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Bezig met laden... Janesville: An American Story (2017)door Amy Goldstein
   Bezig met laden...
 Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek.   ) littlezen | Jan 24, 2024 |   ) juliechabon | Sep 30, 2023 | 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. (  ) mattries37315 | Jan 31, 2023 | ) Jeff.Rosendahl | Sep 21, 2021 | ) KimMeyer | Sep 8, 2020 |
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.
"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"-- Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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 Google Books — Bezig met laden...GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)330.9775Social sciences Economics Economics Economic geography and history North America Midwestern U.S. WisconsinLC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde: (4.02)
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