Drawing on a trove of original documents, tapes, and interviews to chronicle the rise of the United Farm Workers during the heady days of civil rights struggles, the antiwar movement, and 60s and 70s student activism, Pawel weaves together a powerful portrait of a people and their movement.
Miriam Pawel is the author of The Union of Their Dreams - Power, Hope and Struggle in Cesar Chavez's Farm Worker Movement a groundbreaking narrative history told through eight participants in the movement. She spent 25 years as an award-winning reporter and editor on both coasts, directing coverage that won Pulitzer prizes at Newsday for the 1996 crash of TWA Flight 800 and at the Los Angeles Times for the deadly 2003 wildfires. In 2006, she wrote a four-part investigative series for the Times about the United Farm Workers, which led her to delve more deeply into the history of Chavez's movement. She has recently been a fellow at the Alicia Patterson Foundation and a John Jacobs fellow at the Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies.