Finally available in paperback,Power and Cultureis the last work by America’s most influential labor and social historian, the late Herbert Gutman. Edited and introduced by Gutman’s colleague Ira Berlin, the book includes original, unpublished essays from throughout Gutman’s career and important but unavailable works from journals and periodicals, as well as an extended interview with Gutman and a comprehensive bibliography of his works.
Power and Culturefeatures essays on the lives of workers and the formation of class during the “Gilded Age” of American corporations, and on the lives of African American slaves and freedmen—the studies for which Gutman became famous. But it also shows the range of his thought on such subjects asRootsand popular historical awareness. With Berlin’s critical and biographical introduction,Power and Cultureis an important reappraisal of a major scholar.