SOURCE: "Rise of a Union," in The Nation, New York, Vol. 169, No. 13, September 24, 1949, pp. 303-04.

Schlesinger is a prominent American historian and leading intellectual figure in liberal politics. He has twice been awarded the Pulitzer Prize: first for The Age of Jackson (1945) and then for A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House (1965). In the review below, he remarks favorably on The U.A.W. and Walter Reuther.

The United Automobile Workers is one of the great and astonishing achievements of contemporary American life. Growing up in Detroit, that great, steaming swamp of a city, drawing its membership in great part from tense and embittered minorities, confronted by peculiarly rich and ruthless corporations, the U. A. W. has yet shown a reassuring degree of trade-union efficiency and of political sanity. Its top leadership, moreover, was for many years bumbling and mediocre. Yet the U. A. W...