No comments about Diamond Mines: Baseball & Labor (Sports and Entertainment).

5 comments about The Killing of Karen Silkwood.

1. I have yet to encounter a non- fiction piece so captivating and hard to put down as The Killing of Karen Silkwood. This book goes far beyond her life as depicted in the movie, and the story behind all the people who believed in her and sacrificed tremendous amounts of time and energy at great personal danger to themselves after her death is phenomenal. What really amazed me was the sheer number of government agencies that were involved in spying on and covering up evidence as revealed through depositions, leaks, and court ordered documents. So many that no one seemed to be able to link them together (not even among themselves) except Silkwood's legal and investigative team. I had no idea so many police type agencies existed. It really is unsettling. The research this author did feels exhausting it is so through. The story goes on for over 10 years after her death, and it is well worth reading. It is alot more than just a private citizen (survivors) suing a private corporation. This book is reprinted after many years since it's original publication with several follow-up chapters added. The added chapters really tease you especially where the author indicated that a confidential inside source revealed that they saw a file that documented that the FBI knew very clearly who killed Karen Silkwood.



2. I became interested in Karen Silkwood after watching the 1983 movie "Silkwood". The film seemed to suggest that Silkwood was murdered, but a number of reviews I subsequently read dismissed "Silkwood" as an irresponsible docudrama that was based on sensationalism rather than fact.

   After reading Richard Rashke's "The Killing of Karen Silkwood", I'd have to say that the film didn't take its allegations far enough. Based on thousands of pages of court documents, including depositions, sworn statements, internal memos, and federal records, Rashke makes a convincing case for the following:

   Silkwood was deliberately contaminated with plutonium by someone at Kerr-McGee, perhaps on several occasions. Had she lived, Silkwood had a good likelihood of developing cancer because of the significant exposure she experienced.

   Silkwood was most likely carrying important documents the night she was murdered; among other things, she had proof that 42.5 pounds of plutonium was missing from K-M's Cimarron plant, which is enough to make three or four nuclear bombs.

   Security at the Cimarron plant was dangerously lax, as were safety measures. Workers received little education in regards to nuclear energy or the safety risks that accompany it, and consequently contamination was not taken seriously by employees.

   Union members' (and particularly Karen Silkwood's) rights were repeatedly violated by K-M officials, who continually interfered in union activities and even began to spy on Silkwood.

   However, the conspiracy surrounding Silkwood's death became even more heinous and inconceivable as Silkwood's side investigated in preparation for trial. Though the truth will probably never be known, Rashke lays out a compelling - though sketchy - account, involving the FBI, the CIA, the National Intelligence Agency (NIA), the National Security Agency (NSA), the Justice Department, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), and a shadowy network of Iranians, Russians, and Israelis. Rashke hints at an international plutonium smuggling ring, and supplies evidence that the FBI was responsible for illegally and covertly spying on a number of organizations as late as the mid-1970s, including various labor unions and their members - and Silkwood was one of their targets.

   Rashke's story might sound unbelievable, but most of it is based on public court documents. His interviews with the assorted players in the case may be less trustworthy; yet, many statements are corroborated by court papers. Also lending credence to the Silkwood camp's version of the story is the fact that several significant witnesses died, disappeared, or were threatened during the investigation and ensuing court case. Additionally, the Silkwood lawyers and investigator received death threats and were followed and even assaulted - one must wonder why, if the Silkwood case was wholly without merit. Especially appalling is the federal government's role in the affair, and their failure to cooperate with the civil case.

   "Who Killed Karen Silkwood" reads like a novel - it's a compelling book that's hard to put down. Indeed, I expect that I won't soon be able to forget about Silkwood's story and its larger implications. I'm far from what you'd call a conspiracy nut (though I love the X-Files, I identify with Scully as opposed to Mulder!) - yet, the evidence in this case is as convincing as it is frightening. The final two pages will simply blow you away.

   My only gripe - Rashke's update to the 2nd edition of the book (released to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Silkwood's death) was sorely lacking. He made no mention of what's become of those involved in the case; of any information, either directly or indirectly related to the case, that's been discovered since the end of the investigation; or of the movie, which was a critical and box-office success. Rashke coins the newest section "The Legacy", but he doesn't discuss Silkwood's legacy even briefly. The new chapters focus on the court battles since May 1979 and K-M's troubles with and termination of their nuclear program, but speak little of Silkwood.




3. Here is a story that has probably been largely forgotten, of a young woman who fought a powerful corporation and an inept government (and very likely died for her efforts), and the idealistic and courageous people who came together to discover the truth.
   
   If you were alive in the 70s you might remember Karen Silkwood, her mysterious death, and the court case that went on for years. At least two movies were made about her, but movies scripts can seldom tell the whole story or portray history with accuracy because of the demands of drama and story arc. So while I thought that I had a fairly good understanding of the events of Karen Silkwood's death, I have learned from reading this book that there was so very much more to the story. Not only was Silkwood incredibly brave, but the lawyers who took on her case were equally so. In more than one instance, Dan Sheehan, the lead attorney, must tell his investigator, "You're about to be killed. I've been contacted by the White House..."
   
   From rural Oklahoma and an undereducated young working class woman whose cause was simply to improve the working conditions for the employees in a Kerr-McGee plutonium plant, arose what was possibly a conspiracy that could rival any international spy network: FBI, CIA, NSA, the White House, double agents, foreign powers, death threats, and more. How could such a simple woman as Karen Silkwood become involved in this level of intrigue? Richard Rashke did a masterful job of research, presenting the evidence in such a way that the reader can evaluate the evidence himself.
   
   If Silkwood's story were not true, this book would stand as spirited fiction and would make better reading than many a spy novel; but Silkwood's story is true and this book exposes the depth of corruption, greed, cover-ups, and abuse of power that our government practiced in the 60s and 70s, and probably still practices today. The difference then though, is that exposing the government's actions led to reform-today, no one seems to care.



4. This book is not easy but it is readable if you pay attention to details about the nuclear industry. I suspect Karen's death was murder because she was getting too involved in trying to protect her colleagues and herself from getting cancer. Although the movie version changes the relationship between she and her housemate, this book explains so much more. It is a must have book involving a conspiracy that has never truly gone away. Kerr-McGee is still alive and well and thriving but Karen Gay Silkwood was an important and tragic heroine who died risking her life. She may not have been mother of the year to her three children but her contributions and searh for the truth about nuclear contamination is admirable. I know more about her and I like her. Of course, she is not flawless but human like the rest of us.



5. 
   When reality passes fantasy!
   
   The only book I've purchased twice.

2 comments about Organize Your Home Office.

1. I happened across this book when I was actually in an office supply store shopping for furniture for my home office--naturally the title caught my attention immediately!

   I am finding ORGANIZE YOUR HOME OFFICE! to be a helpful guide through this project because it addresses my specific situation--setting up a home office from scratch. This would NOT be the best choice if you've already been working at home for years and need to declutter and rearrange, but for the "beginner" it's a handy checklist of things to keep in mind so you can start out organized and hopefully stay that way. Not a lot of specific details or anecdotes, but a comprehensive outline to keep you on track.




2. This book is extremely practical and to-the-point. The author did well to spare the annoying anecdotes and tedious end-of-chapter reviews or exercises you sometimes find in books like this. All aspects of the home office are addressed, including how to handle your workflow, what supplies to buy, and even what to do if you have children in your home. (Note that the technology tips will naturally be dated.) This is a great book for the starter who just wants to get right down to business, and it also serves as a good reference for the person who is already working from home.

No comments about Convergence and Persistence in Corporate Governance.

No comments about Lord, Please Don't Take Me in August: African-Americans in Newport and Saratoga Springs, 1870-1930 (Blacks in the New World).

2 comments about The Sign of the Burger: McDonald's and the Culture of Power (Labor in Crisis).

1. This book is a refreshing break from the self-indulgent prattle of cultural studies. Taking an autobiographical theme, blending it with a bricolage of good research, the author looks at the power behind the McDonald's corporation. Examining the hegemonic implications of McDonald's, Kincheloe never ceases to entertain, teach, and create the best page-turner of the year--read this book if you are interested in consumer colonialism.



2. This book exemplifies why I tend to stay away from "critical studies" (or whatever academic current this represents). Written by a professor in an obscure vocabulary that reeks of self-appointed elitism, it develops a convoluted argument against McDonald's as a cultural force that is subverting the polticial process in America and even the world. He claims that a burger is not just a burger, but instead eating one is a political act and even a religious ritual without offering anything in support of such claims except his weird academic discipline.
   
   While I find much of value in such radical critiques as No Logo or Fast Food Nation, which in spite of their excesses explore very worthy questions, this book is simply off the deep end. Even worse, though the author claims he has done field research in conversations with people queueing at McDonald's, the book is really pure academic indulgence in the form of an incestuous group that reads and supports eachothers' writing - and perpetuates a common vacabulary.
   
   These views are so outrageously silly and incoherent that it is hard to believe someone can make a living by writing - and teaching - about it. For example, he argues that in enticing kids into the McDo world, the company is decisively damaging the child-parent relationship because kids will nag their parents to get burgers. Well, my kids do, but we set limits on them anyway - once a week or less - and they forget about it immediately. What is the big deal about that?
   
   Moreover, the author is baffled that the people he interviews in line get angry when he implies they don't get the dangerous "politics" behind the act of getting a burger, ie support of a global capitalist system, etc etc. Gosh, maybe they are just in a hurry and don't want to listen to the weird trip that some high-fallutin intellectual tries to impose in them. Why, I wonder, can't a person just like the burgers without becoming a sop to "hegemonistic" big capital? Afterall, the ultimate consumer control is just deciding not to buy them - and lots of us do so. Whether he likes it or not, that option exists.
   
   I wish I could say that I learned something useful from this book, but I didn't. Instead, I waded through such phrases as: "When consumers are in hermeneutic freefall, they are set up for advertisers poised to insert corporate consumption values into the vacuum left by the dissolution of previous beliefs." If this guy is trying to connect to the public, he's got a LONG way to go.
   
   If I could put his argument in a nutshell, it is that McDonald's is both a ("modernist") corporation that seeks operational efficiency with ruthless rationality and a ("post-modernist") manufacturer of culture that speaks to our unconscious needs. In a confusing age ("hyperreality"), he argues, the company strives to be a place of stability and value for customers that fills an existential gap in their lives. By extension, he claims, just going there co-opts us all into its "hegeomonistic ideology" of global capitalism and hence is inherently political. This is strong stuff with a ton of questionable assumptions built in.
   
   The author never, so far as I can tell, approached anyone inside of McDonald's - the supposed evil cabal that is seeking to dominate the world through the insidious exploitation of our children - preferring instead to create the most ridiculous of caricatures. For example, he claims that McDo's early managers were supposed to be uniform anti-intellectual automatons, that Ronald McDonald is actually a reflection of Ray Kroc's right-wing ideology, etc. This type of analysis is not only inaccurate - Kroc preferred diversity of opinion and cultivated it - but it is about as sophisticated as a maoist comic book.
   
   The factual inaccuracies are also legion, such as the author's claim that Kroc hired only men as managers - one of his key executives from the beginning was a woman - or even the date that Kroc gained complete control. While these are details, they signal a sloppiness with how he deals with the company that should make the careful reader suspicious.
   
   At the heart of all of this, in my view, Kincheloe confuses riding the wave of economic forces with the underlieing causes of socio-economic transformation. McDo rode the wave of suburbanization and the development of industrial-style fast food - it didn't invent the wave, yet it exploited it better than did the other fast food chains. It does have an impact on our culture, to be sure, but I don't think its influence is much larger than deciding to buy a burger once a week or once a day. Furthermore, there is an unproven assumption that once set in childhood, eating patterns will never change. Again, this pathetically exagerates the impact of the company: I used to eat a burger a day, and now I don't. I bet there are a lot of people like me - our tastes evolve. Duh.
   
   However, what the author totally misses, in my opinion, is that McDo is in fact a relatively responsive corporation that is learning to listen to its critics. It is beginning to work with some NGOs and corporate watchdogs, and will evolve. Sure, a lot of it may be enlightened self interest, but would it be better if the company ignored its critics? I think that how McDo responds to situations is more than just cynical ploys to fend off lawsuits, though I suspect that that opinion is too nuanced for those who want simple enemies. THere are people who care in the company - it is not a monolith of greedy exploiters of children as Kincheloe would have us belive, but a living institution that can strive to change for the better. Why should we not take the company at its word, that is, look at what it says it is trying to do and then make it live up to those ideals? While many would regard this as naively optimistic, the only thing I have to say is that as a reporter I have observed that such corporations do exist and I believe that McDonald's is striving to be one of them. That doesn't mean these companies always do the right thing and that things shouldn't be better, but there are smart people in them who want to and are working within the system to change them - they can be allies to corporate critics, if we choose to work with them rather than automatically against them.
   
   So, I would not recommend this book. Look elsewhere for useful critiques of capitalism and burger empires. THere are many books far more worthy of thoughtful examination.

No comments about The Jobless Future: Sci-Tech and the Dogma of Work.

1 comments about Internal Improvement: National Public Works and the Promise of Popular Government in the Early United States.

1. John Larson has written one of the more important studies of the political economy of the antebellum republic. He has given me a new way to look at antebellum politics and an insight into the transition from the republican ideology of the founders to the triumph of laissez-faire capitalism in the post Civil War period.
   Before I explain his thesis, I want to express my admiration for aspects of his scholarly ethic. Larson has read deeply in original sources. He is as familiar with the daily debates in the U.S. Congress from around 1790 to 1860 as anybody I have ever read.
   He is equally at home in the writings of Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Madison, Gallantin, Jackson, Van Buren, John Taylor, Stephen Douglas, Henry Clay, Calhoun, ad infinitum. Readers of history owe a debt to writers who mine deeply into original sources. I thank Larson for that.
   I appreciate his apparatus of notes and bibliography. I learned about at least five books that I will read in the future. His footnotes are worth reading. He will often in a footnote refer to several different authors on an issue who disagree with each other. Another great service.
   All the more reason for me to be dismayed by one flaw in his writing that I will discuss later.
   Larson is telling the story of early attempts to build a transportation infrastructure in this country. We ended the Revolutionary War as thirteen separate countries. Most founders saw the need to unite the country by making economic interchange more open and easy.
   The problem was that we were largely a people that had for several hundred of years faced the Atlantic seaboard. Our economy was based on great port cities like Boston, New York and Baltimore. But with the push westward the need grew to create an efficient means to trade between the interior and the seaboard.
   The problem was that whatever technology was chosen to meet transportation needs (roads, river improvement, canals) all required large amounts of money. It really was more than any one person or even group of people could raise at the time. The ventures also tended to be risky. Canal engineering was nascent. Technical issues were solved (often poorly) as the canals were being built. It might be years before investors would see a return if ever.
   For these and other reasons, the supporters of these projects turned to the state and federal governments for the financial means to build the needed infrastructure.
   And there the fun began. The politics of the time was not conducive to the national government uniting behind the idea of supporting the building of improvements.
   Larson is very good at expounding all the byzantine (and sometime overlapping) schisms that fought over these issues. There were strict constructionists (usually from Virginia) who claimed that the federal government did not have the constitutional authority to build roads or canals. Nationalists like Henry Clay argued to the contrary. There were sectional schisms between east and west, north and south. There were concerns about the growing power of new states to make demands on the original thirteen, about the growth of the Slave power, about cabals of oligarchs lying in ambush to grow rich on taxes. There was competition between canals and railroads.
   Behind all of these theoretical and political differences were the economic interests of the areas that would be effected by the improvements and those that wouldn't.
   And in the middle of all this political folderol is the success of the Erie Canal. The Canal had many advantages over other projects. The elevation difference that the entire Canal had to confront was only 600+ feet. Thus technical problems were minimized. The Canal was brilliantly promoted in New York by DeWitt Clinton. The building was very well managed. They built it one section at a time and started running the completed section to support the building of the more difficult sections. This was very different from most projects that typically tried to build all sections at once to keep all the different constituencies effected by the canals happy.
   The success of the Erie Canal made New York City the business and capital center of North America. The irony of that is that the capital accumulation there would later make possible the building of railroads that would doom the Canal.
   All of this is told within the framework of what I see as Larson's main theme. He is appalled by the transition from the republican rhetoric of the founders to the liberal capitalist state that would give us Jay Gould. Larson feels that because of the intransigence of Southern oligarchs, of the facile and self-serving paternalism of the Jacksonians and all the other politicians who blocked every effort by the national government to build and control our infrastructure that we were driven into the unfeeling hands of the corporate capitalists. We never got a chance to see if government could build and run these improvements in the interests of the people.
   I have two comments. In spite of my heartfelt sympathy with his point of view, his own history documents that most every time the government was involved it became a means of enriching those involved. Sad but true. The greed of the capitalist was usually more efficient than the greed of the politicians.
   My last comment is in regard to Larson's writing. I felt many times that he simply didn't even try to present his story fairly. It is very easy 150 years later to see how hollow a philosophy is. The business of the historian is to try to present that philosophy to us in such a way as to help us see why it was taken seriously at the time. Larson's disdain for the constructionism of John Taylor or for Jackson drips from his pen. This is his one failure as a historian. Don't avoid the book just because of that. There is too much to be learned here.

5 comments about Which Side Are You On?: Trying to Be for Labor When It's Flat on Its Back (Plume).

1. This is an excellent book about labor unions which sides with labor from a fresh perspective. Pro free trade, the author is not just peddling the same old protectionist line. From the first line of the book, you realize this author knows what he's talking about and speaks for no one but himself. Also a good book for anyone interested in the fortunes of the Democratic party.



2. Never mind that Geohogan was dead wrong about the future of organized labor or that his pre-Clinton paleoliberalism is dated and painfully overwrought or even that he would have deep and abiding personal contempt for a conservative like me. This guy can flat-out write like a dream.

   Without a doubt, every anecdote in this book is exaggerated and twisted for rhetorical effect. But what a memoir it is, alternately melancholy and funny, by a great storyteller who has the self-awareness to mock his own martyr complex.

   A classic of style over substance.




3. This is an outstanding book, full of heart and voice. I've begun using it in my Business Reporting class at Boston University.



4. How can you be "for labor" these days?
   
   Some realities:
   
   1. Union membership as a percentage of the workforce continues its four-decade decline.
   2. The public reputation of unions has never recovered from the corruption scandals of the 1950s.
   3. Michael Moore has done everything he can to revitalize unions, to no avail. He won a Golden Globe; if HE can't do it...
   4. The very recent splintering of the AFL-CIO could be the beginning of the end.
   5. We've become too isolated and self-centered as a society for this stuff to work here in the foreseeable future.
   
   That said, T.G. personifies the idealistic young lawyer who really wants to help. I was that person once, too. I perceived union leaders as thuggish, power-centric, retrograde, defensive and whatever the exact opposite of visionary is. Leadership makes or breaks human endeavor; I interpreted this to mean that unions were hopeless.
   
   PS - I would like to know whether this book trades on E-Bay; the irony would be irresistable.



5. You know how some people say, "I don't believe in religion, but I believe in God"? Thomas Geoghegan doesn't necessarily believe in labor unions, but he believes in labor. Or maybe: he doesn't believe ultimate salvation is to be found in unions, but that there's no alternative to them for now, and that without them we're ... well, we're in the state we're in today, where workers are powerless and can be left unemployed and uninsured at any moment. A world without unions is a world where we're scared.
   
   This is just not the world we ought to be living in. There is a better way and a better world, of course. We know that we can't get to this world on our own. On our own, we are isolated from the rest of those who are suffering. We are powerless so long as we are isolated.
   
   It's virtually an axiom, then, that some form of collective resistance to limitlessly powerful corporations is necessary. We simply cannot do it on our own. It does not follow, however, that labor unions are the ideal form of that resistance. It also doesn't follow that government is the ideal form. But in their highly imperfect way, says Thomas Geoghegan, labor unions are far better than a world without them. He backs this up with story upon story about corporations absolutely crushing workers in the absence of any labor-union resistance.
   
   Geoghegan himself is a labor lawyer who's been fighting the fight alongside labor unions for a quarter century or more. He's also often worked against them: he's sued the Teamsters repeatedly, in essence fighting for more union democracy. He's trying to get the unions that the employees deserve.
   
   He's not had much luck fighting against them. For a short time, Geoghegan's heart leapt for joy when Ron Carey was at the Teamsters' helm, but the Carey era ended quickly enough and James P. Hoffa (son of Jimmy Hoffa) took over.
   
   As for fighting alongside them, that hasn't worked very well either. Unions are down to 10% or so of the working population. Not coincidentally (as any reader of Paul Krugman knows well), the Democratic party is in a shambles and has been for at least thirty years. The Democrats need the unions.
   
   What makes this book so agonizing is Geoghegan's insistence that a few little changes would bring democracy to the unions, unions to the workers, and the Democratic party to power. One such change is a card-check system like the one Canada uses. Consequently, Canadian union membership has been consistently in the 30% range for at least a decade. When we dream of the better world that Canadians seem to inhabit, it's well to consider how they got there.
   
   The fact that just over the border is a country not much different than ours, but whose policies could hardly be more different, gives the lie to the notion that unions have disappeared in the U.S. because of changing workplaces. Yes, we're now a service economy rather than an industrial economy. But so is Canada. Geoghegan dispenses with any number of commonplaces like this one.
   
   In general, he spends the most time dismantling the idea that unions' disappearance is in some sense "natural." It's not. It has a lot to do with Republicans and with conservative courts. It has to do with Taft-Hartley. It has to do with one law after another that smashed unions into the ground. There was nothing natural about it.
   
   This book doesn't give much in the way of solutions, but I'm not even sure that's its point. Merely getting people -- especially Democrats -- to recognize a problem is plenty. Getting them to recognize a human-created problem is better still. Along the way, Geoghegan is impossibly funny, chatty, and self-deprecating. While I can't quite call this book a "joy" -- it's too maddening for that -- I do submit that it's indispensible and should be on every American's bookshelf.

No comments about Labor Regulation in a Global Economy (Issues in Work and Human Resources).