...[a] moving and magnificently well-researched ethnography of a small Wisconsin factory city on economic life support ... [Goldstein] opts for complexity over facile explanations and easy polemics. (Neither Obama nor Ryan comes off looking particularly good; and no, she does not conclude that these layoffs put Donald J. Trump in the White House) ... 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. The characters are especially memorable. This may be the first time since I began this job that I’ve wanted to send notes of admiration to three people in a work of nonfiction ... Janesville is eye-opening, important, a diligent work of reportage. I am sure Paul Ryan will read it. I wonder what he will say.
[Goldstein] offers us a poignant, fugue-like account of the gradual absorption of this shock ... 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 ... The subtitle of this important and rarely told tale reads: 'an American story.' And so it is: Between 2004 and 2009, more than 7 million workers were hurt in 40,000 mass layoffs.
She deftly introduces and follows a cross-section of affected autoworkers and their families, community members and leaders through the years, writing in present tense to heighten the immediacy of their challenges and responses ... Like Matthew Desmond's Evicted, Goldstein's Janesville offers many reminders that many working Americans are only one or two bad breaks and decisions away from disaster.
Goldstein portrays the ups and downs of Ryan in Janesville and Washington with great acuity ... The stars of the book are the less famous folks. When authors try to juggle so many major characters in one book, the narrative drive often suffers, and the characters never come to life. Goldstein avoids those pitfalls, and the mostly chronological saga never loses its zip. Along the way, she shatters a lot of conventional wisdom.
Goldstein’s narrative shines because of its focus on the struggles of normal, middle- and working-class Americans ... In alternating chapters, Goldstein weaves together the moving, too-familiar stories of families facing an uncertain future ... These are the poignant stories that put faces to the headlines, and the author is to be commended for her dogged research over a five-year period. She is sympathetic, respectful, and evenhanded, even when discussing such hot-button topics as unions ... Admittedly, the book is not as well-written as Evicted — Goldstein is guilty of occasionally awkward or clichéd prose — or as deeply insightful as The Unwinding, and the epilogue, a neat, where-are-they-now summary, is a touch formulaic. But the flaws should be forgiven.
...the focus is not on partisan politics: Janesville is more the story of a strong union town come to grief. Ms. Goldstein deftly sketches the city’s industrial history ... Ms. Goldstein makes a few partisan jabs but is generally fair-minded, recording, for instance, the resentment of private-sector union workers at the cushy pensions and pay security of unionized public employees. One lesson of Janesville is that bad things can happen to good people. Another, perhaps, is that systems designed to produce fail-safe security are at risk of catastrophic failure, hurting those who might have made other choices if the expensive security guarantees hadn’t been there in the first place.
Amy Goldstein’s book Janesville: An American Story humanises the suffering of the white working class in America at a time when the country critically needs to understand the angst that helped elect the president … Bridging the gap between the coasts and the middle, the elites and the working class — between the affluent classes and Rust Belt Wisconsin whites — is crucial to how America will emerge from the Trump presidency. Ms Goldstein has done her bit to close the chasm: simply by letting the people of Janesville tell their story.
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 ... A simultaneously enlightening and disturbing look at working-class lives in America’s heartland.
