Factory Man

Author : Beth Macy
Publisher : Little, Brown
ISBN 13 : 0316231568
Total Pages : 513 pages
Book Rating : 4.65/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Factory Man written by Beth Macy and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2014-07-15 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Author : Beth Macy
Publisher : Pan Macmillan
ISBN 13 : 1447295455
Total Pages : 464 pages
Book Rating : 4.57/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Factory Man written by Beth Macy and published by Pan Macmillan. This book was released on 2017-03-23 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Author : James E. Harbour
Publisher : Society of Manufacturing Engineers
ISBN 13 : 087263860X
Total Pages : 193 pages
Book Rating : 4.00/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Factory Man written by James E. Harbour and published by Society of Manufacturing Engineers. This book was released on 2009 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Factory Man is about James Harbour and the epic struggle of the U.S. auto industry to catch up to Japan in quality and productivity. James Harbour's story, blunt and accessible, includes a detailed description of how Detroit went astray, beginning right after World War II. The story continues to the present day as he explains why Detroit still hasn't quite caught up and how desperate the situation has become.

Author : Guy Delisle
Publisher : Drawn & Quarterly
ISBN 13 : 1770466703
Total Pages : 156 pages
Book Rating : 4.08/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Factory Summers written by Guy Delisle and published by Drawn & Quarterly. This book was released on 2022-08-03 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For three summers beginning when he was 16, cartoonist Guy Delisle worked at a pulp and paper factory in Quebec City. Factory Summers chronicles the daily rhythms of life in the mill, and the twelve hour shifts he spent in a hot, noisy building filled with arcane machinery. Delisle takes his noted outsider perspective and applies it domestically, this time as a boy amongst men through the universal rite of passage of the summer job. Even as a teenager, Delisle’s keen eye for hypocrisy highlights the tensions of class and the rampant sexism an all-male workplace permits. Guy works the floor doing physically strenuous tasks. He is one of the few young people on site, and furthermore gets the job through his father’s connections, a fact which rightfully earns him disdain from the lifers. Guy’s dad spends his whole career in the white collar offices, working 9 to 5 instead of the rigorous 12-hour shifts of the unionized labor. Guy and his dad aren’t close, and Factory Summers leaves Delisle reconciling whether the job led to his dad’s aloofness and unhappiness. On his days off, Guy finds refuge in art, a world far beyond the factory floor. Delisle shows himself rediscovering comics at the public library, and preparing for animation school–only to be told on the first day, “There are no jobs in animation.” Eager to pursue a job he enjoys, Guy throws caution to the wind. Translated by Helge Dascher and Rob Aspinall

Author : Jon Gertner
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 1101561084
Total Pages : 432 pages
Book Rating : 4.89/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Idea Factory written by Jon Gertner and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-03-15 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The definitive history of America’s greatest incubator of innovation and the birthplace of some of the 20th century’s most influential technologies “Filled with colorful characters and inspiring lessons . . . The Idea Factory explores one of the most critical issues of our time: What causes innovation?” —Walter Isaacson, The New York Times Book Review “Compelling . . . Gertner's book offers fascinating evidence for those seeking to understand how a society should best invest its research resources.” —The Wall Street Journal From its beginnings in the 1920s until its demise in the 1980s, Bell Labs-officially, the research and development wing of AT&T-was the biggest, and arguably the best, laboratory for new ideas in the world. From the transistor to the laser, from digital communications to cellular telephony, it's hard to find an aspect of modern life that hasn't been touched by Bell Labs. In The Idea Factory, Jon Gertner traces the origins of some of the twentieth century's most important inventions and delivers a riveting and heretofore untold chapter of American history. At its heart this is a story about the life and work of a small group of brilliant and eccentric men-Mervin Kelly, Bill Shockley, Claude Shannon, John Pierce, and Bill Baker-who spent their careers at Bell Labs. Today, when the drive to invent has become a mantra, Bell Labs offers us a way to enrich our understanding of the challenges and solutions to technological innovation. Here, after all, was where the foundational ideas on the management of innovation were born.

Author : Farah Stockman
Publisher : Random House
ISBN 13 : 1984801155
Total Pages : 433 pages
Book Rating : 4.59/5 ( download)

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Download or read book American Made written by Farah Stockman and published by Random House. This book was released on 2021-10-12 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What happens when Americans lose their jobs? In American Made, an illuminating story of ruin and reinvention, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Farah Stockman gives an up-close look at the profound role work plays in our sense of identity and belonging, as she follows three workers whose lives unravel when the factory they have dedicated so much to closes down. “With humor, breathtaking honesty, and a historian’s satellite view, American Made illuminates the fault lines ripping America apart.”—Beth Macy, author of Factory Man and Dopesick Shannon, Wally, and John built their lives around their place of work. Shannon, a white single mother, became the first woman to run the dangerous furnaces at the Rexnord manufacturing plant in Indianapolis, Indiana, and was proud of producing one of the world’s top brands of steel bearings. Wally, a black man known for his initiative and kindness, was promoted to chairman of efficiency, one of the most coveted posts on the factory floor, and dreamed of starting his own barbecue business one day. John, a white machine operator, came from a multigenerational union family and clashed with a work environment that was increasingly hostile to organized labor. The Rexnord factory had served as one of the economic engines for the surrounding community. When it closed, hundreds of people lost their jobs. What had life been like for Shannon, Wally, and John, before the plant shut down? And what became of them after the jobs moved to Mexico and Texas? American Made is the story of a community struggling to reinvent itself. It is also a story about race, class, and American values, and how jobs serve as a bedrock of people’s lives and drive powerful social justice movements. This revealing book shines a light on a crucial political moment, when joblessness and anxiety about the future of work have made themselves heard at a national level. Most of all, American Made is a story about people: who we consider to be one of us and how the dignity of work lies at the heart of who we are.

Author : Rick Bragg
Publisher : University of Alabama Press
ISBN 13 : 0817356835
Total Pages : 167 pages
Book Rating : 4.35/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Most They Ever Had written by Rick Bragg and published by University of Alabama Press. This book was released on 2011-04-07 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and author of The Prince of Frogtown evokes the hardscrabble lives of those who lived and died by a single surviving American cotton mill by offering the searing true stories of those who worked in the Jacksonville, Alabama establishment. Reprint.

Author : Iain Banks
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1476750246
Total Pages : 192 pages
Book Rating : 4.48/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Wasp Factory written by Iain Banks and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-07-02 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The polarizing literary debut by Scottish author Ian Banks, The Wasp Factory is the bizarre, imaginative, disturbing, and darkly comic look into the mind of a child psychopath. Meet Frank Cauldhame. Just sixteen, and unconventional to say the least: Two years after I killed Blyth I murdered my young brother Paul, for quite different and more fundamental reasons than I'd disposed of Blyth, and then a year after that I did for my young cousin Esmerelda, more or less on a whim. That's my score to date. Three. I haven't killed anybody for years, and don't intend to ever again. It was just a stage I was going through.

Author : Hiroko Oyamada
Publisher : New Directions Publishing
ISBN 13 : 081122886X
Total Pages : 64 pages
Book Rating : 4.62/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Factory written by Hiroko Oyamada and published by New Directions Publishing. This book was released on 2019-10-29 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The English-language debut of Hiroko Oyamada—one of the most powerfully strange young voices in Japan The English-language debut of one of Japan's most exciting new writers, The Factory follows three workers at a sprawling industrial factory. Each worker focuses intently on the specific task they've been assigned: one shreds paper, one proofreads documents, and another studies the moss growing all over the expansive grounds. But their lives slowly become governed by their work—days take on a strange logic and momentum, and little by little, the margins of reality seem to be dissolving: Where does the factory end and the rest of the world begin? What's going on with the strange animals here? And after a while—it could be weeks or years—the three workers struggle to answer the most basic question: What am I doing here? With hints of Kafka and unexpected moments of creeping humor, The Factory casts a vivid—and sometimes surreal—portrait of the absurdity and meaninglessness of the modern workplace.

Author : Sunny Schwartz
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 9781416570103
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.01/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Dreams from the Monster Factory written by Sunny Schwartz and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2009-01-06 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dreams from the Monster Factory tells the true story of Sunny Schwartz's extraordinary work in the criminal justice system and how her profound belief in people's ability to change is transforming the San Francisco jails and the criminals incarcerated there. With an immediacy made possible by a twenty-seven-year career, Schwartz immerses the reader in the troubling and complex realities of U.S. jails, the monster factories -- places that foster violence, rage and, ultimately, better criminals. But by working in the monster factories, Schwartz also discovered her dream of a criminal justice system that empowers victims and reforms criminals. Charismatic and deeply compassionate, Sunny Schwartz grew up on Chicago's south side in the 1960s. She fought with her family, struggled through school and floundered as she tried to make something of herself. Bucking expectations of failure, she applied to a law school that didn't require a college degree, passed the bar and began her life's work in the criminal justice system. Eventually she grew disheartened by the broken, inflexible system, but instead of quitting, she reinvented it, making jail a place that could change people for the better. In 1997, Sunny launched the Resolve to Stop the Violence Project (RSVP), a groundbreaking program for the San Francisco Sheriff 's Department. RSVP, which has cut recidivism for violent rearrests by up to 80 percent, brings together victims and offenders in a unique correctional program that empowers victims and requires offenders to take true responsibility for their actions and eliminate their violent behavior. Sunny Schwartz's faith in humanity, her compassion and her vision are inspiring. In Dreams from the Monster Factory she goes beyond statistics and sensational portrayals of prison life to offer an intimate, harrowing and revelatory chronicle of crime, punishment and, ultimately, redemption.