Summary and Reviews of Glass House by Brian Alexander

Media Reviews

The Wall Street Journal A devastating read...For anyone wondering why swing-state America voted against the establishment in 2016, Mr. Alexander supplies plenty of answers.

Christian Science Monitor [The book] really comes alive in Alexander’s portraits of the people caught up in the town’s unraveling...If you want to understand the despair that grips so much of this country, and the love of place that gives so many the strength to keep going, Glass House is a place to start.

Forbes Lays out a step-by-step account of Anchor Hocking’s slide, benefitting not only from Alexander’s strong reporting, but from candid interviews with key players. What is revealed is a complex system – Alexander argues it is deliberately complex - that allows savvy investors to make relatively small, highly leveraged bets on companies like Anchor Hocking...A valuable contribution.

Newsweek An examination of a town in Ohio that quite literally fell apart?and how that town in and of itself serves as a microcosm of the most pressing issues being faced in America today. From drug dealers to cops, from industry to finance, Alexander goes deep into the heart of what ails us and takes no prisoners.

Slate Reads like an odd?and oddly satisfying?fusion of George Packer’s The Unwinding and one of Michael Lewis’ real-life financial thrillers.

The New York Post Lancaster, Ohio, was declared the All-American Town by Forbes in 1947; its Anchor Hocking Glass Company was the foundation of a healthy, booming community. The town began to crumble as the factory shut down, as with too many other once-vibrant American hubs, leaving its citizens dreaming of the good old days. This well-reported book is all the stronger given the author’s connection to it: Lancaster is Alexander’s hometown. Shades of JD Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette For those still trying to fathom why the land of the free and the home of the brave opted for a crass, vituperative huckster with an unwavering fondness for alternative facts instead of the flawed oligarch Democrats served up, Brian Alexander has a story for you.

Kirkus Reviews Starred Review. A devastating and illuminating book that shows how a city and a country got where they are and how difficult it can be to reverse course.

Publishers Weekly Change is tough, especially with today's societal disconnection and the 'financialization and digitalization of American life'. This is a particularly timely read for our tumultuous and divisive era

 Beth Macy, author of Factory Man and (forthcoming) Truevine Part sociological study and part investigative business reporting, 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.

 Donald Ray Pollock, author of The Heavenly Table and The Devil All the Time Glass House is a fascinating, multi-layered, and superbly written account of how politics, corporate greed, low wages, and the recent heroin epidemic have nearly destroyed a once prosperous Midwestern city. This is a must read for anyone interested in really understanding the anger and frustration of blue collar workers and the middle class in America today.

 Stephanie Coontz, author of The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap A compassionate but clear-eyed description of how deindustrialization, financial speculation, union-busting and deregulation undermined the social fabric of Alexander's home town, illustrated with gripping personal stories.

 Timothy Noah, author of The Great Divergence: America's Growing Inequality Crisis and What We Can Do About It Brian Alexander's Glass House dramatizes vividly how a half-century of economic 'progress' dismantled America's once-sturdy middle class. By focusing his narrative on the inhabitants of Lancaster, Ohio, Alexander personalizes this familiar story in a compelling, often surprising, and utterly heartbreaking way.

 Victor Fleischer, Professor of Law, University of San Diego, and New York Times columnist Glass House is a compelling and harrowing look at the corrosion of the social and economic institutions that once held us all together, from the corporate boardroom to the factory floor. It's the most heartbreaking tale of a city since Mike Davis's City of Quartz.

Reader Reviews

The Dude
Who cares!
It's an epidemic and a tragedy when it happens to white people, but during the eighties when crack destroyed the lives of everyone in the ghetto who wrote about that. So who cares!

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