num_pages: 336
description: For readers of Hillbilly Elegy and Strangers in Their Own LandWINNER OF THE OHIOANA BOOK AWARDS AND FINALIST FOR THE 87TH CALIFORNIA BOOK AWARDS  NAMED A BEST/MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2017 New York Post  Newsweek  The Week  Bustle  Books by the Banks Book Festival  Bookauthority.comThe Wall Street A devastating portrait...For anyone wondering why swing-state America voted against the establishment in 2016 Mr. Alexander supplies plenty of answers.Laura Miller Slate :  This book hunts bigger game. Reads like an odd?and oddly satisfying?fusion of George Packers The Unwinding and one of Michael Lewis real-life financial thrillers.The New Yorker : Does a remarkable job.Beth Macy author of Factory  This book 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.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 35 years ago have sprouted to give us Trumpism inequality and an eroding national cohesion.The Anchor Hocking Glass Company once the worlds largest maker of glass tableware was the base on which Lancasters society was built. As Glass House unfolds bankruptcy looms. With access to the company and its leaders and Lancasters 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 towns 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 high-interest lenders low wage jobs technology and the new demands of American people like Brian Gossett the fourth generation to work at Anchor Hocking; Joe Piccolo first-time director of the annual music festival who discovers the town relies on him and it for salvation; Jason Roach who police believed may have been Lancasters biggest drug dealer; and Eric Brown a local football hero-turned-cop who comes to realize that he can never arrest Lancasters real problems.
language: English
title: Glass House: The 1% Economy and the Shattering of the All-American Town
publisher: St. Martin's Press