Meany: The Unchallenged Strong Man of American Labor (1972)

"George Meany 'may well be the most powerful man in America' outside the government, Newsweek marveled in 1971 when the AFL-CIO president singlehandedly stood down President Nixon's wage-price freeze because of its 'reverse Robin-Hoodism.'

Meany has been titular head of American labor for two decades. Yet for all his power, the one time Bronx plumber is an enigma to both the general public and his 14 million constituents, members of AFL-CIO-affiliated unions. In an era of media imagery and charisma, Meany remains the inaccessible, gruff-talking Irishman, perpetually wreathed in cigar smoke; a unionist whose sole philosophy often seems to be 'More!,' and whose single-minded anti-Communism infuriated veritably three generations of doves and liberals; the archetype of the hard-hat." From the dust jacket