Capital Moves is an important book written with a clear scholarly and political objective. Working in the mid-1990s, after the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organization's (AFL-CIO) defeat in the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA) debate, Jefferson Cowie sought to discredit a conception of workers and labor held not only by union leaders', but far too often by their allies in universities, politics, film, and literature as well. In this older conception, white men employed in the United States' auto, steel, and related industries struggled mightily for decades, in cities like Pittsburgh and Detroit, to improve and defend their conditions and rights at work, only to lose their jobs because the President and the Congress did not prevent their employers from moving their factories to Mexico and Asia.