“Like a Family is history, folklore, and storytelling all rolled into one. It is a living, revelatory chronicle of life rarely observed by the academe. A powerhouse.” – Studs Terkel

“Here is labor history in intensely human terms. Neither great impersonal forces nor deadening statistics are allowed to get in the way of people. If students of the New South want both the dimensions and the feel of life and labor in the textile industry, this book will be immensely satisfying.” – Choice

Since its original publication in 1987, Like a Family has become a classic in the study of American labor history. Basing their research on a series of extraordinary interviews, letters, and articles from the trade press, the authors uncover the voices and experiences of workers in the Southern cotton mill industry during the 1920s and 1930s. Now with a new afterword, this edition stands as an invaluable contribution to American social history.

Awards for Like a Family:
Albert J. Beveridge Award, American Historical Association (best work in English on the history of the Americas), 1988.

Merle Curti Social History Award, Organization of American Historians, co-winner (best book in social history published in 1986-87), 1988.

Philip Taft Labor History Prize, Cornell University, School of Industrial and Labor Relations (most outstanding contribution to American labor history), 1988.

National Reviews for Like a Family:

• Ira Berlin, “A Benevolent and Brutal Paternalism,” New York Times Book Review, 1988, https://www.nytimes.com/1988/01/31/books/a-benevolent-and-brutal-paternalism.html
• Jonathan Yardley, “Millers’ Tales From the South,” Washington Post, No. 29, 1987, https://search-proquest-com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/docview/139076636?pq-origsite=summon.