Why am I passionate about this?

I'm a labor journalist. I've spent the past 20 years writing widely about inequality, class war, unions, and the way that power works in America. My parents were civil rights and antiwar activists in the 1960s and 70s, and they instilled in me an appreciation for the fact that social movements are often the only thing standing between regular people and exploitation. My curiosity about power imbalances in America drew me inexorably towards the absence of worker power and led me to the conclusion that the labor movement is the tool that can solve America's most profound problems. I grew up in Florida, live in Brooklyn, and report all over.


I wrote

The Hammer: Power, Inequality, and the Struggle for the Soul of Labor

By Hamilton Nolan,

Book cover of The Hammer: Power, Inequality, and the Struggle for the Soul of Labor

What is my book about?

Inequality is America’s biggest problem. Unions are the strongest tool that working people have to fix it. Organized labor has…

When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep our lights on (or join the rebellion as a member).

The books I picked & why

Book cover of Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor

Hamilton Nolan Why did I love this book?

I know Kim Kelly not just as a great labor reporter but also as an activist in my own union.

She brings her deep enthusiasm for radicalism and social justice to her book, which gives readers a ton of background on the ways that the labor movement has fought not just for rights in the workplace but also for the rights of women, disabled workers, sex workers, prisoners, and other groups marginalized by society.

A great book to learn how organized labor is a full part of the struggle for equality.

By Kim Kelly,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Fight Like Hell as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This revelatory and inclusive book "unearths the stories of the people-farm laborers, domestic workers, factory employees-behind some of the labor movement's biggest successes" (The New York Times) from independent journalist and Teen Vogue labor columnist Kim Kelly.

Freed Black women organizing for protection in the Reconstruction-era South. Jewish immigrant garment workers braving deadly conditions for a sliver of independence. Asian American fieldworkers rejecting government-sanctioned indentured servitude across the Pacific. Incarcerated workers advocating for basic human rights and fair wages. The queer Black labor leader who helped orchestrate America's civil rights movement. These are only some of the heroes who propelled…


Book cover of Beaten Down, Worked Up: The Past, Present, and Future of American Labor

Hamilton Nolan Why did I love this book?

Steven Greenhouse, who spent decades as The New York Times' labor reporter, writes as good a survey of the state of the present-day labor movement as you can find anywhere.

Uber drivers, health care workers, auto workers, and more, this is a book for anyone who wonders where union power stands, how it’s gotten here, and who the players are who are trying to revive unions for a new century.

By Steven Greenhouse,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Beaten Down, Worked Up as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

“A page-turning book that spans a century of worker strikes.... Engrossing, character-driven, panoramic.” —The New York Times Book Review

We live in an era of soaring corporate profits and anemic wage gains, one in which low-paid jobs and blighted blue-collar communities have become a common feature of our nation’s landscape. Behind these trends lies a little-discussed problem: the decades-long decline in worker power. 

Award-winning journalist and author Steven Greenhouse guides us through the key episodes and trends in history that are essential to understanding some of our nation’s most pressing problems, including increased income inequality, declining social mobility, and the…


Ad

Book cover of Our Least Important Asset: Why the Relentless Focus on Finance and Accounting is Bad for Business and Employees

Our Least Important Asset by Peter Cappelli,

Why is it that the way companies are managing employees seems to have gotten worse over time - less training, career development, job security, more stress, and so forth? It is not a push for greater efficiency. These practices end up being more expensive and less efficient.

Two factors provide…

Book cover of On the Line: Two Women's Epic Fight to Build a Union

Hamilton Nolan Why did I love this book?

There aren’t very many books by union organizers because union organizers tend to be busy organizing unions rather than writing books. Daisy Pitkin is the rare person who can do both.

In this book, she recounts her own experience as an organizer on a bitter, five-year campaign to unionize an industrial laundry in Arizona. If you’ve never been through a union campaign yourself, this is the next best thing.

By Daisy Pitkin,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked On the Line as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"Lyrical . . . candid, clear-eyed and utterly engrossing, Pitkin’s writing couldn’t come at a better—or more necessary—time.” —Jessica Bruder, New York Times bestselling author of Nomadland
 
“A riveting and intimate meditation on power, class consciousness, and the true meaning of solidarity.” —Francisco Cantú, New York Times bestselling author of The Line Becomes a River
 
On the Line takes readers inside a bold five-year campaign to organize workers in the dangerous industrial laundry factories of Phoenix, Arizona. Employees here wash hospital, hotel, and restaurant linens and face harsh conditions, and unfair U.S. labor law makes it nearly impossible for them…


Book cover of A History of America in Ten Strikes

Hamilton Nolan Why did I love this book?

The most gaping hole in most people’s knowledge of American history is labor history. Everyone knows the wars and the civil rights movement, but few people know the bloody, grinding struggles that went into giving us all the eight-hour workday and basic protections on the job.

Erik Loomis’s book builds a coherent vision of how major strikes have shaped this nation every bit as much as better-known movements have. This is one book that will open your eyes to the battles that went into many things we all take for granted.

By Erik Loomis,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked A History of America in Ten Strikes as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Powerful and accessible, A History of America in Ten Strikes challenges all of our contemporary assumptions around labour, unions, and American workers.


Ad

Book cover of Up the Down Escalator: Medicine, Motherhood, and Multiple Sclerosis

Up the Down Escalator by Lisa Doggett,

2024 Gold Winner, Benjamin Franklin Awards, Health & Fitness Category

2024 International Book Awards, Winner, Autobiography/Memoir Category and Health: Women's Health Category

A memoir of triumph in the face of a terrifying diagnosis, Up the Down Escalator recounts Dr. Lisa Doggett's startling shift from doctor to patient, as she learns…

Book cover of The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism

Hamilton Nolan Why did I love this book?

You can’t understand the role of labor in America unless you understand slavery, which set the original template for American labor exploitation that still echoes to this day.

This book is one of the best explorations of American slavery, its roots, and its integral connection to the capitalism that surrounds us all.

When you appreciate how long and completely slaves were oppressed and who got the gains of the work they did, you will develop a much sharper appreciation for the importance of maintaining worker power today.

By Edward E. Baptist,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked The Half Has Never Been Told as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Americans tend to cast slavery as a pre-modern institution,the nation's original sin, perhaps, but isolated in time and divorced from America's later success. But to do so robs the millions who suffered in bondage of their full legacy. As historian Edward E. Baptist reveals in The Half Has Never Been Told , the expansion of slavery in the first eight decades after American independence drove the evolution and modernization of the United States. In the span of a single lifetime, the South grew from a narrow coastal strip of worn-out tobacco plantations to a continental cotton empire, and the United…


Explore my book 😀

The Hammer: Power, Inequality, and the Struggle for the Soul of Labor

By Hamilton Nolan,

Book cover of The Hammer: Power, Inequality, and the Struggle for the Soul of Labor

What is my book about?

Inequality is America’s biggest problem. Unions are the strongest tool that working people have to fix it. Organized labor has been in decline for decades. Yet it sits today at a moment of enormous opportunity. Since the pandemic, the popularity of unions has hit historic highs. The battle inside of the labor movement over how to tap into its revolutionary potential will determine the socioeconomic course of American life for years to come. 

In deeply reported chapters that span the country, this book shows readers the actual places where labor and politics meld. Throughout, Nolan follows Sara Nelson, the fiery head of the flight attendants’ union, as she struggles with how to assert herself as a national leader, to try to fix what is broken.

Book cover of Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor
Book cover of Beaten Down, Worked Up: The Past, Present, and Future of American Labor
Book cover of On the Line: Two Women's Epic Fight to Build a Union

Share your top 3 reads of 2024!

And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.

1,898

readers submitted
so far, will you?

Ad

📚 You might also like…

Book cover of Coma and Near-Death Experience: The Beautiful, Disturbing, and Dangerous World of the Unconscious

Coma and Near-Death Experience by Alan Pearce,

What happens when a person is placed into a medically-induced coma?

The brain might be flatlining, but the mind is far from inactive: experiencing alternate lives rich in every detail that spans decades, visiting realms of stunning and majestic beauty, or plummeting to the very depths of Hell while defying…

Book cover of Adventures in the Radio Trade: A Memoir

Adventures in the Radio Trade by Joe Mahoney,

Adventures in the Radio Trade documents a life in radio, largely at Canada's public broadcaster. It's for people who love CBC Radio, those interested in the history of Canadian Broadcasting, and those who want to hear about close encounters with numerous luminaries such as Margaret Atwood, J. Michael Straczynski, Stuart…

5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in African Americans, the economy, and presidential biography?

African Americans 814 books
The Economy 183 books