Glass House
The 1% Economy and the Shattering of the All-American Town

I grew up in Lancaster. When I was five I lived on Maud Avenue and could see the west side Anchor Hocking plant from my back yard. My grandma lived by Cherry Street Park and you could see the defunct east side plant from her front porch. But by the time I was in high school Anchor Hocking's heyday h......more

"Corporate elites said they needed free-trade agreements, so they got them. Manufacturers said that they needed tax breaks and public-money incentives in order to keep their plants operating in the United States, so they got them. Banks and financiers needed looser regulations, so they got them. Emp......more

The life and death and signs of life of Anchor Hocking Glass Company serves as a platform to tell the story of how greed brought on by Reaganomics and private equity raiders ("Barbarians") stole most of the capital from a company and a thriving Ohio town, capital that took decades to build, but only......more

We've all heard the now-familiar story of how the American dream dies. Outsourcing and foreign competition shutter factories, and in the absence of jobs, working- and middle-class laborers turn to heroin and right-wing politics to numb their pain. The story of Lancaster, Ohio initially seems to foll......more

GLASS HOUSE by Brian Alexander is the book I thought HILLBILLY ELEGY would be: an insightful. historical dissection of how our politicians have allowed people in flyover America, the once glorious Rust Belt, to suffer and die at the hands of vulture capitalists. Set on my birth-state Ohio (GO BUCKS!......more