Alfred F. Young, a pioneer of the “new labor history,” noted social historian of the early American nation, and a founding editor of Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas, died on November 6, 2012 at age 87. Many know him from his passionate and original investigation of the lives of working people, including The Shoemaker and the Tea Party: Memory and the American Revolution(2000), Masquerade: The Life and Times of Deborah Sampson, Continental Soldier (2005), and, most recently, as co-editor of a recent collection of essays, Revolutionary Founders: Rebels, Radicals and Reformers in the Making of the Nation (2012). His earlier essay collections, The American Revolution (1976) and Beyond the American Revolution (1993), highlighted the work of a new generation of historians, many of whom became leaders in the discipline.
