This review essay examines two recent books on the industrial union movement that swept the United States in the 1930s and resulted in the formation of the Congress of Industrial Organization (CIO), Robert Zieger's "The CIO, 1935-1955" and "We Are All Leaders," edited by Staughton Lynd. This essay argues that these two volumes indicate that the rank-and-file-centered perspective that informed much new labor history scholarship since the 1960s may be reaching a scholarly and political cul-de-sac. He suggests that a "new" new labor history that combines institutional and political history with a concern for rank-and-file workers and shop-floor culture holds the greatest promise for understanding the history of workers' movements in modern America.