The UAW engaged in these struggles in an attempt to build a cross-class, multiracial reform coalition that would push American politics beyond liberalism and toward social democracy. The effort was in vain; forced to work within political structures - particularly the postwar Democratic party - that militated against change, the union was unable to fashion the alliance it sought. The UAW's political activism nevertheless suggests a new understanding of labor's place in postwar American politics and of the complex forces that defined liberalism in that period. The book also supplies the first detailed discussion of the impact of the Vietnam War on a major American union and shatters the popular image of organized labor as being hawkish on the war.

From the National Book Award winner, a masterful history of the decade whose conflicts shattered America’s postwar order and divide us still. On July 4, 1961, the rising middle-class families of a Chicago neighborhood gathered before their flag-bedecked houses, a confident vision of the American Dream. That vision was shattered over the following decade, its inequities at home and arrogance abroad challenged by powerful civil rights and antiwar movements. Assassinations, social violence, and the blowback of a “silent majority” shredded the American fabric. Covering the late 1950s through the early 1970s, The Shattering focuses on the period’s fierce conflicts over race, sex, and war. The civil rights movement develops from the grassroots activism of Montgomery and the sit-ins, through the violence of Birmingham and the Edmund Pettus Bridge, to the frustrations of King’s Chicago campaign, a rising Black nationalism, and the Nixon-era politics of busing and the Supreme Court. The Vietnam war unfolds as Cold War policy, high-stakes politics buffeted by powerful popular movements, and searing in-country experience. Americans’ challenges to government regulation of sexuality yield landmark decisions on privacy rights, gay rights, contraception, and abortion. Kevin Boyle captures the inspiring and brutal events of this passionate time with a remarkable empathy that restores the humanity of those making this history. Often they are everyday people like Elizabeth Eckford, enduring a hostile crowd outside her newly integrated high school in Little Rock, or Estelle Griswold, welcoming her arrest for dispensing birth control information in a Connecticut town. Political leaders also emerge in revealing detail: we track Richard Nixon’s inheritances from Eisenhower and his debt to George Wallace, who forged a message of racism mixed with blue-collar grievance that Nixon imported into Republicanism. The Shattering illuminates currents that still run through our politics. It is a history for our times.

Winner of the National Book Award for Nonfiction An electrifying story of the sensational murder trial that divided a city and ignited the civil rights struggle In 1925, Detroit was a smoky swirl of jazz and speakeasies, assembly lines and fistfights. The advent of automobiles had brought workers from around the globe to compete for manufacturing jobs, and tensions often flared with the KKK in ascendance and violence rising. Ossian Sweet, a proud Negro doctor-grandson of a slave-had made the long climb from the ghetto to a home of his own in a previously all-white neighborhood. Yet just after his arrival, a mob gathered outside his house; suddenly, shots rang out: Sweet, or one of his defenders, had accidentally killed one of the whites threatening their lives and homes. And so it began-a chain of events that brought America's greatest attorney, Clarence Darrow, into the fray and transformed Sweet into a controversial symbol of equality. Historian Kevin Boyle weaves the police investigation and courtroom drama of Sweet's murder trial into an unforgettable tapestry of narrative history that documents the volatile America of the 1920s and movingly re-creates the Sweet family's journey from slavery through the Great Migration to the middle class. Ossian Sweet's story, so richly and poignantly captured here, is an epic tale of one man trapped by the battles of his era's changing times.

Poetry. Winner of the 2004 New Issues Poetry Prize. Judge: Rodney Jones. "Kevin Boyle's poems are edgy and sometimes gritty as they cut to the bone of human experience--love, fatherhood, and work. These stunning poems offer the sweep of history as well as the inward gaze. Like many of our favorite Irish and Irish-American poets, Boyle is a great storyteller, and narratives and incidents he records in the poems are unforgettable. The beautiful surfaces of his work often serve to make the water appear safe for the reader--all the while peril reigns below"--Stuart Dischell.

Starting in May of 1979 Kevin Boyle set off on six-decade journey to see the world on foot, 26 miles at a time. This whimsical book tells the tale of this journey highlighting races along the way, as well as offering tips to both first time runners as well as experienced marathoners. Focusing on one marathon per decade, the author not only provides amusing anecdotes of both the training and actual races, he offers an in depth analysis of how the marathon has changed over the years. From his Dad passing him a can of coke at mile marker 20 in 1979 for hydration, to today’s high tech hydration systems he traces this and other changes in the event. He also recounts experiencing the lows in the marathon to include running in the 2013 Boston Marathon marred by bombings. Spanning six decades this book appeals to high school runners, collegiate runners, recreational runners and masters runners. Always stressing positive mental attitude and flexibility, this book will leave the reader laughing while at the same time feeling ready to take on the challenge of their first, or next, race.

Presents a selection of questions and answers covering the principles of democracy, including human rights, free and fair elections, open and accountable government, and civil society.

This text focuses on the working people who, in the first three decades of the 20th century, made Detroit into one of the world's great industrial cities. Telling their stories through photographs with captions explaining its content and context, it examines the world as they lived and changed it.

I did not set out to change the way the world manages crime and corruption but that is the potential outcome of the successful prevention solution I founded 25 years ago in commerce. Be careful what you look for... I have been obstructed within and outside the security industry from further employing and developing the solution and this book is written to tell its story so that you can decide on its merits and future. After a brief 5 year career in policing I transferred the best practice policing methods into proprietary security management in commerce and quickly found that they did not prevent offending and, indeed, probably aggravated it. When highlighting this with peers I was told I was going soft and told to get tougher which simply posed more questions than answers so I began to answer those questions. I discovered that since policing was incepted over 2000 years ago, it has been societys expert purveyor of crime prevention method and advice and this has gone unquestioned and unchallenged over that time. What has evolved is that policing is the fence at the top of the cliff of societal crime management as well as the ambulance at the bottom creating a serious conflict of interest that has allowed the anomaly to be perpetuated and manifest itself into the systemic failure of our criminal justice system. This failed ideology has inexorably crept into the private security industry as best practice in prevention management that now manages crime and corruption in commerce and sports (and other areas) where it achieves the same failed prevention outcomes. Whether you are an athlete in sport, an employee in commerce or a citizen of society you will recognize this truth and this book gives you the opportunity to build a fence at the top of the cliff for the first time in the history of crime and corruption management.