NEW TITLE:
TRAMPLING OUT THE VINTAGE: CESAR CHAVEZ AND THE TWO SOULS OF THE UNITED FARM WORKERS
By FRANK BARDACKE
PUBLISHED: 21 November 2011
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“An...intelligent, thorough history. [Chavez's] truth is marching on” – ECONOMIST
http://www.economist.com/node/21540221
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A dramatic new history of Cesar Chavez and the rise and fall of the United Farm Workers.
The slogan “Yes we can” – in the form “¡Sí Se Puede!” - doesn’t originate with Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. It goes back more than four decades to the heyday of the United Farm Workers, an organization that at its height won many labor victories, secured collective bargaining rights for California farm workers and became a major voice for the Latino community, which was previously excluded from national politics. The UFW was once a transformative political force of a kind now largely lost in contemporary America.
TRAMPLING OUT THE VINTAGE is the authoritative account of the rise and fall of the United Farm Workers and its most famous and controversial leader, Cesar Chavez. Based on many years of interviews—with farm workers, organizers, and the opponents and friends of the UFW—the book tells a story of collective action and empowerment rich in evocative detail and stirring human interest. Beginning with the influence of the ideas of Saul Alinsky and Catholic Social Action at the union's founding, through the UFW’s thrilling triumphs in the California fields, the drama concludes with the debilitating internal struggles that left the union a shadow of its former self.
A vivid rendering of farm work and the world of the farm worker, TRAMPLING OUT THE VINTAGE is a dramatic reappraisal of the political trajectory of Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers and an essential re-evaluation of their most tumultuous years.
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Further praise for TRAMPLING OUT THE VINTAGE:
“Bardacke is a talented writer, burning with rage against injustice, and his subject is one of the most attractive and charismatic figures US politics has produced. “ - Francis Beckett, GUARDIAN
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jan/27/cesar-chavez-two-souls-review?I
“[M]agnificent and tragic history… Bardacke’s enormously insightful and nuanced book thus radically reconfigures the social, political, and moral narrative with which most Americans have understood the history of the farm worker movement and its leadership.”– Nelson Lichtenstein, DISSENT
http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=4096
If you buy one book this year, the book you won’t go wrong paying cash money for is Frank Bardacke’s just released TRAMPLING OUT THE VINTAGE, the first book I’ve read in years that lives up to every pre-release superlative applied to it.” – ANDERSON VALLEY ADVERTISER
http://theava.com/archives/13020
“The best history ever written of the United Farm Workers (UFW) and Cesar Chavez. Certain to become a classic of U.S. working class history.” – Michael Yeats, UPSIDE DOWN WORLD
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/3381-and-the-farmworkers-are-still-poor
“A radically honest, uncompromising and often painful deconstruction of the legend of Cesar Chavez.” – Mike Davis
“There's so much marvelous stuff in Frank Bardacke's book that's simply not been done before.” –Alexander Cockburn, editor, COUNTERPUNCH
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FRANK BARDACKE is a teacher and labor organizer in Watsonville, CA who worked the fields in the Salinas Valley for seven years. He is the author of GOOD LIBERALS AND GREAT BLUE HERONS and TRAMPLING OUT THE VINTAGE, and a translator of SHADOWS OF TENDER FURY: THE LETTERS AND COMMUNIQUÉS OF SUBCOMANDANTE MARCOS AND THE ZAPATISTA ARMY OF NATIONAL LIBERATION.
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ISBN: 978-1-84467-718-4 / $54.95 / £50 / $68.50CAN / Hardback
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For more information about TRAMPLING OUT THE VINTAGE or to buy the book visit:
http://www.versobooks.com/books/800-trampling-out-the-vintage
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