In this new interpretation of the making of modern America, Dawley traces the group struggles involved in the nation's rise to power. Probing the dynamics of social change, he explores tensions between industrial workers and corporate capitalists, Victorian moralists and New Women, native Protestants and Catholic immigrants.

Ecological causes are championed not only by lobbyists or hikers. While mainstream environmentalism is usually characterized by well-financed, highly structured organizations operating on a national scale, campaigns for environmental justice are often fought by poor or minority communities. Environmentalism and Economic Justice is one of the first books devoted to Chicano environmental issues and is a study of U.S. environmentalism in transition as seen through the contributions of people of color. It elucidates the various forces driving and shaping two important examples of environmental organizing: the 1965-71 pesticide campaign of the United Farm Workers and a grazing conflict between a Hispano cooperative and mainstream environmentalists in northern New Mexico. The UFW example is one of workers highly marginalized by racism, whose struggle--as much for identity as for a union contract--resulted in boycotts of produce at the national level. The case of the grazing cooperative Ganados del Valle, which sought access to land set aside for elk hunting, represents a subaltern group fighting the elitism of natural resource policy in an effort to pursue a pastoral lifestyle. In both instances Pulido details the ways in which racism and economic subordination create subaltern communities, and shows how these groups use available resources to mobilize and improve their social, economic, and environmental conditions. Environmentalism and Economic Justice reveals that the environmental struggles of Chicano communities do not fit the mold of mainstream environmentalism, as they combine economic, identity, and quality-of-life issues. Examination of the forces that create and shape these grassroots movements clearly demonstrates that environmentalism needs to be sensitive to local issues, economically empowering, and respectful of ethnic and cultural diversity.

"Knowledge for Justice: An Ethnic Studies Reader is a joint publication of UCLA's four ethnic studies research centers (American Indian Studies, Asian American Studies, Chicana/o Studies, and African American Studies) and their administrative organization, the Institute of American Cultures. This book is premised on the assumption articulated by Johnnella Butler that ethnic studies is an essential and valuable course of study and follows an intersectional approach in organizing the articles. The book is divided into five sections-Legacies at Fifty, Formations and Ways of Being, Gender and Sexuality, Arts and Cultural Production, and Social Movements, Justice, and Politics-with each center contributing one or more articles or book chapters to each. In focusing on the intersectional intellectual, social, and political struggles that confront all of the groups represented in this anthology, the selections nonetheless articulate the specificity of each racial ethnic group's struggle, while simultaneously interrogating the ways in which such labels or categories are inadequate. The editors selected articles that not only address intersectional issues confronting various ethnic constituencies, but that also complicate the categories of representation undergirding such a project itself"--

Examines the efforts of many different people in American history to secure equal treatment in such areas as religion, voting rights, education, housing, and employment.

A collection of essays and photographs depicts injustice in America, demonstrating the progress and distance the nation still needs to go.