"Benton brilliantly traces the politics and mistakes that marked the 1970s. . . A model of scholarship. Moreover, it is a work that must be read to understand the fall of the economic order by the 'new era of globalization' and the political consequences that accompanied it." --New York Labor History Association
“James Benton engages with a complex topic that most labor historians have traditionally avoided: U.S. trade policy. An ambitious study taking us from the Roosevelt administration to the present, Fraying Fabric traces the evolution of that policy, its ultimately devastating impact on the textile and apparel sectors, and the response of business and organized labor to the challenge of global trade. Its provocative arguments should provoke overdue debate in the fields of labor history and public policy.”--Eric Arnesen, author of Brotherhoods of Color: Black Railroad Workers and the Struggle for Equality