The Blue Collar Blues and Other Stories


Book Description

A shipwreck’s tragic toll in human life. The changing face of a quiet turn-of-the century neighborhood. A man who lost his wife unexpectedly. An obnoxious drunk who gets more than he bargained for. A horse who develops an affinity for a Hawaiian saloon. A submarine’s up close and personal encounter with a snoozing whale. Each of these stories and much more are found in “The Blue Collar Blues,” author Bob Stockton’s personal anthology of forty-six short stories that have been published over the past decade. The book’s first section contains stories of a young boy’s coming of age in an ever-changing northeast working-class neighborhood. The second section highlights standalone stories that run from autobiographical to allegorical. The third section focuses on the adventures-and misadventures- of young sailors serving in the U.S. Navy of a half-century past. The fourth section relates actual tales of the U.S. Navy and her sailors deployed along the Pacific Rim. Grab a cup of coffee and escape into the mind of an author with a flair for describing what is really important in life.




Blue Collar Blues


Book Description

A brutal struggle for power in the manipulative automobile industry pits white collar against blue collar. Life altering secrets, pride, ambition, & lust drive them to grab what they can from life, before the upheaval promises to change their relationships forever.




Blue-collar Blues


Book Description




Squid Pulp Blues


Book Description

"On the surface, Thompson looks like any other blue-collar New Jersey town. But beneath the working-class exterior lies a bizarro world of fetishistic crime, sleazy motels, and squid. In these three bizarro-noir novellas, the reader is thrown into a world of murderers, drugs made from squid parts, deformed gun-toting veterans, and a mischievous apocolyptic donkey." -- Back cover




Blues City


Book Description

Readers can take a walk through the vibrant multicultural stew of Oakland, California, conducted by one of America's most distinguished intellectuals and satirists.




One Thing and Another and Other Stories


Book Description

Ever since he moved out of the house, Wednesday has become Simons favorite day of the week. It is the day he picks up his fourteen-year-old daughter, Leni, from school, drives her to her piano lessons, and enjoys a post-lesson weekly dinner ritual with her. But one Wednesday after he drops Leni at home, Simon suddenly has a foreboding feeling that something is wrong and is subsequently led down a path he never could have imagined. In thirteen poignant and compelling stories filled with a varied cast of characters including Billie Holiday and a thinly disguised Paul Newman, Neil Isaacs shares a glimpse into the high and low points in the lives of lovers and loners, siblings and spouses, and families and neighbors. From Marthas Vineyard to Aruba and the Caymans and from Boston to New York and San Antonio, his characters face life-changing moments and learn valuable lessons while dealing with lifes unpredictable challenges. One Thing and Another and Other Stories shares short tales that reveal the quirks and flaws of human nature and prove that we are all more alike than different.




An Injury to All


Book Description

Over the past decade American labor has faced a tidal wave of wage cuts, plant closures and broken strikes. In this first comprehensive history of the labor movement from Truman to Reagan, Kim Moody shows how the AFL-CIO's conservative ideology of "business unionism" effectively disarmed unions in the face of a domestic right turn and an epochal shift to globalized production. Eschewing alliances with new social forces in favor of its old Cold War liaisons and illusory compacts with big business, the AFL-CIO under George Meany and Lane Kirkland has been forced to surrender many of its post-war gains. With extraordinary attention to the viewpoints of rank-and-file workers, Moody chronicles the major, but largely unreported, efforts of labor's grassroots to find its way out of the crisis. In case studies of auto, steel, meatpacking and trucking, he traces the rise of "anti-concession" movements and in other case studies describes the formidable obstacles to the "organization of the unorganized" in the service sector. A detailed analysis of the Rainbow Coalition's potential to unite labor with other progressive groups follows, together with a pathbreaking consideration of the possibilities of a new "labor internationalism."




Corporate Wasteland


Book Description

Through a blend of oral history, photographs, and interpretive essays, 'Corporate Wasteland' encourages readers to look beyond nostalgia as the authors reinterpret our deindustrialised landscape as a historical and imaginative challenge to the ways in which we comprehend and respond to the profound disruptions wrought by globalization.




Dirty Bird Blues


Book Description

A quietly influential force in African American literature and art, Clarence Major makes his Penguin Classics debut with the twenty-fifth-anniversary edition of Dirty Bird Blues The PRH Audio book of Dirty Bird Blues by Clarence Major won a 2022 EARPHONE AWARD. Narrated by Dion Graham. A Penguin Classic Set in post-World War II Chicago and Omaha, the novel features Manfred Banks, a young, harmonica-blowing blues singer who is always writing music in his head. Torn between his friendships with fellow musicians and nightclub life and his responsibilities to his wife and child, along with the pressures of dealing with a racist America that assaults him at every turn, Manfred seeks easy answers in "Dirty Bird" (Old Crow whiskey) and in moving on. He moves to Omaha with hopes of better opportunities as a blue-collar worker, but the blues in his soul and the dreams in his mind keep bringing him back to face himself. After a nightmarish descent into his own depths, Manfred emerges with fresh awareness and possibility. Through Manfred, we witness and experience the process by which modern American English has been vitalized and strengthened by the poetry and the poignancy of the African-American experience. As Manfred struggles with the oppressive constraints of society and his private turmoil, his rich inner voice resonates with the blues.