James P. Kraft

Professor Emeritus
U.S.: Business and Labor, American West

Email: jkraft@hawaii.edu

BA Texas-Austin, 1974; MA California State-Los Angeles, 1985; PhD Southern California, 1990

Representative Publications

• Havoc and Reform: Workplace Disasters in Modern America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2021)
• Vegas at Odds: Labor Conflict in a Leisure Economy, 1960-1985 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010)
• Stage to Studio: Musicians and the Sound Revolution, 1890-1950 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996).
• “Disasters in the Workplace: The MGM Grand Hotel Fire of 1980,” Nevada State Historical Quarterly 56:3-4 (Fall-Winter 2013), 167-86.
• “Disasters, Technology, and Workplace Safety in Modern America,” National Social Science Association Proceedings, 52, No. 2 (2013), 106-12.
• “Manufacturing: Expansion, Consolidation, and Decline,” The Electric Guitar: History of an American Icon (Baltimore, 2004).
• “Business, Labor and Technology in America, 1890-1950,” Music and Technology in the Twentieth Century, Braun, ed. (Baltimore, 2003).
• “Artists as Workers: Musicians and Trade Unionism in America, 1880-1917,” Musical Quarterly (1995).
• “Musicians in Hollywood: Work and Technological Change in Entertainment Industries, 1926-1940,” Technology and Culture (1994).
• “The ‘Pit’ Musicians: Mechanization in the Movie Theaters, 1927-1932,” Labor History (1994).