Common Labor or Groupthink in Government

Common Labor: Workers and the Digging of North American Canals, 1780-1860

Author: Peter Way

Canal construction played a significant role in the rise of industrial America opening up new markets, employing an army of workers, and initiating the ties between capital and government that remain important to this day. The work went forward using simple tools and the brute strength of men and animals, with diggers working twelve-hour days and suffering the ravages of disease and injury. In this highly acclaimed study, Peter Way challenges conventional views of the part these workers played in the early republic and of the culture they created.

Increasingly made up of Irish immigrants, Way explains, the work force was housed in shanty towns hastily thrown up along the path of canal construction. Unlike the vibrant, proud working-class communities so beloved in labor history, these towns were the scene of considerable off-hours vice and violence. As wages fell throughout the 1830s, workers' discontent mounted to the point where riots were frequent and militia units often descended on the towns to enforce order. Common Labour traces a dark picture of powerlessness, depravity, and rage in the lives of America's canal diggers.

Books about: Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Workbook or Instant Relief

Groupthink in Government: A Study of Small Groups and Policy Failure

Author: Paul T T Hart

Why do groups of talented and experienced individuals make disastrously bad collective judgments, such as the Kennedy administration's flawed decision to proceed with the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961? In his pioneering research on collective decision making, Irving Janis introduced the concept of "groupthink"--a deliberately Orwellian neologism--to describe such occurrences. Now, in the first book-length study of groupthink since Janis's work, Paul Hart has provided a rigorous and systematic version of this influential theory which opens several new avenues for research.

Booknews

't Hart provides a systematic version of Irving Janis' influential theory, opening several new avenues for research and examining the circumstances most likely to produce or counteract groupthink. He applies the theory to issues such as leadership style, risk taking, accountability, and prevention. His case study of the Iran-Contra scandal demonstrates the continuing relevance of groupthink theory in the analysis of flawed decision making. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)