Glass House

About this book

A field study of corporate greed and a private equity firm's disastrous effect on a once thriving industrial American town—"Does a remarkable job" ( The New Yorker ). Named a Best/Most Anticipated Book of the Year by New York Post • Newsweek • The Week • Bustle "Should be required reading for people trying to understand Trumpism, inequality, and the sad state of a needlessly wrecked rural America. I wish I had written it." —Beth Macy, author of Factory Man In 1947, Forbes magazine declared Lancaster, Ohio the epitome of the all-American town. Today it is damaged, discouraged, and fighting for its future. In Glass House, journalist Brian Alexander uses the story of one town to show how seeds sown thirty-five years ago have sprouted to give us Trumpism, inequality, and an eroding national cohesion. The Anchor Hocking Glass Company, once the world's largest maker of glass tableware, was the base on which Lancaster's society was built. As Glass House unfolds, bankruptcy looms. With access to the company and its leaders, and Lancaster's citizens, Alexander shows how financial engineering took hold in the 1980s, accelerated in the 21st Century, and wrecked the company. We follow CEO Sam Solomon, an African-American leading the nearly all-white town's biggest private employer, as he tries to rescue the company from the New York private equity firm that hired him. Meanwhile, Alexander goes behind the scenes, entwined with the lives of residents as they wrestle with heroin, politics,

Appears in these reading paths

Rural America: The Best Books on the Heartland and What Happened to It, in Order

Beginner14books121 hrs5 stages

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