This book examines how it was possible and what it meant for ordinary factory workers to become effective unionists and national political participants by the mid-1930s. We follow Chicago workers as they make choices about whether to attend ethnic benefit society meetings or to go to the movies, whether to shop in local neighborhood stores or patronize the new A & P. As they made daily decisions like these, they declared their loyalty in ways that would ultimately have political significance. When the depression worsened in the 1930s, workers adopted new ideological perspectives and overcame longstanding divisions among themselves to mount new kinds of collective action. Chicago workers' experiences all converged to make them into New Deal Democrats and CIO unionists. First printed in 1990, Making a New Deal has become an established classic in American history. The second edition includes a new preface by Lizabeth Cohen.

Recommended on 1 episode:

What We Got Right — and Wrong — in ‘Abundance’

“Abundance” came out a little over a year ago. It’s been exciting — and a little disorienting — seeing how it’s rippled out into the world, and the ways it’s been embraced and debated and critiqued. So I wanted to take a moment to talk through what’s really happened in the last year – with Derek Thompson, my “Abundance” co-author, and Marc Dunkelman, whose book “Why Nothing Works” came out around the same time, and circles the same ideas. What has the abundance movement actually achieved in the last year? Where has it fallen short? And what have the three of us learned from our critics?

Books recommended:

• 📕  Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis, Kathleen Norris
• 📘  The Secret History (Vintage Contemporaries) by Donna Tartt
• 📗  Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919–1939 (Canto Classics) by Lizabeth Cohen
• 📙  Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity by Yoni Appelbaum
• 📕  Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water, Revised Edition by Marc Reisner

Derek Thompson , Marc Dunkelman April 28, 2026 6 books recommended

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