Reviews - Janesville: An American Story

Abstract

In Janesville: An American Story, Washington Post journalist Amy Goldstein follows a set of families and community leaders in the town of Janesville, Wisconsin after the closure of the General Motors manufacturing plant at the beginning of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). As the plant closes, vertically-connected industries such as the Lear Company, which manufactured seats for the sports utility vehicles that were being produced in Janesville, also shut down. Globalisation and the GFC bring other shocks to Janesville, such as the sale and eventual closing of the Parker Pen Company. The net result is that a middle-class industrial town with low singledigit unemployment rates suddenly becomes a dying, rust belt community with unemployment approaching 20 per cent. Show more