March Book Club: Glass House: The 1% Economy and the Shattering of All-American Town by Brian Alexander

The UAPA book club meets monthly, usually at the home of Jim and Jo-Ann Prater. Books read in the last year include Hillbilly Elegy by Richard Vance, The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan, Dark Money  by Jane Mayer,  Bellevue by David Oshinsky and Born on a Blue Day by Daniel Tammet.  We usually read serious books.  Discussions are always spirited.   Please join us:  Email Jim and Jo-Ann Prater at  praterj2000@gmail.com if you want to be on a list for notifications about UAPA book club.

The March book will be Glass House: The 1% Economy and the Shattering of the All-American Town by Brian Alexander.  The meeting will take place on March 29, 2017 at 7:00 pm at 2000 Malvern Rd.

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 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, high-interest lenders, low wage jobs, technology, and the new demands of American life ...