Since the 1960s, historians of labor and the working class have diligently sought to expand our knowledge and understanding of their subject by employing perspectives that transcend an institutional or “top down” approach long associated with the Wisconsin School and its practitioners. To a remarkable degree, this “new” labor history has been successful and some credit must go to The Working Class in American History series published by the University of Illinois Press. Since the series began under the guidance of luminaries Herbert Gutman, David Montgomery, and David Brody in the 1970s, nearly 150 monographs have been published, many of them noteworthy. To that list we may now add Matthew E. Stanley's book, Grand Army of Labor.
Stanley's work surveys the profound impact that the Civil War and its memory held on American workers in the decades from the end of the war until World War II. In this...
