BiblioVault - Books about 1936

The Emergence of a UAW Local, 1936–1939

A Study in Class and Culture

Peter Friedlander

University of Pittsburgh Press, 1975

Peter Friedlander documents the formation of a local United Automobile Workers union at a mid-sized parts factory during the turbulent 1930s. Blending oral history based on personal interviews with a keen analysis of the worker's class structure and widely varied cultural backgrounds, Freidlander describes the transformation of a working-class community by its own actions and the ensuing stratification and factionalizing within that union. The result is a firsthand account of the experience of unionization in personal and social terms.

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John Steinbeck

The Years of Greatness, 1936-1939

Tetsumaro Hayashi

University of Alabama Press, 1993

This volume is derived from papers presented by the North American delegates at the Third International Steinbeck Congress, held in May 1990 in Honolulu, Hawaii, under the co-sponsorship of the Steinbeck Society of Japan and the International Steinbeck Society. These ten essays, arranged in two parts, seek to provide a clearer understanding of Steinbeck's life and work during his most productive period. Part I discusses Steinbeck's women, with emphasis on the function of the feminine from original perspectives. It uses recent research sources, including some of the Steinbeck-Gwyn love letters and poems. Part II explores the Depression trilogy—"In Dubious Battle", "Of Mice and Men," and "The Grapes of Wrath"—Steinbeck's major works of the late 1930s.

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Letters from Clara

One Intrepid Woman's Travels on the Eve of War, 1936-1939

Janet Newman

Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2022

A unique collection of letters from a member of the YWCA on her first world tour in the 1930s, Letters from Clara tells one woman’s story of adventure and danger on the eve of World War II. Despite limited financial means, Clara Pagel was richly resourceful and used the YWCA network to find work and places to live in the Far East, along the way meeting other women also working their way around the world. As Clara described in letters to her YWCA friends back home, her sojourn was filled with museums and world-famous landmarks, as well as typhoons, bombings, and earthquakes. These experiences are described in over one hundred pages of letters, annotated throughout by Janet Newman. Upon Clara’s return to the United States in 1939, she enrolled at the University of Chicago and earned an MBA at the age of forty-six. This is the story of a remarkable woman on an unexpected but fulfilling journey to learn about the world and herself.

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