Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2023 -

Stewardesses in the 1960s and 1970s were imagined as waitresses in the sky and glamorous playthings for men. Forced to undergo humiliating weight checks, wear sexy outfits, and be fired when they married or reached age 32, stewardesses were not perceived as air safety professionals. As Wulfhart (journalist) explains with the aid of many advertisements, the airplane cabin was the sexist workplace in America. The airlines, the media, and the male-dominated Transport Workers Union (TWU) disparaged stewardesses until they began to organize. The 1964 Civil Right Act banned sex discrimination, but the government did not enforce this provision. Stewardesses fought the US government to treat sex discrimination as real discrimination. They created an organization to push back on demeaning images of stewardesses in the media, and they left the TWU to form a new union that would fight for working women. In 1971, the Supreme Court ruled in a case brought by a stewardess that marriage had nothing to do with job competence, thereby protecting all women workers from being fired upon marriage. Wulfhart profiles several flight attendants, from their decisions to become stewardesses through their training and career challenges. The result is a highly readable history.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.

In her first book, Ajunwa (law, Univ. of North Carolina) introduces a new theory of worker quantification, which brings together the full historical and legal scope of automated worker systems for the first time. The idea of quantifying work and workers is far from new, but it is even more relevant in the present age of automated and AI technologies. Divided into four parts, this well-researched volume covers everything from hiring algorithms to workplace wellness and wearable technologies, deftly building on the historical context of Taylorism and scientific management, which led to worker quantification. Ajunwa delves into the ways these concepts have led to the algorithmic biases rampant in today's worker quantification technologies, asking how automation takes power away from workers and exploring how to give it back. This work sits nicely alongside other recent titles on the digitization and automation of labor, including Autor's The Work of the Future (CH, Aug'22, 59-3553) and Altenreid's The Digital Factory (CH, Mar'23, 60-2036). Some chapters are reprinted in part or in whole from the author's previous publications on the subject. The volume includes detailed footnotes, historical images, and an extensive bibliography.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Undergraduates through faculty.