![]() ![]() ![]() Lee Smith, novelist/author of “Guests On Earth”: “The epic struggle of Virginia furniture manufacturer John Bassett III (JBIII) to save his business has given crackerjack reporter Beth Macy the book she was born to write.Beth Macy has given us an inspiring and engaging tale for our times, but not the expected one.” He’s the head of a family furniture company and damned if he’s going to be pushed around. Jones, Pulitzer Prize winner and Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy director: “The unlikely hero of Factory Man is a determined, ornery, and absolutely indomitable…business man. John Bassett III is a cinematic figure and quintessential American, battling for his company, his town and his country.” Jonathan Alter, author and producer of “Alpha House”: “Beth Macy has done a masterful job in personalizing the biggest American economic story of our time–how to save American jobs in the 21st Century.The book tracks John Bassett’s fight to keep American jobs on this side of borders and oceans, and keeps one American town from becoming a place of empty storefronts and FOR SALE signs.” Rick Bragg, Pulitzer-winning author: “In a world of blue-collar victims, where logging chains seal forever the doors of mills and factories from the Rust Belt to the Deep South, Beth Macy’s award-winning look at one furniture maker’s refusal to give in is a breath of hope-and a damn fine story to read.… Macy interviews the Bassett family, laid-off and retired workers, executives in Asia, and many others, providing vivid reporting and lucid explanations of the trade laws and agreements that caused a way of life to disappear.” Starred review in Publishers Weekly, March 17, 2014: “Macy’s riveting narrative is rich in local color.Garden & Gun magazine, by Jamie Gnazzo, June/July 2014 issue: “In a compelling and meticulously researched narrative, Macy follows the story from the Blue Ridge Mountains to China and Indonesia, chronicling John Bassett’s tireless work to revive his company, and with it, an American town.”.Writing with much empathy, Macy gives voice to former workers who must now scrape by on odd jobs, disability payments and, in some cases, thievery of copper wire from closed factories. The author’s brightly written, richly detailed narrative not only illuminates globalization and the issue of offshoring, but succeeds brilliantly in conveying the human costs borne by low-income people displaced from a way of life. ![]() government redress for unfair Chinese trade practices. Starred review in Kirkus Reviews, June 15, 2014: “… Drawing on prodigious research and interviews with a wide range of subjects, including babysitters, retired workers and Chinese executives, Macy recounts how Bassett, now in his mid-70s, mobilized the majority of American furniture manufacturers to join him in seeking U.S.They give out awards for this kind of thing.” Early warning: ‘Factory Man’ (coming July 15) is an illuminating, deeply patriotic David vs. Macy got to know the factory town, its workers, the facts behind offshoring and the tactics that might keep it at bay. Macy zeroed in on a family-run Virginia furniture company that was being put out of business by cheap Chinese knockoffs, and happened to find an owner determined to fight back. Janet Maslin, writing in The New York Times: “Ms. ![]()
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