Acknowledgments; Preface; History, Culture, Capitalism; A Global Corporation; Working at Wal-Mart; 9 Making the New Shop Floor: Wal-Mart, Labor Control, and the History of the Postwar Discount Retail Industry in America; 10 Patriarchy at the Checkout Counter: The Dukes v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., Class-Action Suit; 11 How to Squeeze More out of a Penny; 12 A Wal-Mart Workers Association? An Organizing Plan; Notes; Contributors; Index.;Edited by one of the nation's preeminent labor historians, this book marks an ambitious effort to dissect the full extent of Wal-Mart's business operations, its social effects, and its role in the U.S. and world economy. Wal-Mart is based on a spring 2004 conference of leading historians, business analysts, sociologists, and labor leaders that immediately attracted the attention of the national media, drawing profiles in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and the New York Review of Books . Their contributions are adapted here for a general audience. At the end of the nineteenth century t.