American labour's cold war abroad : from deep freeze to detente, 1945-1970

Abstract

Tony Carew has been working on US labour unions’ Cold War activities ever since his pioneering monograph Labour Under the Marshall Plan (1987). Through a variety of subsequent essays, he then expanded his range to encompass other regions and moments of labour’s international conflicts, and he delved deeper into his key actors’ backgrounds, motivations and foibles. In the process, he gained unrivalled mastery of many, often obscure, archival sources and collected an impressive range of oral interviews. Long recognised as the undisputed authority on the subject, he now has systematised his refined knowledge in a comprehensive reconstruction that reaches up to the era of détente, thus embracing the entire cycle of rising, consolidating and then waning Cold War antagonism in the trade union domain.