A pioneer in union organizing, worker education, and equal rights for working women, Cook's work took her across the country and around the world, across racial, ethnic, national, gender, and class lines, and across obstacles she refused to accept as impassable. In A Lifetime of Labor, Cook recounts a life of activism, teaching, and research that spanned nearly a century and intersected with progressive movements at home and abroad.

After serving as a member of the faculty of the newly founded School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University, Cook continued her pathblazing research with a study of working mothers in nine countries. The rest of her career would be devoted to creating just options for working women - equal opportunity, equal pay for equal work, part-time work options, child care, and other social structures to support true gender equity.