Maximum Leverage: From the Street to the Picket Line

This interwoven collection of stories first portrays the author’s early years surviving poverty on the violent streets of New York, ultimately shaping his journey to becoming one of the most highly publicized union organizers in America. The book is divided into two parts:
 
The Street offers a snapshot of the author as he leaves home in at age sixteen, candidly transporting readers into a world of crime, hardship, and danger, populated with colorful, intriguing, sometimes frightening characters. Cohen vividly recounts a harrowing year driving illegal gypsy cabs in New York’s most dangerous neighborhoods, followed by managing a cheap hotel, where he ends up using his instincts to help impoverished residents deal with various aspects of the system, including hospitals, law enforcement, and welfare.
 
The Picket Line opens with a gripping transition as the author successfully fights corruption in his own union local, before being hired as a lead organizer by a major trade union and inserted into daunting situations other staff couldn’t handle. The stories continue to be written as action dramas with engaging character studies, thrusting readers into the whirlwind of vicious labor disputes while providing an audience-friendly understanding of labor law and asymmetric organizing tactics.
 
The riveting engagements include defeating union busters, leveraging good contracts with hostile employers, rectifying unjust terminations, exposing company schemes to withhold workers comp benefits, and breaking the Ku Klux Klan’s grip on a union local.