Punching Out: One Year in a Closing Auto Plant

by Paul Clemens

An elegy—angry, funny, and powerfully detailed—about the slow death of a Detroit auto plant and an American way of life.

How does a country dismantle a century’s worth of its industrial heritage? To answer that question, Paul Clemens investigates the 2006 closing of one of America’s most potent a Detroit auto plant. Prior to its closing, the Budd Company stamping plant on Detroit’s East Side, built in 1919, was one of the oldest active auto plants in America’s foremost industrial city—one whose history includes the nation’s proudest moments and those of its working class. Its closing also reflects the character of the country in a new era—the sad, brutal process of picking it apart and sending it, piece by piece, to the countries that now have use for its machines.

Punching Out is an up-close report, at once tender and angry, from the meanest, sharpest edge of America’s deindustrializa­tion, and a lament for a working-class culture that once defined a prosperous America—and that is now on the verge of eco­nomic extinction.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Business, Memoir, Sociology, Labor, Biography Memoir

288 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2011

Reviews

[Gnarly Authenticity . · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was going to give this one an extra star just for covering a topic dear to my heart, but this is no "Monkey's Wrench" or even "Rivethead" or "Gulf Star 45". "Punching Out" isn't really about the closing of a factory at all--it's Part Two of Paul Clemens' mildly interesting "How A Relatively Overachieving Lower-Middle Class Catholic Boy Became A Nonfiction Writer" saga. We follow Paul, the main character of the book, as he drives around Detroit, looks up old business directories at the library, broods over the ruins and occasionally speaks with a security guard; all the while making ham-handed literary allusions.

Even so, I was willing to rate three stars until I reached this passage, which concerns the "Arkansas Boys", a trio of hillbilly machinery movers whose stoical,taciturn competence sort of symbolizes the lost manliness of the disappearing white working class to Clemens. They're presented as the most interesting figures in the book, and he's too shy to talk to them in a relaxed social setting:

"By the time the Arkansas Boys had walked into the bar and seated themselves at a table, I'd lost my nerve to approach them. This was their habitat, not mine, and I was out of my depth, sipping my Coke. I continued to observe their work from a distance, as I had for months."

At this point I could only say, "Dude, you're in the wrong line of work" and de-rate him one star. He should put the ruins of Detroit behind him and just concentrate on meta-memoir.

[Jonna Higgins-Freese · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an unexpected delight. I came across this after a family trip to Detroit.

Clemens has an ear for dialogue and the way people talk, and I loved hearing that, the stories of working people that don't usually get

His turns of phrase, and quotations of those of others, were often gorgeous and sharp:

"The arty delectation of Detroit's destruction -- 'ruin porn' as it's called" -- I hadn't heard the phrase "ruin porn" before, but it's perfect -- one of the things I found most mesmerizing, on a delightful Urban Adventures tour of Detroit (go with Bob; he's fabulous), was his photos of the insides of some of the abandoned buildings we were seeing, especially of a sumptuously gold-leaf decorated arched ceiling inside an abandoned building which had been converted into _a parking garage_. Bob shared those photos, but what he really wanted to talk about was the revitalization of downtown -- the art scene, the young people moving back. He was impatient with questions about decay, and for good reasons, I see now. Clemens quotes an article by Nick Paumgarten on the "moral calculus of arty enthusiasm for urban obsolescence . . . there is something decadent about the forma curation of rust and the fetishizing of decay" (35).

Although Clemens hilariously claimed on "The Daily Show" that the book was a description without a thesis, he does touch on deeper political choices and shibboleths, one of them being the idea (though he doesn't flesh it out) that the ideal of home ownership has not done working people any favors. "It's worth trying to describe . . . the isolation surrounding the plant," he writes. In the neighborhoods just north of the Budd plant, 2/3 to 3/4 of the land is occupied by vacant lots or vacant houses.

[Jeramey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyed the idea of this book (and still do), but it really should be one year in a "closed" auto supply plant. Having grown up in Janesville, WI, home of the GM Suburban, Tahoe, Yukon, I am well acquainted with what it an automobile plant can mean to a town. Having left just a few years before it closed I was looking forward to a story of the plant employees on the way out, what they would miss, what they wouldn't, what they're doing next, and how they feel about it.

This book actually deals with the next step, what happens after it closes. It was interesting to learn all that goes on with clearing out the facility, from security personnel to riggers moving the actual equipment. I wish the characters had been explored to a greater extent, but they still gave you a sense of who these people are and where they come from.

The trip to Mexico at the end to see some of the equipment was insightful, and I couldn't have certainly went for more of that as well.

I enjoyed the book, learned quite a bit, but it wasn't quite what the title sold it as.

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

IF you're from Michigan or a Rust Belt state, you're likely to find this book incredibly sad and wistfully funny. It shows how complicated the forces are behind the crumbling of Michigan's manufacturing base, and the inevitability of the emptying of it's cities. It's an important read, and you'll understand your neighbors and towns the better for it.

If you're not from Michigan, you'll probably just think it's too bad, and you'll move on. And you don't need to read it.

[RICK "SHAQ" GOLDSTEIN · Rating 5 out of 5]

RICK “SHAQ” GOLDSTEIN SAYS: “THE AMERICAN WORKING CLASS, MOPPING UP AFTER ITSELF.”
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Everybody in America is aware of… if simply by osmosis… of all the layoffs affecting the Automobile industry in the last decade. The numbers alone are staggering. In addition to the hundreds of thousands laid off… the domino effect in related industries and lifestyles is mind blowing. Even more amazing… and brought to light… in such an ingenious way by author, Paul Clemens, is the unbelievable amount of actual manufacturing plants that have been closed. *THOUSANDS-UPON-THOUSANDS* of these former definitions of successful middle class working America. The author then takes a step even further into the core of the crumbling American auto manufacturing world… and that is… what happens to the actual equipment left behind in the “graveyard” of plants, after the hard working human beings are gone? It really makes you stop and think… after you (metaphorically) put aside the human count that is listed everywhere on the written page and heard by every voice on the airwaves. What happens to all that equipment?

Aaah! All that equipment! And man on man… will you learn about this equipment in this book. And not just the type of mere equipment that might logically come to the average reader’s mind. But pieces of equipment that in many cases *WEIGH-OVER-ONE-MILLION-POUNDS!!* I’m sure if you’re like me… until you’re awakened by this stimulating book… you simply envision the old equipment rusting and rotting away like headstones in a no longer active industrial cemetery. But most of this gigantic equipment is eventually bound for foreign plants in Mexico, Canada, India and beyond. Well, these former monsters of progress can’t just be packed up like your Grandmother’s dishes and shipped by UPS. That’s where the author creates a non-fiction story dominated by unique and quirky characters, that are covered with grease and oil… who more likely than not are shivering cold, huddled around a fire heated 55 gallon drum in a closed auto plant with no electricity.

The hub of this story takes place at Budd Company a former auto stamping plant and wheel company. Budd closed its doors/gates for good on December 4, 2006. “AT ITS PEAK, PLANT EMPLOYMENT APPROACHED TEN THOUSAND.” The author at just the right intervals, takes you back through Budd’s entire history. This history includes an owner that cared about his employees. The plant changed completely to military manufacture during World War II and among other things manufactured over *10,000,000 SHELLS*. In the post war years “BUDD BUILT AND ASSEMBLED THE T-BIRD THROUGH TO SEPTEMBER 2, 1960, PRODUCING 251,453 TOTAL UNITS.” Though the story centers on Budd… the carnage of Detroit itself is displayed as individual plants approaching *FIVE MILLION SQUARE FEET ARE SHUTTERED* and the city itself… “NO CITY THAT LOSES 150,000 RESIDENTS A DECADE FOR SIX CONSECUTIVE DECADES CAN REALISTICALLY CLAIM ANYONE WANTS TO MAINTAIN IT, LET ALONE RECAPTURE IT.”

But the character’s that range from Arkansas hillbillies who can not only cut up these million pound machines… with the expertise of a heart surgeon… but oversee their being loaded onto trucks… and then the unique truck drivers that can handle such loads… let alone in hazardous winter conditions… under enormously tight time constraints… and then these machines are somehow reinstalled… and reborn… in other parts of the world. The “Dirty-Dozen” like cast of characters performing this magician like work… in most cases couldn’t get a union job down the road… or are paid more than if they could. And all this goes on for years after the official plant closing.

As the author made his way precariously through all roadblocks that included human beings… union regulations… and good old Mother Nature… he had to constantly explain and sell his reason for being allowed into this almost apocalyptic world.

“I TOLD THOSE WHO WONDERED AT MY PRESENCE THAT I WANTED TO SEE WHAT HAPPENED TO AN AUTO PLANT AFTER IT CLOSED—TO ITS EQUIPMENT, ITS PEOPLE, AND TO THE OLD PLANT ITSELF, THE PRODUCT OF AN INDUSTRIAL ERA, AMERICA’S LAST, THAT WOULD LEAVE BEHIND RUINS TO RIVAL THE ROMANS.”

The author has succeeded beyond belief. If you read this book you will never simply pass by an abandoned plant on the side of the road or highway. If you don’t at least physically stop and look around… I guarantee you that your heart and soul will!

[Luke Allen · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Made in Detroit" is a must read for anyone interested in the city. This isn't. But it is an interesting well researched look at the death of one of thousands of auto plants in the city, and, by extension, the neighborhood around it. For most people this will be a pretty depressing read, sort of morbid. But I moved to Detroit as Clemens was researching this book and it made me nostalgic for those days, crazy as it sounds. Hundreds of thousands of people were losing their livelihoods, and the city was spiraling into Mad Max times. It was an unmitigated tragedy. For me, new to the city, it was also romantic. Detroit still had a real, distinct blue collar character, and infinite fascinating corners to discover. Neighborhoods had their own cultures. And for all the comeback talk, more people lived there than now. Reading this reminded me how Detroit has hollowed out, both literally and soul-wise, as it's "come back". The changes make me sad. Maybe I'm just getting old.
There's a point where he talks about the Texas bar on the east side. I went there once, not long after I had moved to the city. It was full of blue collar union guys and their drunk wives. Black and White. Pounding Budweiser and listening to classic rock. I was hipster-adjacent and stuck out like a sore thumb.
I google mapped the Texas Bar after I read that chapter. It's gone. Replaced with a "cocktail lounge" . Big windows, sapwood, "vintage" string lights. My 23 year old self might have hated it, but I wouldn't have looked out of place.
Then I google mapped the plant he covers in the book. Still empty.

[Anne Vandenbrink · Rating 3 out of 5]

Paul Clemens spends a year at the Budd metal fabricating plant in Detroit observing the process of shutting it down. He went to union meetings where workers had questions about their their severance pay, pensions and health insurance. He watched as foreigners from all over looked at the machinery they might buy for their own endeavors. Auctions were held to sell all the remaining fixtures from hi-los to calipers. He watched as crews from all over the US and abroad dismantled the 3 stories high stamping machines piece by piece, put on hundreds of trucks and transported to Mexico and Brazil. Then he watched crews come in to cut up the rest and fill hundreds of trucks headed for the scrap yard.

[Nic · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first half of the book is really good. You follow the author around while he gives you a history of the automotive industry in Detroit. The second half gets a bit monotonous. Chapter after chapter of how a plant gets stripped and sold off. He does his best to make the limited cast of characters sound like outlaws and misfits, but it only goes so far. Decent read if you're into history or from the area but not something I'd recommend for pleasure

[Patricia · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little more memoir than I'd like to see, but still fun!

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

I did not get through the first chapter. This was an interesting idea, but the wrong author.

[Stephany Wilkes · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book describes the disassembly of the Detroit Budd Plant, part of the decades-long disassembly of a city, class, skill set, culture, and language. That does seem like something we at least ought to record (doesn't it?), this shift from the America of 100 years, much of the nation's lifetime, as creator and producer of goods with a large middle class as a point of pride to... something else to be determined. But very few people are documenting and writing about it, aside from ruin porn, and even fewer are doing it as sympathetically, thoughtfully and non-judgmentally as Paul Clemens.

Clemens is a keen observer and faithful recorder of the way people speak, and thankfully uses hefty helpings of quotations to share with us. I like his honesty, and the way in which he situates himself in the narrative, which helps readers situate themselves in the context of a closing factory. I like the fact that Clemens doesn't altogether avoid giving his personal opinion of certain matters, and that he lets emotion in, if quietly.

We use a lot of non-attributional language to describe the economic changes taking place in the U.S., which implies that no one is to blame so much as "forces" beyond our control. The language in the Plant Closing News Clemens quotes is like this, for example. This language may remove or dull human agency, but it cannot change the very real human effects of high unemployment and watching one's surrounds fall apart. Clemens shows what it is like to be part of that experience, vs. staring at beautiful ruin photos chock full of nature and devoid of people. There are still people in Detroit and other Rust Belt cities, and none of us know what they are supposed to do next, and so we'd rather not think about them.

Don't do that. Read this book instead. It's beautiful and one of the few documents we have of what real people are going through on the ground in America's transition to post industrialism. This book will, I think, become an increasingly important historical reference as time goes on: we have so much evidence of our build up to industrialization and so little of the decline. Perhaps Greenfield Village can acquire Mr. Budd's old, plaster-peeling office from the Budd Plant as its first historical showcase item of decline?

[Ben · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really this is probably only a 3 on the enjoyment scale for me, but it gets an extra star for being a really good concept for a book. Clemens gives an account not of the last operating days of the plant, but of the aftermath, the dismantling and shipping off of the plant to Asia, Mexico or South America, where the machinery will be put back into service again, often for the same companies who used it in its original home in Detroit. He spends time with the people who performs this work, and goes to great pains to understand and humanize them.

I'll confess to being one of those artsy types Clemens makes fun of in the early part of the book, who from time to time sneak into old abandoned factories and warehouses, taking photographs and wondering at what once went on inside. But this experience for me (in my case the old railyard buildings in Albuquerque back when they were abandoned ) also added to an understanding of the sort of vast spaces, massive machinery, and wooden floors similar to the ones in this book, that he's talking about. It's hard to really grasp the scale unless you've see them yourself, but I definitely understand first hand something of the awe he tries to create when writing about the auto plants.

Clemens' account goes beyond this one plant, to cover some of the deconstruction of the American auto industry. Thankfully it avoids a lot of the political and emotional overtones and instead keeps a fairly solid documentarian tone. If you're looking for a story, there isn't too much of a narrative, but there are characters and history galore. Just the history of the Budd auto plant and the innovation behind the switch from wooden to steel automobile bodies made the book worthwhile for me in a historical context.

By the end of the book Clemens acknowledges that he doesn't know what he'll do when he doesn't have the plant to go to every day, the routine, the friends he has made there, the simple, regular act of work (or in his case observing people work). And that more than anything I found touching. I look forward to seeing what Clemens turns his hand to next.

[Everyday eBook · Rating 5 out of 5]

Detroit Dreams Disassembled: Paul Clemens’ Punching Out

I own a “Say Nice Things About Detroit” T-shirt — colored gray, appropriately enough. It plaintively asks us to remember, please, that the city needs our help. The Motor City, which once brought to mind Chevy muscle cars and Stevie Wonder, now makes many think of rust, racial animosity, and murder, when they think of it at all. Paul Clemens, the author of Punching Out: One Year in a Closing Auto Plant, would say that we can’t afford to ignore his city much longer. What’s bad for GM is bad for the country, and the deindustrialization that has been taking place in Detroit and elsewhere is beginning to have deep and unpleasant ramifications for tens of millions of people.

For Clemens, it’s personal. He had deep roots in the neighborhood around the now-defunct Budd Company stamping plant, a supplier of auto body parts to all the major car manufacturers. When he read in 2006 that “Budd’s” would close, he set out to find out what that really meant. After the pink slips, he spent a year watching the massive steel presses be disassembled, loaded onto trucks, and shipped to China and Brazil, or melted for scrap. He follows one press, which once produced parts for a nearby Chrysler plant, as it is trucked and reassembled in Mexico — where it now stamps parts for Chrysler.

Clemens is a wonderful writer who shows rather than tells, introducing us to the motley crew of “riggers,” security guards, and truckers who empty the plant until it becomes one more exhausted hulk on the Detroit skyline. We taste the gritty dust, just as we feel the marshmallowy softness of the rubber boots propped too close to a steel barrel, burning oil-soaked floor tiles to keep out the Detroit winter. It’s clear that we are watching workers who are disassembling their own, and others’, American dreams.

Read the full review here: http://bit.ly/xErICo

[Neil Pierson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was expecting to read about an auto plant that was scheduled to close and about the impact on its employees. After all, the subtitle is One Year in a Closing Auto Plant. But the plant (Budd Company’s Detroit stamping plant) is already closed when most of the book takes place. After the plant closed, none of the workers were Budd employees, although a couple were former employees. The author connects with some of the workers, but they come and go without much explanation. The author says, “Morale was low, turnover was high, and I kept my distance, clear of the crew’s internal dramas.” Wait! Aren’t you writing a book about… ?

What he’s writing about is how an industrial plant is dismantled, who does the work, and what happens to the stuff inside. In the bigger picture, what the author sees is a hollowing out: The Budd plant becomes a huge, empty shell, slowly imploding as the structure deteriorates. It’s in a city — Detroit — that has become an empty shell, imploding as its population declines and its society deteriorates. And it asks the question: As good-paying middle-class jobs disappear, will America become an empty shell?

Pretty serious stuff! But not grim, because of thoughtful writing and the character and humor of the workers. They recognize the irony: They make a living by eliminating the tools that enabled people like them to make a living. But there’s a job to do, problems to be solved, bills to be paid, lives to be lived. No one is going to do it for them, so they go to work at the (freezing cold) Budd plant.

As America segregates along a widening gap between upper class and lower class, it’s worth remembering that the lower class is more than tattoos, DUIs, and child support. It’s what we used to call the working class.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book to be a great account of what happens when an auto plant in Detroit closes. Paul Clemens takes you inside the Budd Auto Plant right after its closing. The first part of the book is a history of various Detroit plants and then a meeting with the UAW representative who represented the workers in the Budd Plant who describes what happens at that point to the workers. He then moves on to hanging out with the riggers and the cleaning crew who take apart the machines and parts of the assembly lines to go to the people who won them in auctions who are coming from China, Brazil, Germany, Canada, and Mexico.

The interviews with members of the staff who come in to clean out the plant and liquidate the machines are very informative. These are usually people with very little education or people who have a hard time finding regular employment who have negative views of union workers or have worked on the assembly lines themselves at one time. One employee discussed how he “wanted to work at Ford’s” and managed to do so. Another gives an interesting take that he worked to put the assembly lines together for a living, and then it came to a point where he had to learn how to take assembly lines apart to earn a living.

A lot of great insights and humoring moments in the book when it comes to our dying manufacturing industry in America, and the fall of Detroit’s auto plants for cheaper production and outsourcing.

[Patrick Sprunger · Rating 2 out of 5]

One of Paul Clemens's subjects put it this way:

"We the willing, led by the unknowing are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much with so little for so long, we are now qualified to do anything with nothing."

That pretty much sums up the pathos and resignation captured in the author's snapshot of our industrial heritage in tatters. Personally, I have no idea why Clemens wrote this book. I get the feeling he doesn't either. It's observations are variegated and lacking in any unified focus. It recriminates expansive tracts of a system without offering any positive advice. The thesis may be that no economic system works. If so, the American system must be the most perverse - in that someone can earn money by writing nothing at all. And people will pay good money to gain no valuable insights other than creeping despair. Creeping despair, after all, is reality - but why do you want to make a recreation of bringing it home?

Perhaps I'm being a philistine. Obviously the absense of judgment and dedication to a true depiction of the subject is Punching Out's purpose. Art for art's sake. But I like to think I understand the concept of "art for art's sake." So why do I feel like my grandmother considering an Ad Reinhardt black painting?

[Carmen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'd feel like a douchebag if I gave this book less than 3 stars. It's a valid story that needs to be told, yet I found myself headachey and skimming large chunks of it. In ways this was just an overlong magazine article.

Yes, I saw the clear irony of closing a plant, only to have its parts disassembled and brought to a plant that does the same exact work in Mexico. [Insert outsourcing rant here! I just wish that the Mexican workers made better wages and the companies had better environmental restrictions... all of the things that lead to outsourcing in the first place. It's less about HEY AMERICAN JOBS and more about why we can't treat workers fairly and the environment too all over the world.]

It was hard for me to picture the giant machines discussed. I felt little sympathy for the car industry and really no nostalgia for its heyday. I was mad at Detroit for bad city planning and no economic diversification. I was mad at America for building a nation reliant on cars and oil but failing to make the best cars. I was, after all, reading this book on my daily subway commute.

There are a ton of people introduced also to whom I didn't get attached... I'm not sure if it was the author's storytelling or my detachment from the automobile industry. It reality, I probably skimmed too much.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is going to have special appeal for people from the rust-belt areas, particularly Detroit.
(I am from Detroit, but my life was mostly sedentary and when I needed money I was lucky to find computer work.)The book gave me a vicarious look into the factory milieu, and nostalgically into the lives of industrial workers. This had a somewhat romantic tinge to it. These are people who took a roller-coaster ride while the country's industrial base went downhill.

This is not a passionate book with compelling momentum. Rather, it is a compassionate chronicle done in a rather meandering style.

Poignantly, the people who built, maintained the factory were the ones who got the job of dismantling it, piece by piece, in the era of "globalization".

Some negative reviews I looked at had very superficial reasons for panning the book. One said it didn't meet the standard expected from a Jon Stewart recommendation. Now that's a howl!!!!!!

Another reviewer said that the book was confusing because it revisited certain sub-plots. In a book designed to be a trip down memory lane the rear-view mirror, I kind of like that reiterative style.

[Andrew]

This was a book with so much potential. There is little more poignant, especially to someone like myself of strong working class, Middle American, labor-and-Democratic Party origins, than the collapse of industry and the transformation of Detroit from the "Arsenal of Democracy" into a synonym for decrepitude. And here we have not only a factory closing (something we see on the news every night), but a company specializing in factory closings.

Clemens is a capable writer, but not a great one. He lacks the ability to make the city and the story burst to life. Maybe this isn't entirely his fault. The taking apart of a factory is probably very workaday. But still, you could make it glimmer a bit more.

I would also like some political discussion here. I know Clemens probably wants to stay journalistically neutral, but an event like this is very, very political. By not invoking the neoliberal policies of Reagan and Clinton, Clemens frankly does truth and reality a disservice in the name of "neutrality."

[Anthony · Rating 4 out of 5]

When it comes to factory closings, everyone wants to blame someone - evil companies, unions, foreigners. But it's hard not to like the union guys we meet, or fault the company for closing a plant that had never really been profitable and that made mostly parts for a vehicle that was no longer selling, or blame people in other countries for being willing to work hard to feed their families.

Punching Out follows which follows the closing of Budd Stamping's Detroit plant, which stamped body parts for a number of vehicles (including, evidently, the roof of my '06 Ranger). It captures what happens after the last shift leaves the plant until the building is empty. The author introduces us to the scrap dealers, truckers, security guards, and equipment buyers and sellers who are employed by the unemployment of others.

It's a look at something we don't really think about, and also at the change of our country from industrial to service.

[Carol · Rating 3 out of 5]

I hope that the fact that some of this book bored me did not lead to the decline of manufacturing in America. Clemens spends pages lovingly chronicling the history of the Budd stamping plant on Charlevoix Avenue in Detroit. While I know that this is important industrial history, I can only muster so much interest in what are essentially metal boxes. I appreciate the immense amounts of manpower and machinery that went into the building of 20th Century Detroit, but I think the relentless focus on tools and dies and metal and oil for the singular purpose of building cars is what led to Detroit's current status as the most desolate city in the country. Clemens really succeeds when he focuses on people -- the men who are taking the immense machinery apart the the ones who are repurposing it in Mexico. This book made me glad -- once again -- to live adjacent to a city that has built itself on many industries. Diversity is strength!

[Kimberly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Paul Clemens made the dismantling of Budd's Detroit plant seem poetic. This was a fascinating book and an open window look into the working class of Detroit in the auto industry.

As someone who has worked in both the manufacturing end as well as the production end, I could totally relate to the people who "went down with the ship" at this particular stamping plant. The slow death of Budd Detroit took a toll on the building, the equipment, the people and the city. The transformation of the plant spanned the transformation of a people, a community and a country.

This is a totally recommendable book, especially for those who do not work in the industry, to get an understanding of what Detroit and Michigan have gone through, and are recovering from.

[Kristin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This non-fiction account of the 2006 closing of a Detroit auto plant, the Budd Company on the East Side, is a painful look at the demise of our industrial city. Built in 1919, this stamping plant was one of the oldest active auto plants in Detroit. As the plant is slowly dismantled piece by piece, you realize Clemens is describing the demise of the working class and an American way of life. With an interesting cast of characters on the dismantling crew, at times, Clemens inflects dark humor into this angry elegy. It is a sad reminder that all good things may come to an end. Like the heyday of the auto industry.

[Eugene · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was born and raised in Michigan. I know several friends, classmates and relatives that worked in the auto industry. I tried to get a job there too but was turned away for health reasons. I left the state in 1968 but have always kept attuned to the auto industry.

Reading this book was truly informative and enjoyable. There was so much history in this Budd plant. The early thunderbird bodies were made there. So many of the cars in our past, and now in museums etc, had ties to this plant.

Closing the plant and shipping equipment to other countries so tells the story of American manufacturing. The details in the book made me feel like I was there.

[Alison · Rating 2 out of 5]

Two stars might be a little harsh but I expect more from a Jon Stewart recommendation. The premise is really interesting- the industry that revolves around shutting down the Detroit plants and shipping all the parts to different factories around the world. The book is full of colorful characters- proud third generation UAW members and recent immigrants who are considered pinkertons and scabs. The author just had a hard time getting a flow or narrative to the book which seems like a long article that was being stretched into a book.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting book about a year spent in an auto supplier plant when it was closing down in Detroit. The author tells the story from the perspective of a number of different employees. The plant was closing and had sold off most of its machinery to other plants who sent folks to disassemble the equipment in Detroit to later reassemble at the other plants. The book provides good detail about the decline of the auto industry in the US, particularly in Detroit. Its a good book about the decline of Detroit in general. 07/08/2012 dab

[Johanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this for work so I could review it on our website. The author is an assistant dean at Wayne State, and his wife is my colleague here at the archives. The book is really great, though. Fascinating and well written. Paul was on the Daily Show the other night talking about it, which is pretty cool. If you are interested in the decline of American industry and manufacturing, this is a must-read.

[Ann · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was eager to read this book after I heard Paul Clemens on the Jon Stewart show. Bu, it was a big disappointment. It seemed to be more about Paul and his reaction to the loss of a factory he remembered from his youth. The men he introduced seemed very one-dimensional since you never heard about their past or how they were going to survive this loss. The one high point was when he visited the factory in Mexico and found it cleaner and better run. I do not recommend this book

[Amy Wochos · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book a lot more than I did. The subject was compelling, and many of the people he encounters could probably write great memoirs, but there was something off putting about how this was organized. It wasn't exactly in chronological order, so he mentions some people early on, then describes meeting them later in the book, which was confusing. I also wanted more of a comparison between what day to day life was like in the glory years and the dismantling of the plant.

[Carrie · Rating 1 out of 5]

I can barely get through half this book. First of all, Clemens is not a story teller, he is a list maker. Second, the lists he makes describe very physical objects - photographs might have saved his story, yet he included only a few. The website for the book has a video and cache of images for the Budd factory that support the book incredibly well, but unless you think to look it up you'd never know.

I do not recommend anyone reading this book - especially if they are a visual person.