American Work: Four Centuries of Black and White Labor

At a time when much of the national conversation on race begins with "Get over it," reminding people of slavery can be serious business. Jacqueline Jones's "American Work" offers especially serious reminders. Jones not only refuses to forget the history of slavery, she makes it central to her understanding of American labor history and "the historic forces shaping the entire American workforce." -- Village Voice, 17 February 1998Jacqueline Jones's previous book, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family from Slavery to the Present, won the Bancroft Prize in American history and was warmly reviewed in the Book Review by Toni Morrison. In American Work, Jones ... undertakes the even more ambitious task of describing the working lives of ordinary people from the Jamestown settlement to the present. In this she fails, despite the prodigious efforts and mastery of a broad range of sources that her ample notes and bibliography demonstrate. The problem is that no one can do justice to so great a subject in only 395 pages of text. -- The New York Times Book Review, William L. O'NeillWe shouldn't need a book that once again demonstrates the deep-rootedness of racism in the United States and patiently explains how racial conflicts "remain the moral burden of the country's history." But we do, and the challenge is eloquently and thoughtfully met by Jacqueline Jones, chair of the history department at Brandeis University and author of three previous books, including the prize-winning Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family from Slavery to the Present. -- The Los Angeles Times, Anthony M. Platt