Table of Contents

Select labor film categories -- Tracing the history of labor films: a chronology.

About the Author

Tom Zaniello is Director of the Honors Program at Northern Kentucky University and Adjunct Professor at the National Labor College, George Meany Center for Labor Studies. His books include Hopkins in the Age of Darwin and Explorations in Reading and Writing.

Reviews

"Working Stiffs is an invaluable resource for folks with an interest in representations of working people... By covering such a broad range of films, Zaniello implicitly illustrates the ways in which processes of selection, distribution and availability of media images effect our perceptions of labor and working people."-Edward Burch, The Paper, August 29, 2003. "Zaniello's comments on the films are useful and perceptive, offering insight into the films' political and artistic strengths and weaknesses and supporting material that will prove invaluable to anyone trying to organize a film series or choose a film for a class. And the breadth of the selections should make it fairly easy to find a film for any purpose."-ASR: Anarcho-Syndicalist Review, Winter 2004 "Zaniello is an authority on the labor movement, not motion pictures, yet he manages to parlay his avocational cinematic knowledge into a highly entertaining collection of witty entries, well grounded in the principles of film aesthetics and criticism, and fully knowledgeable about the films' social and historical contexts."-American Reference Books Annual 2004 "Comprehensive, richly informed, sound in its judgments and highly entertaining, Working Stiffs is an invaluable reference tool for scholars in a wide variety of fields. It's also a treasure for non-specialist fans like myself who sometimes get lost without a paddle in video stores."-Benjamin DeMott "Tom Zaniello's encyclopedic guide is an indispensable contribution to film and labor studies as well as to the community of labor activists and others concerned with labor issues. Its inclusive sweep is an inspiring reminder of the diversity and complexity of film's treatment of labor and working people, locally and globally. Zaniello's guide to important but hard-to-get or unavailable films celebrates social commitment in film and protests its erasure."-Linda Dittmar, University of Massachusetts, Boston "With close attention to detail, Tom Zaniello has created a long overdue guide to films that tell entertaining and heartfelt stories of working people-stories that are as vital today as ever before. It would take years to find all the information contained in this one book. Working Stiffs, Union Maids, Reds, and Riffraff is a wonderful compilation of hidden treasures for audiences everywhere."-Barbara Kopple, filmmaker