Factory Man: How One Furniture Maker Battled Offshoring, Stayed Local - And Helped Save an American Town - Hardcover

Macy, Beth

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0316231436 ISBN 13: 9780316231435

Publisher: Little Brown and Company, 2014

Synopsis

The instant New York Times bestseller about one man's battle to save hundreds of jobs by demonstrating the greatness of American business.

The Bassett Furniture Company was once the world's biggest wood furniture manufacturer. Run by the same powerful Virginia family for generations, it was also the center of life in Bassett, Virginia. But beginning in the 1980s, the first waves of Asian competition hit, and ultimately Bassett was forced to send its production overseas.

One man fought back: John Bassett III, a shrewd and determined third-generation factory man, now chairman of Vaughan-Bassett Furniture Co, which employs more than 700 Virginians and has sales of more than $90 million. In FACTORY MAN, Beth Macy brings to life Bassett's deeply personal furniture and family story, along with a host of characters from an industry that was as cutthroat as it was colorful. As she shows how he uses legal maneuvers, factory efficiencies, and sheer grit and cunning to save hundreds of jobs, she also reveals the truth about modern industry in America.

About this title

Review:

"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.... A masterly feat of reporting."--Kirkus (starred review)

"Macy chronicles Bassett's saga with vigor, integrity, soul, and skill, offering a humdinger of a globalization story and a true drama that reads like a novel."--Christian Science Monitor

"The unlikely hero of Factory Man is a determined, ornery, and absolutely indomitable...business man. He's the head of a family furniture company and damned if he's going to be pushed around. Beth Macy has given us an inspiring and engaging tale for our times, but not the expected one."--Alex Jones, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Losing the News: The Future of the News that Feeds Democracy, Director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy and Laurence M. Lombard Lecturer in the Press and Public Policy

"Macy brings to the story a keen understanding of life among factory workers.... At its best, "Factory Man" traces the intertwined stories of a family, business, and town: the complex, paternalistic relationships, the shared secrets, the vexed bonds of interdependence. Macy writes movingly about what happens when workers in these factory towns face not only closing factories and skyrocketing unemployment but the loss of their community identity."--Kate Tuttle, Boston Globe

"I find myself deeply sympathetic to Macy's essential point, which is that globalization inflicts a great deal of suffering on millions of people, something the news media should do a better job of acknowledging and the government should do a better job of mitigating."--Joe Nocera, New York Times

"Like some of the best nonfiction writers today - Michael Lewis and Katherine Boo come to mind first - Macy takes a topic that is either too dry, too complicated, or too depressing for most journalists to tackle and she tackles it with vigor, integrity, soul, and skill."--Janet Saidi, Christian Science Monitor

"An educational, fascinating reading adventure.... A moving book about the loss of American jobs -- one of the most vital issues of this century."--Steve Weinberg, The Dallas Morning News

"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. Longtime champion of the downtrodden and the working American, Macy brings globalization down to a human scale, giving a real voice and a recognizable face to everyone involved, from factory worker to government official to Chinese importer. Thorough reporting and brilliant writing combine to make FACTORY MAN an exciting, fast-paced account of a quintessentially American story that affects us all."--Lee Smith, author of Guests on Earth

"Beth Macy sees twists and subtleties that other journalists can't see, and she writes about the world around her with grit, honesty and remarkable grace. She has a police detective's diligence and determination, a poet's way with words, and a born storyteller's gift for spot-on narrative."--Martin Clark, author of The Legal Limit

"This business book, laced with Byzantine intrigue, has "made for Hollywood" stamped all over it."--Cecil Johnson, The Fort Worth Star-Telegram

About the Author:

Beth Macy won the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award, a joint project of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard for "her extraordinary reporting and narrative skills" and her work on Factory Man. The daughter of a factory worker, she writes about outsiders and underdogs. Her articles have appeared in national magazines and the Roanoke Times, where her reporting has won more than a dozen national awards, including a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard. She lives in Roanoke, Virginia.

About this edition

• Publisher: Little Brown and Company
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0316231436
• ISBN 13: 9780316231435
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 464