Joshua Freeman, Working-Class New York: Life and Labor Since World War II. New York: The New Press, 2000. xv + 409 pp. $35.00 cloth.

On September 11, 2001, the terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center targeted a city that has long been a symbol of high finance, speculation, and investment—the capital of multinational capitalism. Yet among those killed in New York were hundreds of working-class men and women, people whose labor has long been essential to the functioning of Wall Street. The causalities included electricians, dishwashers, and janitors, as well as “pink collar” workers such as secretaries, typists, and file clerks. Joshua Freeman reminds us that these laborers played an important role in shaping the politics and society of modern New York as did the financiers, brokers, and lawyers so central to our image of the global metropolis. Freeman begins his book with a criticism of the “astonishing blindness” to working-class life in the “vast literature celebrating postwar New York” (xiv). Working-Class New York goes a long way toward the rewriting of the history of New York with workers at the center.