Amy Goldstein has been a staff writer for thirty years at The Washington Post, where much of her work has focused on social policy. Among her awards, she shared the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting. She has been a fellow at Harvard University at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Janesville: An American Story is her first book. She lives in Washington, DC.
“Goldstein is a gifted storyteller, and Janesville is a raw,
beautiful story, one that sheds needed light on a country searching
for some pathway to the future.”
—J.D. Vance, author of Hillbilly Elegy
“Janesville is haunting in part because it’s a success story....
One is awed by the dignity and levelheadedness of its protagonists,
who seem to represent the best of America.... Goldstein is a
talented storyteller, and we root for her characters as, moment by
moment, they try their hardest.”
—The New Yorker
“Brilliant, probing, and disturbing. A gripping story of
psychological defeat and resilience.”
—Bob Woodward, The Washington Post
“A superb feat of reportage, Janesville combines a heart-rending
account of the implications of the closing on GM workers and their
families with a sobering analysis of the response of the public and
private sectors. The book is a must-read for anyone who wants to
understand the economy of the Rust Belt — and its implications for
America’s once-proud middle class.”
—The Philadelphia Inquirer
“Anyone tempted to generalize about the American working class
ought to meet the people in Janesville. The reporting behind this
book is extraordinary and the story—a stark, heart-breaking
reminder that political ideologies have real consequences—is told
with rare sympathy and insight.”
—Tracy Kidder, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Soul of a New
Machine
“Ms. Goldstein’s book takes its place alongside those other
essential tomes of the Trump era, J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy: A
Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis and Joan Williams’ White
Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America.”
—Financial Times
“We’ve been hearing a lot since the November election about the
press missing The Story of a middle class losing ground, hope, and
heart. But it turns out that Amy Goldstein, one of our finest
reporters, was on it all along. Her vivid portrait of a
quintessential American town in distress affirms Eudora Welty’s
claim that 'one place understood helps us understand all places
better.'”
—Diane McWhorter, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Carry Me
Home
“Energetically reported and sympathetically narrated.... The story
of ordinary people, how they cope or don’t cope with a largely,
though not entirely, unexpected economic disaster.”
—The Wall Street Journal
“Goldstein gives the reader a gripping account of the GM layoff,
the real loss it caused and the victims’ heroic resilience in
adapting to that loss. By the end of this moving book, I wanted her
to write a sequel on what might have been done to prevent the
damage in the first place.”
—The Washington Post
“Reflecting on the state of the white working class, J.D. Vance’s
Hillbilly Elegy focuses on cultural decay and the individual,
whereas Amy Goldstein’s Janesville emphasizes economic collapse and
the community. To understand how we have gotten to America’s
current malaise, both are essential reading.”
—Robert D. Putnam, New York Times bestselling author of Bowling
Alone and Our Kids
“Goldstein provides a welcome addition to the conversation on the
broken social contract. Janesville is a town like countless others,
and this book offers a useful cautionary tale for public officials,
sociologists, economists, and engaged citizens alike.”
—The Boston Globe
“Janesville is as relevant to the moment as a breaking news
bulletin. It should be required reading for anyone who wants to
understand how the Great Recession and deindustrialization have
disrupted social, economic and political life in the American
heartland. If you want to know why 2016 happened, read this
book.”
—E.J. Dionne, New York Times bestselling author of Why the Right
Went Wrong
“Moving and magnificently well-researched.... Janesville joins a
growing family of books about the evisceration of the working class
in the United States. What sets it apart is the sophistication of
its storytelling and analysis.”
—Jennifer Senior, The New York Times
“The 2008 financial crisis is frequently reduced to a matter of
statistics and graphs, which makes Goldstein’s extensive reporting
so valuable and, at times, moving.... By emphasizing the effects of
economic collapse on family life, Goldstein’s narrative doubles as
a sort of generational saga: It humanizes the worst economic crisis
of contemporary times by chronicling the enormous pressures it
placed on several generations of Janesville residents.”
—The Nation
“Fair-minded and empathetic.... While it highlights many moments of
resilience and acts of compassion, Amy Goldstein’s Janesville: An
American Story also has a tragic feel. It depicts the noble
striving of men and women against overpowering forces — in this
case, economic ones.”
—Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
“Eminently accessible, instantly absorbable, Janesville is a story
of economics lived.”
—The Keen Thinker (800-CEO-READS newsletter)
“Amy Goldstein was in the right place at the right time to help us
understand why we no longer `just get along.’ Having immersed
herself in Paul Ryan’s idyllic hometown after its GM plant closed
forever, she illuminates disrupted lives, marriages, and childhoods
as the manufacturing and strong unions that built our modern middle
class fade—fracturing the community and breeding the political
polarization that helped give rise to Donald Trump.”
—Sheldon Danziger, President of the Russell Sage Foundation and
coauthor of America Unequal
“Meticulously reported and researched... filled with startling—and
disturbing—facts and figures.”
—The Denver Post
“[Goldstein] shatters a lot of conventional wisdom.”
—Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Based on three years of probing interviews, Pulitzer Prize-winning
Washington Post journalist Goldstein makes her literary debut with
an engrossing investigation.... A simultaneously enlightening and
disturbing look at working-class lives in America's heartland.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Goldstein's exhaustive, evenhanded study of the plight of
America's working class through the lens of one emblematic
community is deeply humane and deeply disturbing, timely and
essential.”
—Library Journal (starred review)
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