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Framing Our Past is about women's lived experience. Drawing from diaries, oral history, letters, organizational records, paintings, quilts, dressmaking patterns, milliners' records, and posters, the contributors offer fresh interpretations of this historical material and unique insights into the lives of individual Canadian women who expanded the boundaries of traditional roles. Lavishly illustrated, Framing Our Past looks at women and their social rituals with other women, organized sporting clubs, philanthropic, spiritual and aesthetic activities, study and reading groups. The authors explore women's roles as nurturers and keepers of the hearth and in family management, child care, and health care. They highlight women's work in areas as diverse as domestic labour, nursing, dressmaking, broadcasting, and banking as well as women's contributions to education and their instrumental political role in consumer activism, social work, and peace movements. --Publisher's description

The article reviews the book, "William Z. Foster and the Tragedy of American Radicalism," by James R. Barrett.

The article reviews the book, "A Thing of the Past? Child Labour in Britain in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries," edited by Michael Lavalette.

The article reviews the book, "Solidarité et Détermination: Histoire de la Fraternité des Policiers et des Policières de la Communauté Urbaine de Montréal," by Jacques Rouillard and Henri Goulet.

Examines the presence and struggles of the Communist Party of Canada (le Parti communiste canadien (PCC)) in Quebec during the 1930s. It highlights the challenges faced by the PCC, including widespread anticommunism from the government, the Catholic Church, and conservative labour unions. The PCC sought to organize workers through independent unions like the Workers Unity League and engaged in social struggles, including unemployment protests and antifascist campaigns. Despite some successes in labour movements and antifascist efforts, the PCC failed to become a mass party, remaining largely isolated and marginalized, especially among francophone workers. The article also discusses the PCC's strategic shifts, from ultra-revolutionary rhetoric to a united antifascist front, and its eventual decline during World War II. Overall, the PCC's efforts were significant in challenging capitalism and advocating for workers' rights, but its influence remained limited in Quebec's political and social landscape.

Nonunion Employee Representation: History, Contemporary Practice, and Policy, edited by Bruce E. Kaufman and Daphne Gottlieb, is reviewed.

The article reviews the book, "Women and Scientific Employment," by Judith Glover.

Discusses the life of Michael James "Mickey" O'Rourke, miner, soldier, and labour activist. In 1917, he was awarded Canada's highest military decoration, the Victoria Cross, for "conspicuous bravery and devotion to duty during prolonged operations" while a member of the 7th Battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Force during World War I. After the war O'Rourke went to California, then returned to British Columbia where he played a prominent role in the 1935 Vancouver longshoremen's strike. Despite chronic health problems that were war-related, he received only a small pension as a disabled veteran. O'Rourke's later life was complicated by alcoholism. He died as an indigent at a Veterans' Affairs facility in Burnaby, British Columbia, in 1957.

The article reviews the book, "The Challenge of Global Capitalism: The World Economy in the 21st Century," by Robert Gilpin.

The article reviews the book, "Skill-Biased Technological Change : Evidence from a Firm-Level Survey," by Donald S. Siegel.

The article reviews the book, "Canadian Communication Thought: Ten Foundational Writers," by Robert E. Babe.

The article reviews the book, "Australian Labour History Reconsidered," edited by David Palmer, Ross Shanahan, and Martin Shanahan.

The article employs Antonio Gramsci's philosophy of praxis to analyze the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty's battle against the proto-fascist, neoconservative Ontario provincial government. A structural diagram, entitled "The Party at the Margin," is presented to show OCAP's place in the current social formation. Adapting Machiavelli, the article considers OCAP's collective "new prince" role, as well as the role of the intellectual. A retired academic, the author was a member of the OCAP executive.

The article reviews the book, "Alabama North: African-American Migrants, Community, and Working-Class Activism in Cleveland, 1915-1945," by Kimberley L. Phillips.

The article briefly reviews "Have Women and Minorities Reached the Top? Diversity in the Power Elite," by Richard L. Zweigenhaft and G. William Domhoff; "An Investigation of Racial Disadvantage," by Derek Leslie et al.; Brian Titley's "The Frontier World of Edgar Dewdney;" Gilbert G. Gonzalez's "Mexican Consuls and Labor Organizing: Imperial Politics in the American Southwest;" Peter Bailey's "Popular Culture and Performance in the Victorian City;" Ching Kwan Lee's "Gender and the South China Miracle: Two Worlds of Factory Women;" Diana Crane's "Fashion and its Social Agendas: Class, Gender, and Identity in Clothing;" "Italian Lives: Cape Breton Memories," edited by Sam Migliore and A. Evo Dipierro; and Glenda Riley's "Women and Nature: Saving the 'Wild' West."

The article briefly reviews Peter Gossage's "Families in Transition: Industry and Population in Nineteenth Century Saint-Hyacinthe;" Daniel T. Rodgers's "Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age;" Claudia Orenstein's "Festive Revolutionaries: The Politics of Popular Theater and the San Francisco Mime Troupe;" Micheal Goldfield's "The Color of Politics: Race and the Mainsprings of American Politics;" Philip Scranton's "Endless Novelty: Specialty Production and American Industrialization, 1865-1925;" "The Living Wage: Building a Fair Economy," by Robert Pollin and Stephanie Luce; Christine Cousins' "Society, Work and Welfare in Europe;" "What Workers Want," by Richard B. Freeman and Joel Rogers; and "On the Front Line: Organization of Work in the Information Economy" by Stephen J. Frenkel, Marek Korczynski, Karen A. Shire, and May Tarn.

The article reviews the book, "The World Guide 2001/2002: An Alternative Reference to the Countries of Our Planet."

CyberUnion: Empowering Labor through Computer Technology, by Arthur B. Shostak, is reviewed.

This paper investigates the role of women's issues in the decision to join unions by examining a successful organizing drive in a predominantly female workplace. The main focus of the discussion is the identification of women's issues where they were not immediately apparent to workers and union representatives. The theoretical question raised by this case study is the extent to which women workers' relationship to unions is similar to or different from men workers'. Contemporary industrial relations discourse tends to emphasize the similarities between women and men, without taking into account well-documented differences in women's paid and unpaid work and union experiences. From a feminist perspective, the conclusion that gender is unimportant in organizing campaigns often rests on an inadequate analysis of what constitutes women's workplace/union issues.