Women have been the mainstay of the grueling, seasonal canning industry for over a century. This book is their collective biography--a history of their family and work lives, and of their union. Out of the labor militancy of the 1930s emerged the United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing, and Allied Workers of America (UCAPAWA). Quickly it became the seventh largest CIO affiliate and a rare success story of women in unions. Thousands of Mexican and Mexican-American women working in canneries in southern California established effective, democratic trade union locals run by local members. These rank-and-file activists skillfully managed union affairs, including negotiating such benefits as maternity leave, company-provided day care, and paid vacations--in some cases better benefits than they enjoy today. But by 1951, UCAPAWA lay in ruins--a victim of red baiting in the McCarthy era and of brutal takeover tactics by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

This is the second of two Library of America volumes (the companion volume

Route 66 uses oral history and photography as the basis for a human study of this country's most famous road. Historic times, dates, places, and events are described in the words of men and women who were there: driving the highway, cooking hamburgers, creating pottery, and pumping gas. As much as the concrete, gravel, and tar spread in a sweeping arc from Chicago to Santa Monica, those people are Route 66. Their stories and portraits are the biography of the highway.

Traces the genealogy of Frank and Jessie James, and shares brief anecdotes about the brothers and their immediate relatives

Documents the early campaigns of the Civil War with photographs of soldiers, officers, and battlefields

This book explains the growth of the cowboy myth, assesses the effect of that myth on American values and dreams, and contrasts the now-legendary cowboy image with historical reality

Describes the last twenty-four hours of President Lincoln's life and how his assassin spent those hours

Volume 1 of the classic edition of Lewis and Clark's day-by-day journals that later became the basis for U.S. claims to Oregon and the West. Accurate and invaluable geographical, botanical, biological, meteorological and anthropological material. Complete 1893 edition, edited by Elliott Coues from Biddle's authorized 1814 history.