’ place in the history of the American West. He tackles an uncommon topic, and will broaden the historical perspective of many young cowboy fans, but his glance at modern vaqueros seems to stop at this country’s borders. Young readers will get a far more detailed, vivid picture of vaquero life and work from the cowboy classics in his annotated bibliography. (Notes, glossary, index) (Nonfiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2001
ISBN: 0-8050-6019-7
Page Count: 116
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2000
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