A sometimes illuminating but uneven examination of the current state of American manufacturing.
What does “Made in the U.S.A.” mean these days? One company’s odyssey suggests an answer.
There aren’t many success stories in 21st-century American manufacturing, but Slade, a journalist and bestselling author of Into the Raging Sea, has found one: an apparel firm called American Roots, founded by idealistic Ben and Whitney Waxman. They were determined to compete against cheap imports while paying their workers at good rates and with union benefits to make vests, shirts, and hoodies. When the pandemic hit, the firm pivoted to produce face shields and other protective equipment, reconfiguring their factory so workers could operate safely. The American Roots story shows that manufacturing in the U.S. is alive and deserves support, which makes it unfortunate that Slade often wanders away from the primary narrative. The text meanders for 100 pages before the company is established; after that, the author takes numerous detours to deliver diatribes on misleading official statements about masking made during the pandemic and “the demonization of unions, wrapped in the new mystical language of free trade.” Granted, a certain amount of background information and cultural context is welcome, but the amount of it here raises the question as to what the book is really about. Slade is on firmer ground when she examines the problems of running the company, from haggling with fabric suppliers and finding skilled employees to monitoring the bottom line. It was a constant battle between operational efficiency and social objectives, but eventually, the Waxmans found a balance. By the end of the book, American Roots is poised for the next step in its growth path. If Slade had been willing to tell the story in straightforward terms, this would have been a more readable, engaging book.
A sometimes illuminating but uneven examination of the current state of American manufacturing.Pub Date: Jan. 9, 2024
ISBN: 9780593316887
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.
Bearing witness to oppression.
Award-winning journalist and MacArthur Fellow Coates probes the narratives that shape our perception of the world through his reports on three journeys: to Dakar, Senegal, the last stop for Black Africans “before the genocide and rebirth of the Middle Passage”; to Chapin, South Carolina, where controversy erupted over a writing teacher’s use of Between the World and Me in class; and to Israel and Palestine, where he spent 10 days in a “Holy Land of barbed wire, settlers, and outrageous guns.” By addressing the essays to students in his writing workshop at Howard University in 2022, Coates makes a literary choice similar to the letter to his son that informed Between the World and Me; as in that book, the choice creates a sense of intimacy between writer and reader. Interweaving autobiography and reportage, Coates examines race, his identity as a Black American, and his role as a public intellectual. In Dakar, he is haunted by ghosts of his ancestors and “the shade of Niggerology,” a pseudoscientific narrative put forth to justify enslavement by portraying Blacks as inferior. In South Carolina, the 22-acre State House grounds, dotted with Confederate statues, continue to impart a narrative of white supremacy. His trip to the Middle East inspires the longest and most impassioned essay: “I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel,” he writes. In his complex analysis, he sees the trauma of the Holocaust playing a role in Israel’s tactics in the Middle East: “The wars against the Palestinians and their Arab allies were a kind of theater in which ‘weak Jews’ who went ‘like lambs to slaughter’ were supplanted by Israelis who would ‘fight back.’” Roiled by what he witnessed, Coates feels speechless, unable to adequately convey Palestinians’ agony; their reality “demands new messengers, tasked as we all are, with nothing less than saving the world.”
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9780593230381
Page Count: 176
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.
Documenting perilous times.
In his most recent behind-the-scenes account of political power and how it is wielded, Woodward synthesizes several narrative strands, from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel to the 2024 presidential campaign. Woodward’s clear, gripping storytelling benefits from his legendary access to prominent figures and a structure of propulsive chapters. The run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is tense (if occasionally repetitive), as a cast of geopolitical insiders try to divine Vladimir Putin’s intent: “Doubt among allies, the public and among Ukrainians meant valuable time and space for Putin to maneuver.” Against this backdrop, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham implores Donald Trump to run again, notwithstanding the former president’s denial of his 2020 defeat. This provides unwelcome distraction for President Biden, portrayed as a thoughtful, compassionate lifetime politico who could not outrace time, as demonstrated in the June 2024 debate. Throughout, Trump’s prevarications and his supporters’ cynicism provide an unsettling counterpoint to warnings provided by everyone from former Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley to Vice President Kamala Harris, who calls a second Trump term a likely “death knell for American democracy.” The author’s ambitious scope shows him at the top of his capabilities. He concludes with these unsettling words: “Based on my reporting, Trump’s language and conduct has at times presented risks to national security—both during his presidency and afterward.”
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781668052273
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: yesterday
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