York University history professor Craig Heron’s 2015 title, Lunch-Basket Lives: Remaking the Workers’ City (Between the Lines Books), has been named Book of the Year by the International Labor History Association.

The book, which focuses on the working class of 1890s to 1930s Hamilton, was also shortlisted for the Legislative Assembly of Ontario’s 2015 Speakers Book Award and the 2016 Sir John A. Macdonald Prize, which announces its winner on May 31.

An ILHA release stated: “The highly engaging narrative represents many years of careful research and reflection, convincingly revealing the inner dynamics of labor situated in an environment of deep anti-labor hostility, political struggles, community cross-pressures, societal and economic upheavals that, taken together, drove changes in the labor sphere. … Thus the book is a tour de force of social and labor history, bringing an ultra-comprehensive analysis of labor, management, youth and families, gender tensions, ethnic and community contributions, within the economic dynamics of a Canadian city and its labor movement.”