The
first, GLASS HOUSE by Brian Alexander, tells the story of
Lancaster, Ohio, home to Anchor Hocking Glass. And it was a good home – a factory
town where workers and executives lived near each other and where a life, including local sports
teams and free holiday turkeys, centered around the company. That, at least, was true in times like 1947
when Forbes devoted an issue to the city as an exemplar of
American enterprise. And through the late 1960’s, Anchor Hocking employed 5000
in a town of 29,000 – a staggering proportion. Since
then, as the cover aptly conveys, a downward spiral ensued.
Alexander is an award winning journalist who
grew up in Lancaster and who subtitles his book “the 1% economy and the shattering
of the All-American town.” In the past
30 years, Anchor Hocking has gone thru Chapter 11 (twice) and recapitalization,
been owned by numerous entities and led by a variety of CEO’s, faced foreign
competition and “big box” store pricing pressures, all while undergoing name
changes (Global Home Products, EveryWare, and Oneida Group). As a result, there was a definite retrenchment
in its workforce and benefits, the loss of a local identity and increase in
drug abuse. GLASS HOUSE will
make an interesting companion read to Hillbilly Elegy for our
students with both speaking to these negative trends, their political impact,
and changes in life near the Appalachians. GLASS HOUSE received a
starred review from Kirkus and was recently profiled by a wide variety of media outlets: NPR,
Christian Science Monitor, Slate
and The Wall Street Journal.
The second book is called THE DEATH AND
LIFE OF THE GREAT LAKES by Dan Egan.
I started to read the introduction and was immediately struck by these
facts: “Of the 3 percent or so [of the world water] that is freshwater, most is
locked up in the polar caps or trapped so far underground …. And of the sliver
left over that exists as surface freshwater readily available for human use,
about 20 percent of that – one out of every five gallons available on the
planet – can be found in the Great Lakes.”
As someone who drives by Lake Michigan every
day, I was shocked by much of what I read.
Egan was twice a Pulitzer Prize finalist for his reporting on this
subject and calls the impression that humans and the lakes have finally learned
to get along a “mirage.” Instead, he contends
that his text will “illuminate an ongoing and unparalleled ecological
unraveling of what is arguably North America’s most precious natural resource.”
Complex and technical at times, THE DEATH AND LIFE OF THE GREAT LAKES will
shortly be on our shelves after receiving starred reviews from Booklist,
Kirkus, and Library Journal.
