Prologue
Chapter 1: Boom Days in Appliance City
Chapter 2: Unrest in the Magic Valley
Chapter 3: An American Classic in the Global Era
Chapter 4: The Red-headed Stepchild
Chapter 5: Padre Mike and NAFTA Man
Chapter 6: Resist or Reinvent
Chapter 7: "Sin Maíz, No Hay País"
Chapter 8: "The End is HERE!"
Chapter 9: The Mike Allen Question
Chapter 10: Chiles, Coyotes, and Vanilla
Chapter 11: Frogs, Mules, and Life after Maytag
Chapter 12: "Esa es Mi Visión"
Chapter 13: Looking North from Barra de Cazones
Chapter 14: Getting Back to Work in the 'Burg
Chapter 15: Hojas, Blackberries, and the Tortilla King
Chapter 16: Treading Water in the Great Recession
Chapter 17: Little Detroit, El Cartel, and Aguamiel
Chapter 18: Reshoring Up
Epilogue
Notes on Method
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
Chad Broughton is Senior Lecturer in Public Policy Studies at the University of Chicago.
"Boom, Bust, Exodus brings to life the human impact of global
industrial change on the people who live with it. Chad Broughton
combines a journalist's eye for color and the telling detail with a
scholar's grasp of his subject and skill in putting it all into
context. There are heroes here, but few villains. Rather, Broughton
tells in vivid prose what happens-both to people and their
cities-when industry is ripped up from the places where it has
always
been and transplanted to places that weren't ready for it.
Broughton knows the territory. He went to see and to listen, and he
understands what he saw and heard. The result is a classic of
post-industrial
scholarship." --Richard C. Longworth, author of Caught in the
Middle: America's Heartland in the Age of Globalism
"Chad Broughton has written a deeply-observed and nuanced account
of one of the stories of our time: the migration of a once-thriving
American factory over the border into Mexico. When he learns of
Maytag's plans to shutter its refrigerator plant, a move decried by
a young Senator Obama, Broughton begins a decade-long dive into the
drama that envelops both Galesburg, Illinois, where townspeople are
losing their $15.14-an-hour livelihood, and Reynosa, Mexico,
where the same jobs will pay $1.10 and come with a cost. The
results are both epic and surprising. The pitfalls of such a
project are many, but Broughton avoids pity and screed, delivering
a story that
is beautifully detailed and rich in human and historic dimension.
Most of us talk about a global economy with a vague sense of what
that really means. With Boom, Bust, Exodus Broughton has defined it
indelibly." --Ann Marie Lipinski, Curator, Nieman Foundation for
Journalism, Harvard University
"Chad Broughton's Boom, Bust, Exodus is a beautifully written,
humanistic portrayal of globalization as is lived on a day-to-day
basis. Using production as a through line, Broughton takes us from
the Midwest to the border to the Mexican interior and back,
unsentimentally but empathetically delineating the human
consequences of capital mobility in North America in the 21st
century." --Leslie Salzinger, University of California, Berkeley,
author of
Genders in Production: Making Workers in Mexico's Global
Factories
"Broughton has written a powerful indictment of corporate greed and
poor public policy, balanced by a tribute to the perseverance of
the working-class people of two nations... While most readers will
be familiar with the growth of economic inequality in the U.S.,
Broughton's unflinching, empathetic account puts a human face to
that idea." --Publishers Weekly
"Broughton's book provides ample documentation of a central truth
of late-American history-namely, that capital has no country."
--Kirkus
"In this richly reported book, Chad Broughton gives us a birds-eye
view of the intended and unintended consequences of globalization.
Boom, Bust, Exodus is a deeply-felt and narrative-driven work, an
essential contribution to understanding the why behind the growing
divide between those who have and those who have not." -Alex
Kotlowitz, author of There Are No Children Here and The Other Side
of the River
"Chad Broughton's well-written and incredibly engaging book
poignantly captures the effects of industry relocation on
individuals and towns in our globalized economy....For those
concerned about the consequences of capital mobility on the lives
of ordinary people, Boom, Bust, Exodus is a must-read." -William
Julius Wilson, Harvard University
"Anyone wishing to understand the human dimensions of the grinding
process of North American economic integration should read Chad
Broughton's moving tale of two cities." -Emilio Kourí, Director of
the Katz Center for Mexican Studies, University of Chicago
"Boom, Bust, Exodus is a story of intertwined lives....Connected by
production and commerce, possession and dispossession, ownership
and loss, profit and precariousness, the men and women and children
caught in the shifting tides of a global economy have found in Chad
Broughton a sympathetic and informed voice." -Jacob S. Hacker,
co-author, Winner-Take-All Politics
"A unique book, telling its story of the offshoring of a
refrigerator plant at many levels-personal, local, national,
international-and combining acute sociological analysis with life
stories reaching across many years." -Andrew Abbott, Department of
Sociology, University of Chicago
"Broughton grounds his tale with ample historical context, tracing
the rise and fall of the middle class in post-World War II America
and Mexico's evolving economic policies with the United States . .
. The heart of "Boom" is the people Broughton profiles as they
adjust to life with and without Maytag." --Chicago Tribune
"As the economic watchword of the millennium, globalization is a
cliché. But this story reveals the truly local results of this
phenomenon. Though there aren't a lot of winners on the front
lines, as in any good Dickens narrative, this tale shows that the
human spirit rises above would-be captors."--Library Journal
" Broughton describes a modern-day Dickensian nightmare, with
workers flocking from formerly agricultural regions to work for
Maytag and other US companies seeking to '"slough off not only
union wages, pension obligations, taxes and regulations, but also
any sense of obligation to the place where they made their money."'
The author writes winningly of individual workers in both cities,
but this book is as discouraging as it is necessary."
---Boston Globe
"It took Broughton more than ten years to research and write this
book, and he has crafted a narrative that reads like a novel, well
placed a free of polemic. He puts a human face on economic
inequity, and by showing that it is politics that brought us to the
current predicament, he lets us see that it is through politics
that we can find our way out. " -Texas Observer
"[A]n extremely valuable account of how economic globalization is
being experienced by those most directly affected by it." -CHOICE
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