Janesville, a review

A Washington Post reporter’s intimate account of the fallout from the closing of a General Motors’ assembly plant in Janesville, Wisconsin—Paul Ryan’s hometown—and a larger story of the hollowing of the American middle class--Janesville is on a lot of year-end "Best Books" lists. It's easy to see why. The event that grounds the book is the closing of a GM parts plant just before Christmas in 2008, a move that threw the struggling blue-collar town into financial disarray. Even as town leaders looked to their hometown hero Paul Ryan to help them out, citizens scrambled to find other jobs. And as in the Bruce Springsteen song, "These jobs are going boy, and they ain't coming back."

Now, nearly a decade later, Ryan (who comes from a wealthy family) has offered his own Christmas present to his constituents, and to the rest of America. And just like GM, his decision was based purely on profit with no regard at all for the human cost of his actions.  We expect corporations to be soulless. It's still a surprise when humans are completely without compassion. It's worth noting that in the 2012 election, Romney and Ryan did not carry the vote in Janesville.

Here's my review:

This is a story that plays out much like the star-studded adaptation of Randy Shilts’ AND THE BAND PLAYED ON, bringing together related plot strands and characters in a story that does not have a happy ending. The writing is very good, and one of the surprises is the sympathetic portrait of Congressman Paul Ryan, who grew up in the wealthy part of Janesville (his family was part of the “Irish Mafia” who got rich in construction), but who seems to have worked very hard to save the plant for his neighbors and constituents.