Radicals in the Barrio uncovers a long and rich history of political radicalism within the Mexican and Chicano working class in the United States. Chacón clearly and sympathetically documents the ways that migratory workers carried with them radical political ideologies, new organizational models, and shared class experience, as they crossed the border into southwestern barrios during the first three decades of the twentieth-century. Justin Akers Chacón previous work includes No One is Illegal: Fighting Racism and State Violence on the U.S.-Mexico Border (with Mike Davis).

When the depression of the 1890s prompted unemployed workers from Los Angeles to join a nationwide march on Washington, “Coxey’s Army” marked the birth of radicalism in that city. In this first book to trace the subsequent struggle between the radical left and L.A.’s power structure, Errol Wayne Stevens tells how both sides shaped the city’s character from the turn of the twentieth century through the civil rights era. On the radical right, Los Angeles’s business elite, supported by the Los Angeles Times, sought the destruction of the trade-union movement—defended on the left by socialists, Wobblies, communists, and other groups. In portraying the conflict between leftist and capitalist visions for the future, Stevens brings to life colorful personalities such as Times publisher Harrison Gray Otis and Socialist mayoral candidate Job Harriman. He also re-creates events such as the 1910 bombing of the Times building, the savage suppression of the 1923 longshoremen’s strike, and the 1965 Watts riots, which signaled that L.A. politics had become divided less along class lines than by complex racial and ethnic differences. The book takes stock of the rivalry between right and left over the several decades in which it repeatedly flared. Radical L.A. is a balanced work of meticulous scholarship that pieces together a rich chronicle usually seen only in smaller snippets or from a single vantage point. It will change the way we see the history of the City of Angels.

Hollywood Unions is a unique collection that tells the stories of the unions and guilds that have organized motion picture and television labor: IATSE, the DGA, SAG-AFTRA, and the WGA. The Hollywood unions represent a wide swath of the workers making media: from directors and stars to grips and makeup artists. People today know some of these organizations from their glitzy annual awards celebrations, but the unions’ actual importance is in bargaining with the Association of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) on behalf of 331,000 workers in the motion picture and television industry. The Hollywood unions are not neutral institutions but rather have long histories of jurisdictional battles, competitions with rival unions, and industry-altering strikes. They have supported the industry’s workers through the Great Depression, World War II, the McCarthy era, the collapse of the studio system, the rise of television, runaway production, fights for gender parity, the digital revolution, and a global pandemic. The history of these unions has contributed to making media work sustainable in the long term and helped shape the conditions and production cultures of Hollywood.

Profiling the ten most populous cities in the United States during ten critical eras of political development, Cities in American Political History presents a unique singular focus on American cities, their government and politics, industry, commerce, labor, and race and ethnicity. Cities in American Political History analyzes the role that large cities from New York to Chicago to San Jose, have played in U.S. politics and policymaking. Each entry is structured for straightforward comparison across issues and eras. The city profiles include basic data and statistics for the era and are accompanied by maps of each era and the largest cities at that time.