Fai clic su di un'immagine per andare a Google Ricerca Libri.
Sto caricando le informazioni... Janesville: An American Story (originale 2017; edizione 2018)di Amy Goldstein (Autore)
Informazioni sull'operaJanesville: An American Story di Amy Goldstein (2017)
Sto caricando le informazioni...
Iscriviti per consentire a LibraryThing di scoprire se ti piacerà questo libro. Attualmente non vi sono conversazioni su questo libro. What is included in the book is interesting and well done, but what is missing is glaring. The author's failure to ever mention, let alone consider, race is ridiculous and makes me question her reliability as a narrator. ( ) A sobering look at the corporate hierarchy and how small we are compared to the powers of industry. Anyone who has ever been laid off can appreciate the harm not just to the workers, but to the entire community. Stories about the individuals who fought for their jobs show the toll these decisions made on people's health and family lives. Especially sad is the experience of employees who chose to commute to other states and return home once a week. It was a town that was centered around one large production plant supported by other companies that supplied it, then one day the plant closed, and the town changed. Janesville: An American Story by Amy Goldstein shows how the closing of a General Motors assembly plant affected one small Wisconsin town over five years as those laid off, their families, and others in the community. Goldstein followed three families affected by the closing of the GM plant either directly or a supplier leaving town once the plant was gone as well as various individuals in the town including the town’s most famous resident, former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. Over the course of almost 300 pages people must deal with finding a new job whether they went back to school to retain or not, some must make decisions on if they want to continue to work for GM but states away and if so to commute or leave Janesville, children learn to help out their parents with multiple jobs with the unintended consequence of reducing state aid available to the family because policy changes and budget cuts by the new governor because their household income is too high, and a once close knit community is divided between the haves and have nots. As with all things dealing with real life, it’s not pretty, especially as everyone written about must deal with the emotional and mental affects of dealing with something they’d never thought about before. Janesville: An American Story is a look at one section of the Midwest Rust Belt that have been devastated by economic factors out of their control and how a town tried to respond. Amy Goldstein is an excellent job showing a cross-section of the affected community and how they dealt with the fallout of a town’s largest employer closing. This didn't turn out to be what I was expecting. From the jacket: "This is the story of what happens to an industrial town in the American heartland when its factory stills - but it's not the familiar tale." Actually, it rather did turn out to be the "familiar tale." I was expecting much more big-picture information about different entities remaking Janesville. And I applaud Goldstein for giving us rather intimate pictures of key individuals and the varying ways their lives changed, but I feel like the conclusions chapter was eliminated from the book. The only tidbit that matched my expectation was the description of how job retraining really doesn't (or didn't in this case) help move unemployed into new jobs. If you enjoy reading about individuals and their stories, you will enjoy this book. If, like me, you want more analysis, you'll have to keep searching. Thoroughly researched and well told, this story of Janesville after the closure of the GM plant holding up much of the town's middle class is interesting, but in its desire to be told in an objective, nonpartisan way, it stops short of really exploring the "why" behind this downfall. Definitely still worth the read for its look at labor in the midwest and the struggles of factory economy workers.
Goldstein gives the reader a gripping account of the GM layoff, the real loss it caused and the victims’ heroic resilience in adapting to that loss. By the end of this moving book, I wanted her to write a sequel on what might have been done to prevent the damage in the first place. For it turns out that while we’re often primed to take management’s word for what a company needs to do, this is a question well worth asking... In the end, Goldstein says, “ it became evident that no one outside — not the Democrats nor the Republicans, not the bureaucrats in Madison or in Washington, not the fading unions nor the struggling corporations — had the key to create the middle class anew.” Maybe so. But does such a disproportionate burden have to rest on the weary shoulders of the Jerad Whiteakers of the nation? How welcome it would be if the higher-ups at GM and elsewhere demonstrated the same generosity and ingenuity that Jerad and his co-workers have displayed. “Janesville” joins a growing family of books about the evisceration of the working class in the United States. What sets it apart is the sophistication of its storytelling and analysis... perhaps the most powerful aspect of “Janesville” is its simple chronological structure, which allows Goldstein to show the chain reaction that something so calamitous as a plant closing can effect. Each falling domino becomes a headstone, signifying the death of the next thing... “Janesville” is eye-opening, important, a diligent work of reportage. I am sure Paul Ryan will read it. I wonder what he will say. While it highlights many moments of resilience and acts of compassion, Amy Goldstein's "Janesville: An American Story" also has a tragic feel. It depicts the noble striving of men and women against overpowering forces — in this case, economic ones... Goldstein is a reporter, not a pundit. She is fair-minded and empathetic in presenting her viewpoint characters. Also fairly, as Ryan becomes a leading figure in American politics, she notes the dissonance between the gospel of local self-reliance that Ryan preaches and what is available to people struggling in his hometown. Like Barbara Ehrenreich and George Packer, Goldstein reveals the shattering consequences of the plant’s closing through an evenhanded portrayal of workers, educators, business and community leaders, and politicians—notably, Paul Ryan, a Janesville native who swept into town periodically. Like other politicians, Ryan made promises that proved empty...A simultaneously enlightening and disturbing look at working-class lives in America’s heartland. Premi e riconoscimentiMenzioni
"A Washington Post reporter's intimate account of the fallout from the closing of a General Motors' assembly plant in Janesville, Wisconsin--Paul Ryan's hometown--and a larger story of the hollowing of the American middle class. This is the story of what happens to an industrial town in the American heartland when its factory stills--but it's not the familiar tale. Most observers record the immediate shock of vanished jobs, but few stay around long enough to notice what happens next, when a community with a can-do spirit tries to pick itself up. Pulitzer Prize winner Amy Goldstein has spent years immersed in Janesville, Wisconsin where the nation's oldest operating General Motors plant shut down in the midst of the Great Recession, two days before Christmas of 2008. Now, with intelligence, sympathy, and insight into what connects and divides people in an era of economic upheaval, she makes one of America's biggest political issues human. Her reporting takes the reader deep into the lives of autoworkers, educators, bankers, politicians, and job re-trainers to show why it's so hard in the twenty-first century to recreate a healthy, prosperous working class. For this is not just a Janesville story or a Midwestern story. It's an American story"-- Non sono state trovate descrizioni di biblioteche |
Discussioni correntiNessunoCopertine popolari
Google Books — Sto caricando le informazioni... GeneriSistema Decimale Melvil (DDC)330.9775Social sciences Economics Economics Economic geography and history North America Midwestern U.S. WisconsinClassificazione LCVotoMedia:
Sei tu?Diventa un autore di LibraryThing. |