{"id":2542,"date":"2018-02-16T17:35:57","date_gmt":"2018-02-17T01:35:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=2542"},"modified":"2018-02-17T16:53:54","modified_gmt":"2018-02-18T00:53:54","slug":"review-janesville","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=2542","title":{"rendered":"Review: Janesville"},"content":{"rendered":"

Amy Goldstein has crafted quite a\u00a0kaleidoscope in Janesville<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In 2008 GM closed the manufacturing plant that was the anchor of the city’s economy which had huge effects on everyone in the town.\u00a0 Goldstein brings a journalist’s eye and compelling research to follow those waves and then ripples into 2016. The reporting is powerful and enlightening.<\/p>\n

I have never lived through such a focused economic upheaval as an adult.\u00a0 Elmira<\/a> has certainly seen a steady economic contraction over my lifetime, but never the kind of hammer blow that Janesville did. I fancied that the result was the sort of economic crater from which the population just scattered, though I know that never happens.\u00a0 Lives don’t move that suddenly.\u00a0 Janesville<\/em> gives a fantastic view of this from the ground to the Speaker of the House<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I thought about this a little more and I want to be a little more concrete about Goldstein’s multi-faceted portrayals.<\/p>\n

Because Goldstein presents the lives of many folks who play different roles in how Janesville takes the blow, she presents the effects on both the people playing those roles and the institutions in action.\u00a0 The federal government is far away and somewhat aloof; vague promises never become concrete and many efforts are misguided.\u00a0 Worker retraining at the local community college is difficult to get funded and over the years its effects are a mixed blessing.\u00a0 (Goldstein includes a compelling study on the efficacy of their retraining as an appendix, so data nerds (guilty) can compare her conclusions with theirs).<\/p>\n

To be fair, neither the college facilities nor its funding structure was built to absorb demands like the ones this crisis presented. That is part of the larger point that Janesville is a small city that takes an enormous blow.\u00a0 This plant was the majority employer for the city and it vanished over months.\u00a0 Most of the civic structure was adapting to cope with the slow sort of decline my home town had, if they were planning for decline at all.\u00a0 While the blast of trouble more clearly reveals the cracks in the people and the institutions, its magnitude almost certainly overwhelmed institutions and humans who could have adapted to smaller shocks.<\/p>\n

In addition to showing one view of civic institutions in crisis, Janesville<\/em> also illuminates larger societal trends in concrete terms.\u00a0 After 8 years the reader can trace see the decline of union influence, increased income disparity, and shifts in social strata through the individual stories of those living it.<\/p>\n

Goldstein’s tapestry is well crafted from strong threads that resolve into an enlightening picture.<\/p>\n

Recommended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Amy Goldstein has crafted quite a\u00a0kaleidoscope in Janesville. In 2008 GM closed the manufacturing plant that was the anchor of the city’s economy which had huge effects on everyone in the town.\u00a0 Goldstein brings a journalist’s eye and compelling research to follow those waves and then ripples into 2016. The reporting is powerful and enlightening. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2542"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2542\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2545,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2542\/revisions\/2545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}