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Professional Bio

Alan Derickson is a Professor Emeritus of Labor Studies and History.  His research centers on the health problems of working-class life in the United States since the nineteenth century. His first book, Workers’ Health, Workers’ Democracy: The Western Miners’ Struggle, 1891-1925 (Cornell University Press, 1988), won the Philip Taft Award as the best book of the year in labor history. He is the author of three other books – Black Lung: Anatomy of a Public Health Disaster (Cornell University Press, 1998), Health Security for All: Dreams of Universal Health Care in America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), and Dangerously Sleepy: Overworked Americans and the Cult of Manly Wakefulness. (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013). Among the journals in which his articles have appeared are the Journal of American History, Labor History, Industrial Relations, American Journal of Public Health, Journal of Social History, and Business History Review. His article “Asleep and Awake at the Same Time: Sleep Denial among Pullman Porters,” in Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas won the C. L. R. James Award of the Working Class Studies Association as the best article published in 2007 and 2008.  Derickson’s current research concerns the exposure of immigrants and people of color to the most adverse working conditions since the onset of industrialization.