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Amy Goldstein Reveals A Community Reeling From A Manufacturing Plant Closure In "Janesville"

This encore program originally was broadcast in March, 2018.

The Great Recession ultimately left millions of Americans without jobs and devastated entire communities. The bruises have lingered, perhaps nowhere more so than in the industrial communities of our nation’s heartland, in places like Janesville, Wisconsin. Janesville was home to the oldest operating General Motors plant until it shut down in the midst of the Great Recession, two days before Christmas in 2008.

  

Washington Post reporter Amy Goldstein spent years in Janesville to piece together the inside story. Her book, “Janesville,” is an intimate account of what happened to the town and its people in the years following the devastating loss of GM. The book delves into the lives of autoworkers, teachers, politicians and job re-trainers and illustrates why it’s so hard to recreate a healthy, prosperous working class.  “Janesville” is now out in paperback.

Ms. Goldstein has been a staff writer at The Washington Post for 30 years. She currently covers health-care policy, focusing on the 2010 federal law reshaping the U.S. health care system. She was part of a team of Washington Post reporters awarded the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting for the newspaper’s coverage of 9/11 and the government’s response to the attacks.

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