Out of Control: Reagan, Labor, and the Fate of the Nation

Joseph McCartin’s book will long stand as the most judicious, painstakingly researched, and thorough study of what is undeniably one of the most important events in labor history of the last four decades, the PATCO strike. But the book’s strength is also its weakness. The author may strip his subject of hyperbole, do a great job of conveying the everyday grind of controllers’ lives, and capture the impending standoff with the federal government, but he also tends to leave the story in isolation. How we, as a nation, get from this single labor conflict to the transformation in all of labor relations and the larger political economy that Greenspan celebrates remains foggy. PATCO was more than just another strike: it was the game changer of the second half of the twentieth century. Yet it appears here as a quarrel gone bad—what appears to be, culturally speaking, a nineteenth-century-style union accidentally ushering in the New Gilded Age.