A Life's Journey A Working Class Saga


Book Description

After spending his first twenty years with his supportive working class parents in a village largely run by middle-class professional values, Richard decides to move away. As a young boy growing up surrounded by farming people, including his father, two uncles and many other family members, his mother had always encouraged him not to end up as a farm worker. After a short spell working for a local furniture company, and running away with an underage girl to Scotland, he goes to sea for a while. Afterwards, slowly but surely, he begins to develop an enjoyable and productive career in forestry, working around the country, each time moving to a higher and better paid job. After nearly thirty years away from his place of birth, although he does visit his family and friends during that time, he decides to move back to where his parents were living, where he develops a new career and finds a new partner. But perhaps he had paid a high price for leaving his home village in the first place!




Journey to Nowhere


Book Description

'Journey to Nowhere puts faces and real-life circumstances on all the statistics that you read about but that remain abstract to a lot of people. It doesn't really tell you what to think, it just shows you things: This is what we found, this is what is out there...It's a very powerful book, it should be out there, it should be read.'--Bruce Springsteen




Claims and Speculations


Book Description

Mines have always been hard and dangerous places. They have also been as dependent upon imaginative writing as upon the extraction of precious materials. This study of a broad range of responses to gold and silver mining in the late nineteenth century sets the literary writings of figures such as Mark Twain, Mary Hallock Foote, Bret Harte, and Jack London within the context of writing and representation produced by people involved in the industry: miners and journalists, as well as writers of folklore and song. Floyd begins by considering some of the grand narratives the industry has generated. She goes on to discuss particular places and the distinctive work they generated--the short fictions of the California Gold Rush, the Sagebrush journalism of Nevada's Comstock Lode, Leadville romance, and the popular culture of the Klondike. With excursions to Canada, South Africa, and Australia, Floyd looks at how the experience of a destructive and chaotic industry produced a global literature.




2012-2013 Class Trip Directory


Book Description

A directory of day, overnight and travel trips for school, scout and homeschool groups with themed trip lesson plans to increase the learning experiences.




Blue-Collar Pop Culture


Book Description

From television, film, and music to sports, comics, and everyday life, this book provides a comprehensive view of working-class culture in America. The terms "blue collar" and "working class" remain incredibly vague in the United States, especially in pop culture, where they are used to express and connote different things at different times. Interestingly, most Americans are, in reality, members of the working class, even if they do not necessarily think of themselves that way. Perhaps the popularity of many cultural phenomena focused on the working class can be explained in this way: we are endlessly fascinated by ourselves. Blue-Collar Pop Culture: From NASCAR to Jersey Shore provides a sophisticated, accessible, and entertaining examination of the intersection between American popular culture and working-class life in America. Covering topics as diverse as the attacks of September 11th, union loyalties, religion, trailer parks, professional wrestling, and Elvis Presley, the essays in this two-volume work will appeal to general readers and be valuable to scholars and students studying American popular culture.




Transforming Work


Book Description

In this age of stiff competition and "free agency," no organization can afford to take its employees for granted. The new labor-market landscape is forcing organizations to think creatively about how to inject passion in the workplace and motivate their employees to find meaning in their work. In Transforming Work, Boverie and Kroth draw from their extensive research and experience in the field to show executives, HR professionals, and students how to create inspiring, employee-friendly work environments in order to capture, develop, and retain talent and transform both the employees and the organization in the process.




Tale of Life (Essence Series #2)


Book Description

When Calloway returns to school after the winter break, high school only becomes more difficult, and not academically. Beatrice, the girl who he's had his eye on since the beginning of high school, finally acknowledges him. Calloway doesn't understand what any of it means. They are still trying to locate the portal, and when chance strikes, they believe they found the answer. But now they have to decide what to do, Should they tell Weston or go on their own? Hawk's torments are ever present for Calloway. When it becomes too much, Calloway turns to his mentor, Mr. Avey, for help. There's only so much Calloway can take. With graduation, prom, and the Hara-kirs chasing them every step of the way, Calloway and his two friends have to stay a step ahead. If not, the game could end for good.




Routledge International Handbook of Working-Class Studies


Book Description

The Routledge International Handbook of Working-Class Studies is a timely volume that provides an overview of this interdisciplinary field that emerged in the 1990s in the context of deindustrialization, the rise of the service economy, and economic and cultural globalization. The Handbook brings together scholars, teachers, activists, and organizers from across three continents to focus on the study of working-class peoples, cultures, and politics in all their complexity and diversity. The Handbook maps the current state of the field and presents a visionary agenda for future research by mingling the voices and perspectives of founding and emerging scholars. In addition to a framing Introduction and Conclusion written by the co-editors, the volume is divided into six sections: Methods and principles of research in working-class studies; Class and education; Work and community; Working-class cultures; Representations; and Activism and collective action. Each of the six sections opens with an overview that synthesizes research in the area and briefly summarizes each of the chapters in the section. Throughout the volume, contributors from various disciplines explore the ways in which experiences and understandings of class have shifted rapidly as a result of economic and cultural globalization, social and political changes, and global financial crises of the past two decades. Written in a clear and accessible style, the Handbook is a comprehensive interdisciplinary anthology for this young but maturing field, foregrounding transnational and intersectional perspectives on working-class people and issues and focusing on teaching and activism in addition to scholarly research. It is a valuable resource for activists, as well as working-class studies researchers and teachers across the social sciences, arts, and humanities, and it can also be used as a textbook for advanced undergraduate or graduate courses.




The Academy


Book Description