What Passes for Labor History

Tentacles of Power: The Story of Jimmy Hoffa
by Clark R. Mollenhoff
World, 415 pp., $6.50

Hoffa and the Teamsters: A Study of Union Power
by Ralph C. James and Estelle Dinerstein James
Van Nostrand, 430 pp., $6.95

Clark R. Mollenhoff’s book reduces the problem of corruption in American society and the labor movement to the level of a TV script with Mollenhoff cast in the role of a journalistic Elliot Ness. The author does not concede the legitimate function of trade unions like the Teamsters, and he seems to be unaware that most of its members are ordinary Americans. He hardly criticizes the t...