Please feel free to share with your patrons and anyone else who might be interested. Join author Ted McClelland as he gives a presentation on his book Midnight in Vehicle City. Register here: https://commercetwp-library.libcal.com/event/12850078 The tumultuous Flint Sit-Down Strike of 1936 to 1937 symbolized the start of the United Auto Workers and set the standard for wages in every industry. This historic transformation of the economic structure in the U.S. ultimately established the golden age of the American middle class. The causes for which the strikers sat down–collective bargaining, secure retirement, better wages–enjoyed a half-century of success. But now, the middle class is diminishing in the 21st century and economic inequality is at its highest since the New Deal. If we want to learn how to revive it, we need to look at how it started in the first place. Midnight in Vehicle City is the dramatic story of how workingmen defeated a major industrial power–General Motors, the largest corporation in the world. Journalist and historian Edward McClelland will bring you into the action-packed events of the strike, such as takeovers of GM plants and violent showdowns between picketers and the police. The strikers’ victory resulted in a new kind of America, one in which every man had a right to the wealth his labor produced. McClelland revives the stories of the industrial Midwest in order to examine how the labor movement has declined as a result of changes in automation, outsourcing, and American politics. He uses the lens of Flint, Michigan, to exemplify how one city can be the birthplace of the middle class yet face its most rapid decline. Through new stories of strikers and archival research, McClelland reminds readers how shared prosperity can only be achieved through intervention and how the legacy of the Sit-Down Strike can guide our understanding of the increasing economic disparities in the U.S. -- Alexis Shirk Adult Services Librarian Commerce Twp. Community Library Phone: 248-669-8108 x121 "In principle and reality, *libraries* are life-enhancing palaces of wonder." -Gail Honeyman, *Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine* Currently Reading <https://www.goodreads.com/user/email_signature_destination/9999500?utm_medium=reading_link&utm_source=email_signature> [image: Book Cover] <https://www.goodreads.com/user/email_signature_destination/9999500?utm_medium=cover&utm_source=email_signature> [image: Goodreads Logo] <https://www.goodreads.com/?utm_medium=gr_logo&utm_source=email_signature>Get your own email signature <https://www.goodreads.com/user/email_signature_instructions?utm_medium=gyo_link&utm_source=email_signature> -- The information contained in this electronic message is intended only for the use of the designated recipient(s). If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any review, use, dissemination, forwarding or copying of this message is strictly prohibited, and we request that you delete the original message and all attachments.