Nothin' But Blue Skies: The Heyday, Hard Times, and Hopes of America's Industrial Heartland

by Edward McClelland

The Upper Midwest and Great Lakes region became the "arsenal of democracy"-the greatest manufacturing center in the world-in the years during and after World War II, thanks to natural advantages and a welcoming culture. Decades of unprecedented prosperity followed, memorably punctuated by riots, strikes, burning rivers, and oil embargoes. A vibrant, quintessentially American character bloomed in the region's cities, suburbs, and backwaters.

But the innovation and industry that defined the Rust Belt also helped to hasten its demise. An air conditioner invented in Upstate New York transformed the South from a sweaty backwoods to a non-unionized industrial competitor. Japan and Germany recovered from their defeat to build fuel-efficient cars in the stagnant 1970s. The tentpole factories that paid workers so well also filled the air with soot, and poisoned waters and soil. The jobs drifted elsewhere, and many of the people soon followed suit.

Nothin' but Blue Skies tells the story of how the country's industrial heartland grew, boomed, bottomed, and hopes to be reborn. Through a propulsive blend of storytelling and reportage, celebrated writer Edward McClelland delivers the rise, fall, and revival of the Rust Belt and its people.

Genres: History, Economics, Nonfiction, American History, Politics, The United States Of America, Race

352 pages, Hardcover

First published April 2, 2013

About the author

Edward McClelland is the author of Young Mr. Obama: Chicago and the Making of a Black President, which will be published in October by Bloomsbury Press. His writing has also appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, and on the websites Salon and Slate, among others. A graduate of Michigan State University, he lives in Chicago's Rogers Park neighborhood.

His previous books include Horseplayers: Life at the Track, and The Third Coast: Sailors, Strippers, Fishermen, Folksingers, Long-Haired Ojibway Painters and God-Save-the-Queen Monarchists of the Great Lakes."

Reviews

[Don · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lest anyone think I read this just to latch on to the hipsterish aspects of the "Rust Belt Chic" trend, know that I was born in Cleveland a mere four years after the Cuyahoga River burned, and I grew up through most of the events in the "Burn On, Big River" chapter of the book. Take McClelland's writing on Dennis Kucinich's various rises and falls, for instance. No matter how much prominence he gained after reinventing himself as a national politician, and regardless of how many of his views I might share, I'll always know him as "Dennis the Menace" because in the late 70s/early 80s, even a six year old like me could read a political cartoon in THE PLAIN DEALER and glean from how the grown-ups talked that that's what everyone thought of him. We were reading USA TODAY in grade school when the whole the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame thing came up. And I had one of my first underage drinks just as the Flats was transitioning from a hotspot to a hive of scum and villainy. (I'd left before it finally turned into a "Scooby Doo ghost town".)

All that to say that if McClelland, a native of Lansing, MI, did enough of his homework to get those sorts of Cleveland details right then it seemed likely to me that his notes about life in post auto industry Youngstown, Detroit, Flint, Lansing, etc. also has a genuine ring of truth. In fact, reading about the stories of these other places and some of the people in them felt like a rediscovery of sorts. I can imagine this is what it feels like for someone who has some weird personality quirk that never made sense to anyone until some previously hidden fact of biological or social history was discovered and gave you the context. I'd never heard the terms "bathtub Madonna" or "Mary on the half shell" before reading this book, and never knew how prevelant they were in other places similar to Cleveland, and yet I'd grown up seeing these little homemade grotto shrines to the Virgin Mary in every neighborhood I ever rode through inside Cleveland.

The book succeeds in giving me what feels like a thorough background about subjects I already knew, or at least in filling in the gaps about things I witnessed from a short distance. I was familiar with the socioeconomic patterns and movements of White Flight and gentrification, but this book clarifies the mechanics of it, particularly with respect to the decrepit housing and infrastructure it left behind (neither of which was really all that great to begin with). McClelland also lists a few examples of what happens when movements born of social justice to serve people crash and burn when they start becoming unsustainable, which many times has to do with internal personalities and politics, as much as whatever the latest company outsourcing or international trade plan is.

I was startled to learn exactly how much politicians in other regions of the country are looking over the carcass of the Rust Belt and still see a couple of things worth stripping even now, like Great Lakes water. A part of me cheered when I read about the political pushback these efforts get; Michigan representatives basically saying, "You wanted to go live in that sand box [i.e places like Georgia, Nevada, Arizona, etc. which have lured people and jobs from Michigan]. Don't come crying to us when you can't find anything to drink."

The one nit I have is that McClelland does a little too good of a job integrating various regional idioms of, to put it mildly, an insensitive stripe. It's one thing to quote, or report a quote from, various sources and stories, like one in which a Daley political operative tells Chicago Latino voters, "We want you guys to be our minority, because we're already sick of that other minority [emphasis mine]." But it's another to uncritically mix them into your own narrative. The author writes, "[Latinos in South Chicago] had their own church -- Our Lady of Guadalupe -- and they were tolerated by Stosh and Chester [i.e. code for "men of eastern European descent"] at the ironworkers' tavern, who figured it was them or the colored [i.e. the other minority]." And while I'm fairly certain McClelland himself doesn't espouse these beliefs, that contention might be a tougher sell for people to whom I might recommend this book. I theorize (but could be wrong) that I'll have to deal with this in the next book in my Rust Belt reading queue, Ben Hamper's Rivethead: Tales from the Assembly Line.

But then, personally, I'm a little (too?) used to it. After all, I grew up around that; hell I'm a Filipino-American who grew up in it. And if nothing else, this book goes a long way to telling me why.

[Stephany Wilkes · Rating 3 out of 5]

The tragedy of the post-industrial Midwest is, for some reason, as captivating for me as the financial crisis: I can read book after book about it. Perhaps there is some subconscious solace in the repetition, or perhaps the solace comes from the fact that the mainstream media has finally acknowledged the level of suffering that has been reality in places like my home area of Detroit for more than 50 years.

But this book isn't repetitive or unoriginal. It contains new perspective and fresh voices, focusing on Chicago's success, the nationwide rape and pillage of corporations on both natural and human resources, and demographic factors, including one that I think will bring new life to the Midwest during my lifetime, which is the need for water. When people hear me say this, I can see them thinking "Tinfoil hat crazy end-of-days lady." Let's face it: Southern CA, Nevada, and Arizona are deserts in the truest sense, a lot of humans were never meant to be living there, and they can't do it indefinitely. And we humans need water more than we need jobs.

The tone of the book was even-handed and fair: the author's writing lacks the bitterness and sorrow that can feel overwhelming in books on this topic, which is not cold but just makes it easier, emotionally, to finish the book. McClelland also writes about people, and their anecdotes, that were fresh and surprising even to me, a MI native.

McClelland also neatly describes, but does not dwell on, some Midwest cultural factors that drive me mad, as in the author's story about considering a low-paying job in Lansing only to learn it offers no vacation for at least a year, and that the hiring manager thinks it's a bad sign to even discuss vacation time. It's the "little things" like this that make me want to beat my head against a wall: so MI wants its college-and-more educated graduates to come home... to low-paying jobs with no vacation? Got it.

The book felt a bit lengthy at times, as in some of the passages about riverfront areas in Buffalo and Cleveland, but overall I recommend it. This is also a good book to read about the Midwest's issues if you hail from elsewhere, since its span is larger than Detroit and offers a better breadth of post-industrial issues, geographically.

[Chet]

Good for anecdotes but doesn't seek more overarching systemic analysis. Solid rustbelt journalism.

[Tim Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent and well written tour and history of the industrial heartland of America that is the Rust Belt – the Upper Midwest and the Great Lakes region – that was a combination of history, travelogue, and socio-political and economic analysis of why the region became the Rust Belt and what the people who live there are doing to improve things. I enjoyed how individual chapters focused on particular cities, regions, or events but again and again author Edward McClelland would return to recurring themes, showing how different cities or historical events illustrated trends or common historical occurrences in the region. Each chapter was a skillful blend of on the ground reporting, meeting everyone from company executives to government officials to school principals to bar tenders, the homeless, drug dealers, and lots of factory workers and labor leaders, to good historical research of particular labor movements, strikes, the rise and fall of particular political dynasties or labor unions, and regional and local economic trends, though in the end the book was about one thing; what happened to the factory?

The book could be depressing at times, telling tales of failed strikes, or strikes that succeeded but damaged the company it was directed against, the industry it was a part of, or even the national economy (or was a last gasp, a last success in an industry that was becoming globalized, or at least moving to the Sunbelt, or becoming automated and offering workers lower pay, longer hours, and fewer benefits). Stories of blighted neighborhoods, of streets plagued by drug dealers and arsonists, of people whose economic outlook was reduced to days or hours, not years or retirement, of people drug addicted and doing absolutely desperate things for their next high, they took a toll on me at times and made for some grim reading. Even the relatively hopeful chapters of people moving back to some cities, of revitalized neighborhoods and new industries sprouting up were leavened by tales of woe again and again. The book focused on why so many Rust Belt cities and towns shrank, had white flight or brain drains, why crime (particularly murder and drug-related crimes) skyrocketed, why so many industries moved to the south and west, why the percentage of labor that was union shrank, why unions became less powerful, and again, in the end, what happened to the factory, as so many cities filled with factories that are ruins, too expensive to revitalize or remodel but also too expensive to tear down, home to pigeons, weeds, rats, the homeless, scrap hunters, graffiti artists, and drug dealers.

Chapter one was a good introduction to the subject, noting how for instance in the span of one man’s life Flint, Michigan went from “a small town where building cars was a cottage industry, to the city with the highest per capita income in the United States, to a depopulated slum with the highest murder rate in the nation.” The author covered both the particulars of one important event, the Flint Sit-Down Strike, which lasted from December 30, 1936 to February 11, 1937 (the first strike where a major manufacturer backed down, a victory that “resulted in the founding of the United Auto Workers and in a new kind of America, one in which every man had a right to the wealth his labor produced”) and more general concepts such as the advent of the middle class (“America’s greatest twentieth-century invention was not the airplane, or the atomic bomb, or the lunar lander…[i]t was the middle class”).

Chapter two gave a good review of the rise and fall of blue-collar labor in the United States, spending a lot of time on the 1960s, which was both the height of the time when factory work was good work, when “America could afford guns and butter,” as the “late 1960s were the pinnacle of this country’s prosperity.” McClelland talked about how different the culture was in the 1960s (a car culture, “when auto engineers were celebrities,” as were professional bowlers and beauty queens), the importance of the 1970 GM strike (which in just two months cut the gross national product growth from 2.5 percent to 1.4 percent, as back then the “auto industry was the American economy”) and the arrival of cheap, fuel-efficient, well-engineered Japanese cars (and the poor Detroit response to this new market), closing the chapter perhaps a tiny bit incongruously with how Buffalo, New York went from a top industrial city and a major population center to the first big Rust Belt city to fall, in large part due to “Buffalo’s midcentury misfortune,” the 1959 opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway, meaning it lost its importance as a major port and last stop on the Lower Great Lakes.

Chapter three was the first of several chapters dealing with Detroit, with particular attention paid to the history of Motown and the long ranging effects of the 1967 Detroit riot and the election of mayor Coleman A. Young Jr. In this chapter this was also the first but not the last time McClelland addressed racial politics, racism, and white flight, nothing how Young “knew he had gained control of the city for the same reason blacks got anything in America – because the whites had discarded it and moved on,” with Young accused of “creating a Midwestern Zaire,” as author Ze’ev Chafets wrote, “America’s first Third World City…seething with post-colonial resentments.”

Chapter four focused on Cleveland, the pollution saga of the Cuyahoga River (with a good history of the famous story of the river burning and its long-ranging effects of becoming nationally prominent) as well as a good deal about the culture and history of Cleveland and the political history (and what this said about Cleveland and of the Rust Belt) of Dennis Kucinich.

The fifth chapter focused on Flint, comparing and contrasting the decline of Detroit (“undid” in the 1960s) with Flint (a city “that never recovered from the 1970s”). In addition to some excellent history of the rise and fall (especially the fall) of Flint, a lot of time is spent looking at Michael Moore (who doesn’t come off especially well in the book).

Chapter six was a very well written chapter on Chicago (particularly the East Side of Chicago), the author covering a lot of territory, from the rise of Barrack Obama (the author having penned a book on Obama earlier) to the industrial decline of the city to the saga of the steel industry to a good bit about the racial and ethnic politics of the city (one “of the most racially divided cities in the nation”) to the invention of the term Rust Belt (coming from an earlier term Rust Bowl, coined by Time magazine in the early-eighties, popularized by Walter Mondale, and merged with an earlier term, the Frost Belt, coined by Richard C. Longworth, “an antonym to the Sun Belt”).

Chapter seven looked at the steel industry again, focusing this time on the history of steel in Homestead, Pennsylvania (“The Brooklyn Bridge, the Pacific Fleet, and the Atlas rockets were all built with Homestead steel, the raw material of the American Century”). This was also the first major exploration in the book of repurposing old mills and industrial structures, fascinating to read about.

Chapter eight was probably the most depressing chapter, returning to Detroit, focusing on Detroit crime, be it carjacking (a term coined by the Detroit News in 1991 “after a twenty-two-year-old drugstore clerk was killed for her Suzuki Sidekick”) or what lead to carjacking, crack, as well as prostitution and the escalating murder rate. Not a fun chapter, it did get into some systemic issues, such as the causes and consequences of a relative lack of respect for education in Detroit.

Chapter nine dealt with a series of subjects I knew nothing about at all, centering around Decatur, Illinois and the labor saga of A.E. Staley Manufacturing Company, in 1988 purchased by the multinational corporation based in the UK known as Tate & Lyle. A major powerhouse in the production of high-fructose corn syrup, so important to candy, soft drink, and beer manufacturers, this sad chapter didn’t tell of labor violence or violent crime but instead the failure of a union to prevail against a company, where people suffered slowly, quietly, and inexorably. A well written chapter, I liked the exploration of Decatur history and culture, a city that “is either the southernmost Northern city in America or the northernmost Southern city,” a city with roots both in the Rust Belt and the Bible Belt but was in the end more important because it showed and discussed the declining power of labor unions and the rising power of multinational corporations (as well as the changing base of the Democratic Party, as it went from “champion of the working stiff” to being “dominated by overeducated liberals…more concerned with protecting the interests of blacks, homosexuals, career women, and pregnant teenagers than the interests of labor”), though I think McClelland could have gone a great deal farther in his exploration of this shift and its consequences for the Rust Belt.

Wow, ok this review is getting long. Trying to a bit briefer. Chapter ten was one of the first really hopeful chapters, discussing how Chicago is growing in a region where pretty much every other city is shrinking, why these factors may pretty much be unique to Chicago (strangely, ethnic and racial tribalism may have helped the city quite a bit, though another huge factor was its more diversified economy, as besides “forging steel and slaughtering cattle, Chicago published books, wrote insurance, traded grain futures, and issued bank loans”) and comes at the “expense of every other city in the region,” and perhaps on a more personal note (the author is from Michigan) why Chicago is such a draw for young and college-educated people from Michigan (the chapter is titled “We’re All Going to End Up in Chicago”). Chapter eleven focused on Syracuse, New York, with both discussions of how one industry both made the town and ultimately broke it and the region (the air conditioning industry, as “it popularized the product that caused its own demise, and contributed to the demise of the entire Northeastern United States”) and again explored attempts to find new industries and revitalize derelict industrial structures, wasteland, and vacant lots. Chapter twelve returned to Buffalo, New York once more, focusing a lot on the theme of making the city attractive and livable again, as so much of the abandoned industrial land “could no longer grow anything edible, produce anything salable, or support a home that was livable.” This chapter was fascinating to me in that it talked about how different cities view their waterfront and waterways (once all related to industry except in Chicago perhaps, now seen as amenities) and the future of the region as it relates to water (will the water of the Great Lakes region be a draw for people to move back from the arid Sunbelt, or will be it the target of many schemes to siphon off its greatest remaining resource, as water usage in the region is a “third rail” for many residents?). Chapter thirteen was an eye-opening and very sad chapter on the Great Recession, the one tied to the sub-prime housing market, and focused a lot on how this affected Cleveland, Ohio. Chapter fourteen was an excellent chapter on Detroit, with the author going into all manner of things, from ruin porn to urban exploration, the three types of “Detroit stories: the Metonym (about the auto industry), the Detroit Lament (about “derelict buildings”), and Detroit Utopia (generally about white hipsters planting community gardens next to their $5,000 homesteads),” with lots of coverage of the return of urban farming as well some coverage of the scrapper industry and urban exploration tourism. Chapter fifteen was on Flint, showing both areas of improvement in Flint and, all without mentioning the poor quality drinking water, how its high crime rate, especially murder, has made it a “twenty-first-century Tombstone, an American Mogadishu,” the author exploring why this is. The final chapter, chapter sixteen, focused on Lansing, detailing the history of Oldsmobile, so closely tied to Lansing, and discussing the differences in “shoprat” culture between Flint (more combative) and Lansing (much, much less combative), the problems the two cities face (fairly up to date equipment in Flint, a hard to work with culture for the auto industry, while a much more cooperative and professional culture in Lansing but a much more outdated infrastructure and “obsolete, inefficient factories”), the chapter closing on some positive notes as Lansing has made enormous strides with new industries and a baseball team.

I would have liked a closing chapter that summarized the trends and issues McClelland visited again and again. With revisiting several cities in multiple chapters it at times felt like a series of collected essays, though all of the essays were good. The writing was very evocative and descriptive when he was interviewing people, visiting industrial ruins or working factories, or simply in a city, it was vivid and at times quite funny. I don’t think he got a lot of the law enforcement side of things in the various chapters but points for getting interviews with criminals.

[William · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very important book for anyone who really wants to understand how we got to where were are now as a nation. Facing a President elect Trump. The author is from Lansing Michigan. Although a bit of a college town it is also positioned deep in the heart of the Rust Belt.Those north and Midwest states that were previously dependent on heavy industry and now mostly resemble some post industrial dystopia. I wasn't enamored of the authors voice, it reflects the middle Midwest vibe and is equally critical of business/Republican policies as it is of labor/ democratic values. This in my mind is a false equivalency as, as far as I know labor cannot move easily to the Sun belt or China, Mexico, etc. as the auto, steel, and other manufacturers have done. (Confession: I have worked in a steel mill and belonged to the Steelworkers Union) .
McClelland tell the story of the people and cities, affected by the pull out of the auto plants in Detroit, Flint, and Lansing, Steel mills in Homestead, Pittsburgh, and Youngstown, and the worlds largest corn syrup operation in Dekalb Illinois. All these industries provided middle class to upper middle class livelihoods for millions. All of them either no longer exist or are much smaller and poorer in those cities.
Millions of previously well paid workers saw their fortunes crumble after the last boom in manufacturing output after the Vietnam war buildup of 70's Since then GM has moved most of its plants that it did not out right close to the South for a non union workforce willing to 12 hour days and at less than half the cost. And most of U.S. Steels production now comes from China. The author tells the convoluted story of how and why those industries left and the human misery that followed in their wake. It is this misery that saw the rust belt states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Indiana all look to Mr. Trump for deliverance. The book was published in 2013 but the quotes of laid of workers then were heard in many a post election autopsy. They felt abandoned by the Democrats (even though Obama bailed out GM, saving thousands of job), who they felt cater to "special interests" i.e. Blacks and Gays. And that their once powerful unions are now either powerless or in cahoots with business. The GM that returned after the bailout is not the same. They have installed a two-tiered payment scale for new hires (in an effort to break the union), and have installed "Japanese style"..working conditions. It is a much smaller, labor-wise, company.
Now millions of formerly well paid workers have seen their standard of living drop. The cities that used to support them decaying and the realization that their children's only options are to move away or take lower paying jobs. When, as these mostly White well paid workers have done, you've put yourself at the top of the totem pole by moving to lily white suburbs, playing racial politics to your advantage both inside and outside the plant, gerrymandering voting blocks to keep yourself in power and all of a sudden your fortunes crumble, demagogues lurk and get elected.
The author details how unions, industries, politicians, and more conspired to keep Blacks at the very bottom of the economic ladder in these rust belt cities and how housing discrimination built the ghettoized municipalities that remain.
If more people had been paying attention to the voices and stories in this book the outcome of this past November's elections could have been prevented. By that I mean instead of the racist, misogynistic and xenophobic answers offered to those feeling disgruntled because of loss of status (even if that privileged status is derived from mostly stepping on and taking advantage of minorities), politicians acknowledged the loss and invested in the people and structures in these abandoned and forgotten places.

[Alex Kolb · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall I enjoyed this book. It was a relatively easy read and had a good amount of detail that kept it interesting. The last few chapters seemed a bit disjointed from the rest of the book, which took it down from a 4 star to 3.5 for me.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good book. Great history of labor unions and the main towns and industries of the Rust Belt. The writing is good, the stories are poignant, and if you have every lived or spent time in any of the cities mentioned you will get a new perspective on some things.

[Ed A. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A clear-eyed view of an oft-referenced but frequently misunderstood region, from the people who lived it...

Two events precipitated my reading of this book. Both of them were conversations with my late grandfather, whose life story could have easily fit between its covers. The first one was in the fall of 2016, when we mused about the results of the U.S. election and working-class resentment brewing in places like Flint and Youngstown. The second one was about 5 years later, when he realized I was never moving back to the steel town that I grew up in and that he called home. Across a 60-year generation gap between a retired factory worker and the guy writing this review, McClelland deftly chronicles how greatly our standard of living has declined since the halcyon days of the American Century. If you've ever looked at an abandoned factory and asked "why?" - this book is for you. If you've ever wondered why contemporary politicians obsess about courting "the middle class" - this book is for you. If you wonder why so many folks today seem to be afflicted by some fond nostalgia for the past - again, this book is for you.

Most impressive are McClelland's innate ability to link important historical events with obscure economic figures, and seamlessly blend them with the stories of people who inhabit what is now collectively known as "the Rust Belt." Whether it's Decatur or Detroit, Chicago or Cleveland - the arc of history is much the same. Blue-collar workers had a pretty good run until the rug got pulled out. The ones who retired from manufacturing before the industry's collapse fared the best. The youngest retrained as computer programmers, grocery store clerks, or began dealing crack. Middle aged workers with families and mortgages were hit the hardest. This was the demographic which often spiraled into addiction, divorce, and suicide. The author, most shrewdly, shines a light on the loss of economic mobility and its connection to rising crime, poverty, and drug abuse without it devolving into a one-sided social commentary (à la J.D. Vance).

As a journalist, McClelland does not offer up solutions although he does cover this region's nascent but fractured attempts at revitalization. The tone suggests that there's little in the way of optimism; given how much of the region's identity is still rooted in its industrial past - a modern-day Waiting for Godot. This book is an intensely sad reminder of how much American workers have lost over the last five decades and how contemporary history seems hellbent on deleting this legacy from 21st century discourse. With countless Midwestern cities in varying degrees of aging and gradual de-population it seems unlikely that this trend will reverse anytime soon, as evidenced by one of my favourite anecdotes in the book:

"Michigan was the only state to lose population in the 2000s. In 2000, Michigan’s per capita income was 18th among states. By 2009, it was 37th. The poverty rate, once fifth lowest, was 14.4 percent -- in the Top 20. Even the obesity rate ballooned to 31.5 percent, putting Michigan among the five fattest states, in the same league of avoirdupois as Alabama and West Virginia. In college degrees, Michigan fell from 30th to 35th, as half the graduates left the state in search of work, like Okies with B.A.s and B.S.s, reversing the migration from the South that had built it into a Megastate of the mid-20th century. (By the early 21st, Michigan would be surpassed by Georgia and North Carolina.) “There’s nothing for them here,” explained a retired Oldsmobile engineer whose children had dispersed to Colorado and California."

I truly loved this book. I've read it more than a few times. I eventually gave it to my grandfather as I felt he was the only person who could truly relate to the stories within. He offered a running commentary on "how things were" and more often than not, McClelland hit the mark. Shortly before he passed, he said he finally understood why I'd moved away. Much like the people chronicled in the book, my grandfather often moved in pursuit of economic opportunity (a trend which seems to be intensifying as folks increasingly search for cheaper housing, better jobs, or lower taxes). Stories then came out. He once turned down a job offer in his native Germany at the Mahle plant in Stuttgart for a chance to make ten times more money working for the defense sector in California. Before leaving for Canada, he flipped a coin: Heads? Detroit. Tails? Hamilton, Ontario. (He lost his job as soon as NAFTA was inked, costing him his pension). In a way, this book was a bit like reading various personal accounts from a lost civilization, but the harsh truths it offers are timeless:

"To Mike Stout, a steelworker who lost his job when Pennsylvania’s Homestead Works closed in 1986 - Homestead was a microcosm of what America had become: a nation of shopkeepers who sold each other things, instead of making things. There's an old adage that says, 'We can't all take in each other's laundry.' It's been proven in Homestead."

Five stars.

[Luke Allen · Rating 2 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading this but nevertheless thought it failed. Some interesting local history and I liked his writing tone. Empathetic but detached enough to point out absurdity when he sees it (for example, I thought he handled the discussion of "ruin porn" in my former hometown of Detroit well. Yes, you can see how locals might get annoyed with voyeurism by tourists over big abandoned building, but its completely ridiculous to expect people not to be fascinated by them). An interesting read for me because he was researching Detroit and Flint at times that I was living and working in those places. It was even a surprise to see people I know on the pages as interview subjects.

But ultimately I guess that's why this book failed for me. First, it's basically just a series of local histories of rut belt towns. Interesting, but not compelling. What is his underlying thesis? I have no idea.

More importantly though, he just gets a lot wrong, at least about the towns I know the best, Flint and Detroit (and Michigan more broadly). I can't countenance claims that "all Michiganders do X" when literally no one I know does X or "Most Detroiters think Y", when I know hundreds of people in Detroit, none of whom think Y. Gonna need to see some evidence my man.

Overall, an easy enough read, but some massive flaws that doom this book from the beginning.

[Mitch · Rating 5 out of 5]

After being on my "To Read" list for over 6 years, this book delivered and was everything I hoped for and then some!! Part history, partly sociological, part personal journey through the rust-belt, this book reminded me so much of George Packer's phenomenal The Unwinding, which is a masterpiece.

I loved McClelland's tone and writing throughout this book. I appreciated the snapshots into each of the regions discussed, most memorably Detroit, Chicago, Buffalo, Cleveland, Flint, Lansing, and Homestead, PA. I particularly loved the chapters on Detroit, which captured the history and present day essence of the city perfectly. It's no secret that Detroit is a fascinating place, and one that is special to me, and McClelland nailed it!

I sincerely hope that McClelland revisits some of these places as part of a "10 (or 20) years later" new edition, as I'm sure that there would be some great positive changes in some places (Detroit for one) and perhaps further decay in others. I would also have loved to have gotten McClelland's (and other Flintstones') perspectives on the Flint water crisis, which came to light several years after this book's publication.

Easy 5 stars. I will remember this one well, and will definitely recommend to others and revisit in the future.

[Stephani · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. One star off because at times it felt the author was inputting his opinion instead of sticking to factual information and sometimes would venture off into seemingly random paths. I learned a lot about various Rust Belt cities, which was extremely insightful. If you are interested in learning more about the Rust Belt with a broad brush, I would highly recommend this. I am glad to have picked this book up in a local bookstore in Lansing, MI, where the author is from. He now lives in the neighborhood I grew up in in Chicago.

[Ti.Me · Rating 3 out of 5]

A deep, multifaceted look into the dire impact of unchecked globalism on American manufacturing. If it had been expressed in 50% fewer words, Nothin' But Blue Skies would have earned 5-stars from this reader. 3 stars as-is.

Partial List of Topics:
Unions
Labor
Gentrification
American Midwest
Greater Syracuse Area
Buffalo
Eerie Canal
Michigan, esp Detroit
Cleveland
Auto Manufacturing (US)
Auto Manufacturing (Japan)
Steel Industry, esp in Pennsylvania

[Liz · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sorry to say that 1/2 way thru, I bailed on this book...I was hoping to read an account of the Heartland's economic history as it relates to industry. What I got was a persuasive essay on labor unions. I did learn a few things, but not enough to justify finishing.

[Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this immensely. I have a propensity to love rust belt cities; the grittiness, the abandonment by most. This book explained why places are, what happened to the people.

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ed McClelland’s “Nothin’ But BLUE SKIES” is a neat little treatise on the Rust Belt – how it earned its moniker and how it got that way. Basically it is a hyper-kinetic serial description of the area – from Flint, to Lansing, to Detroit, to Cleveland, to the East Side of Chicago, to Homestead (Pa.), to Decatur (Il.), to Syracuse (NY), to Buffalo, and back to the Michigan cities.

In this wide-ranging assessment the author focuses on the growth and decline of the steel and automobile industries, and the impact of intransigent management and militant labor. While the view is often cursory – the tale is more journalistic summary than academic analysis – the author’s writing is crisp and entertaining at all times. This book would appeal mostly to readers reared in any of the named cities or in the Midwest in general … readers who come from other areas of the country may not pick up on the inside jokes and asides of the tales. One especially interesting chapter gives the author’s take on why Chicago did not suffer the same problems seen in Detroit and Cleveland.

The story brings in anecdotes on the impact of air conditioners and drugs, and even spends a few pages trashing both Michael Moore and Roger Smith. The tale touches on how America tried to accommodate the Japanese invasion in automobiles - attempting to match Japanese efficiency, and noting how GM watched Toyota grab the market in hybrid vehicles.

But after all is said and done, this is really a story of the love-hate relationship between General Motors and Michigan. How capitalist GM would use up and dump cities like Flint when manufacturing realities changed, and labor unions would squeeze out every employee benefit they could get while they had leverage. Was management that poor? Did unions overplay their hands? While both the company and the unions get credit for creating the great middle class, they also share in the blame for driving the days of plenty away. Just maybe there aren’t any answers … just maybe manufacturing was destined to reach this confrontation anyway – McClelland doesn’t offer an opinion.

[Michael Shaw · Rating 4 out of 5]

Occasional gems mixed in to an otherwise plodding account of the rise and fall of midwestern cities. Too much time detailing the specifics, and not enough giving the broader context in which to interpret the facts.

[Liam · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Clevelanders ... were also sick of Dennis [Kucinich], whose two years in office would earn him seventh place in a historians' poll of worst mayors in American history." (52)

"Cleveland is even jealous of Detroit, its annual rival for poorest city in America, because Detroit's Roman decay has drawn the cameras of filmmakers and photographers from all over the world. Rotting unnoticed on Lake Erie's other shore, Cleveland is as unromantic as a worn out strip mall." (56)

"It's an obvious observation that the drug trade replaced the auto industry as Detroit's number one employer of high school dropouts. But the factories helped create that class of dropouts. Henry Ford, who once said, 'I hire an autoworker from the neck down,' dispatched his recruitment agents to the South to hire unlettered men who'd be so grateful for work they wouldn't cause labor trouble. Education was never important to blue-collar Detroiters, because the shop was always hiring, and it paid better than teaching. By the mid-1980s, the graduation rate in the Detroit public schools was 25 percent." (142-3)

"In the sixties, there was so much work that the hippies had to construct an alternate system of morality to justify their indolence." (156)

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Toxic dust emerged from upper Midwest smokestacks in the heyday of America’s industrial age, but now it’s gone, hence the book’s title. Blue skies are just about all that’s left; urban blight prevails in Flint, Mich., Detroit, Cleveland and other Rust Belt cities depicted. I yearned for bright turnaround stories, but they are few. Author begins and ends with cultural descriptions of his hometown, Lansing, Mich., its rise and demise as an Oldsmobile hub. Being from there, he writes, enabled him to have the necessary rust belt cred he needed to identify and talk with people living amid inner-city scars. They relate how they cope, but foresee little hope. Yet someday people and factories that have vanished to the Sun Belt and to southwest deserts will return. They’ll return for Great Lakes water. They’ll need a drink.

[Rock · Rating 4 out of 5]

McClelland has a gift for finding compelling stories and characters and working them into cohesive vignettes. But this book doesn't manage to be more than a collection of these vignettes, and certainly isn't the methodical treatment the topic deserves (and the jacket implies the book will contain). That's not McClelland's fault if that's not what he's trying to do, but a serious problem with the book is that he sometimes just throws facts in, seemingly in an attempt to be facty, and makes no attempt to examine their context or validity. One example is his offhand attribution of the differing labor characters of Flint and Lansing to their settlement by differing ethnic groups. All in all a pleasure to read, though, and highly illuminating.

[B · Rating 5 out of 5]

Five stars...five reasons I liked this book:
(1) The writing is colorful and at times a little vulgar, which gives the narrative an appropriate tone; (2) He quickly covers 20th century industrial history of several midwest and non-coastal eastern cities, unfortunately not including Milwaukee, but I admire his on the ground reporting and personal background/street cred; (3) He effectively weaves together several different social issues that collectively swirled into a tornado that tore apart the blue color middle class in the Rust Belt; (4) He provides a decent backgrounder showing why the white working class feels alienated from the democratic party; and (5) As far as I can remember, every chapter really held my interest and I kept looking forward to reading it

[Andrew Rothstein · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a wry sense of humor, McClelland takes through the detritus that remains from the rise and fall of some of Americas rust belt cities. There is nothing pretty about the stories of cities we now associate with industrial decline, such as Detroit, Flint, Cleveland, and Buffalo. Yet somehow, the humanity of these places still comes through.

We meet real people who remain attached to cities that have not found a way to reinvent themselves. McClelland doesn't spare those who claim to care about such cities. Michael Moore, for example, gets raked good and proper. But so do the heads of the auto industry and politicians. Authority takes a bashing and the regular working person left with the result.

Colorful people and fun reading.

[Jeramey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book expecting something similar to Richard Longworth's Caught in the Middle. It's not that, and that's okay. It does lack a solid structure to define where you're going, but I suppose the Rust Belt lacks that as well.

I enjoyed the read, but could have used more of a setup from the author on how the book would lay out. It's part-travelogue, part-history text, mixed with some pontification on what the future might hold.

The book doesn't touch much on Milwaukee, which was a bit of a personal bummer (I'm always interested what outsiders think). It's quite Michigan centric, given the author's background that's too be expected (but should perhaps be explained in the intro).

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe I keep reading books about Rust Belt cities because I expect someone to suddenly come up with an idea that will put the residents back on the road to a better life. Not sure when or how or if that will happen in this century. Tons of interesting information, stats, stories and characters within these pages but the author sometimes seemed to have his own agenda and scores to settle. He really does not like Dennis Kucinich or Michael Moore, two people who I think have brought a lot of attention to the issues the author writes about. But I took tons of notes — always a sign that a book involved me deeply.

[Art · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book pretends to cover "America's Industrial Heartland." Instead, it offered 16 chapters that felt like good, long magazine articles without a narrative thread connecting them. ... I grew up in Chicago and lived a few years in Cleveland, so I read the two chapters about those two cities. ... The author argues that Chicago did not read its own obituary in 1980 and, instead, became a global city at the expense of other big cities in the region. "What did Chicago do right?" the author asked. Mayor Daley focused on downtown development, attracting a young and professional class.

[Oliver Bateman · Rating 5 out of 5]

kudos to mclelland for this immersive, journalism-driven popular history of the various shithole hotspots that constitute today's "rust belt" (which mclelland, like many others, defines as the midwestern expanse between buffalo and chicago). the sections on cleveland and detroit (as well as lansing, mclelland's hometown) are especially strong; the rest is good, too, and appears to have been pieced together from the dozens of long-form stories that michigan state alum mclelland wrote for various publications over the years.

[Dave · Rating 1 out of 5]

Disjointed, rambling, lacking in substance. The only thing I learned from this book is that the author is an arrogant prick. Or at least he comes across as one. His "memoir" style of prose is self-absorbed and his lack of research into the topic is evident.

There are far more coherent and less self-absorbed books out there documenting the decline of the US's industrial heartland. I would highly recommend Richard Longworth's "Caught in the Middle" as the defining book of this genre.

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was immediately engaged as McClelland begins his story in Michigan with the roll of the automakers in defining and creating the new middle class - did not have time to finish this before it was due, but will definitely return (although I fear I already know too well some of the heartaches in store for the union men and women)

[Washington Post · Rating 5 out of 5]

In “Nothin’ but Blue Skies,” McClelland chronicles the destruction of America’s industrial heartland, largely by the greed, heartlessness and stupidity of those who should have been its caretakers — CEOs, bankers, politicians and many, many people in government and the judicial system. Read the review: http://wapo.st/13DWEIi

[Claudia Majetich · Rating 4 out of 5]

Didn't like some of his snarkier chapters, and sometimes he overwrites...but overall a compelling depiction of how once vital communities in the old inudstrial heartland have been destroyed. Michael Dirda in the Washington Post wrote a very good review: http://articles.washingtonpost.com/20...

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thoroughly enjoyed the sociological, first-person look into the Midwest, unions, class, race, etc. As someone who grew up in a quintessential middle American town in a time of transition, I related to the stories and found the tone to be like sitting at a bar talking to an old friend.