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Punching Out
Punching Out: One Year in a Closing Auto Plant | Paul Clemens
3 posts | 1 read
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 symbols: 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. From the Hardcover edition.
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review
bourne.shell
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Mehso-so

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 you'd read for pleasure

blurb
bourne.shell
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Chapter 2: They Just Closed The Door

Thinking about how large the Budd company was at it's highest, the largest sheet metal company in American in the 1920's, The largest automotive stamping facility in the world in the 1970's, closed in 2006. The Story of Budd, is the story of Detroit.

blurb
bourne.shell
post image

Started “Punching Out“ by Paul Clemens as he follows the year after the Budd Company stamping plant on Detroit‘s East Side, closed in 2006. One chapter in, he paints a picture of just how large the automotive industry was in Detroit and what a labor intensive process it was to “Stamp“ parts out for the assembly plants. Almost all of this has been replaced by automation and outsourced for cheaper labor.