Release Day

Today is Out of Sight‘s official release date. If you like what I do on this blog, you will love this book. It combines a breezy overview of America’s history of capitalism and resistance with analysis of how outsourcing has destroyed the American working and middle class while not allowing the people of Bangladesh, Vietnam, Honduras, and Guatemala to create middle classes of their own. It brings labor and environmental analysis together on issues as disparate as apparel production, candy factories, and steel. It focuses on tales of women in the history of global production from 19th century New England to 21st century Bangladesh. And it tries to point the way forward toward global labor solidarity and reforms that could help workers of all nations. In other words, it’s by far the most important thing I’ve ever done in my political and professional life.

Not to belabor the point, but I might as well repeat some of the blurbs here:

“The arrival of Out of Sight could not have been better timed. Erik Loomis prescribes how activists can take back our country—for workers and those who care about the health of our planet.” —Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH)

“The rise of unbridled corporate power has been a disaster in so many ways—including the ability of the 1 percent to intimidate the rest of us into remaining silent lest we displease our masters. The story told here is tragic and important.”
—Bill McKibben, author of Deep Economy

“In this dazzling overview of industrial history, Erik Loomis shows how we can—no, we must—fight for both decent jobs and a clean environment. We can do so by not letting the corporations escape ‘out of sight.’ We need to think and act as globally as corporations do, and force them to respect rights wherever they go. This book is a must-read for people who care about jobs and the environment.”
—Aviva Chomsky, professor of history at Salem State University and author of Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal

“A passionate condemnation of the power that corporations hold over our lives, Erik Loomis shows that capitalism’s geography is a central element in class conflicts.”
—Andrew Herod, Distinguished Professor of Geography at the University of Georgia

“One of the top voices chronicling the struggles of the twenty-first-century labor movement. Loomis’s blunt, witty, take-no-prisoners style always promises an exciting read.”
—Sarah Jaffe

“Erik Loomis has globalized [Upton Sinclair’s] The Jungle. He shows that the most important reason for U.S. corporations to produce abroad is to avoid the regulations that books like The Jungle produced. Perhaps Out of Sight can prompt a similar movement on behalf of workers around the world, our planetary environment, and, yes, we who wear the clothes and eat the sausage that ‘they’ produce.”
—James Loewen, author of Lies My Teacher Told Me

“Well-written and informative . . . shows the many strong connections between workplace catastrophes, poor working conditions, diseases, and environmental disasters. Highly recommended.”
—Kalpona Akter, executive director of the Bangladesh Centre for Worker Solidarity, Dhaka

“Erik Loomis shows that our systems remain broken, and it is our planet and her people, particularly the most marginalized communities, who are paying the price. However, there is hope in collective action.”
—Jacqueline Patterson, director of the NAACP Environmental and Climate Justice Program

And as my father in law put it, “my granddaughter in the 8th grade could read this.” It’s the best thing one could say about it. It’s easy to read and I hope powerful and persuasive. But you won’t know unless you procure a copy. If the world’s most famous environmentalist, the head of the Bangladeshi workers’ movement, several famous scholars, and a sitting senator and his dog can find time to read it, surely you can.