Search Results for: The Company Town

Company town: The very phrase sounds un-American. Yet company towns are the essence of America. Hershey bars, Corning glassware, Kohler bathroom fixtures, Maytag washers, Spam — each is the signature product of a company town in which one business, for better or worse, exercises a grip over the population. In The Company Town, Hardy Green, who has covered American business for over a decade, offers a compelling analysis of the emergence of these communities and their role in shaping the American economy, beginning in the country’s earliest years.From the textile mills of Lowell, Massachusetts, to the R&D labs of Corning, New York; from the coal mines of Ludlow, Colorado, to corporate campuses of today’s major tech companies: America has been uniquely open to the development of the single-company community. But rather than adhering to a uniform blueprint, American company towns represent two very different strands of capitalism. One is socially benign — a paternalistic, utopian ideal that fosters the development of schools, hospitals, parks, and desirable housing for its workers. The other, “Exploitationville,”; focuses only on profits, at the expense of employees”; well-being.Adeptly distinguishing between these two models, Green offers rich stories about town-builders and workers. He vividly describes the origins of America’s company towns, the living and working conditions that characterize them, and the violent, sometimes fatal labor confrontations that have punctuated their existence. And he chronicles the surprising transformation underway in many such communities today. With fascinating profiles of American moguls — from candyman Milton Hershey and steel man Elbert H. Gary to oil tycoon Frank Phillips and Manhattan Project czar General Leslie B. Groves — The Company Town is a sweeping tale of how the American economy has grown and changed, and how these urban centers have reflected the best and worst of American capitalism.

Make-Believe Town brings together David Mamet’s acute insights into everyday life, the arts, and politics. These pieces evidence Mamet’s love of language, particularly the introductory essay, “Eight Kings”, which celebrates the private languages of carpenters, carnival workers, and all crafts and trades, and “The Northern Novel”, which propounds Mamet’s affection for the line of American fiction exemplified by Willa Cather and Theodore Dreiser. Some of the essays are prose portraits from Mamet’s life: “Deer Hunting” and “The Diner” delineate worlds far from the public eye. Make-Believe Town also contains beautifully written recollections of Mamet’s early days as a writer (“Girl Copy”), his start in the theater (“Memories of Off Broadway”), his education as a gambler (“Gems From a Gambler’s Bookshelf”), and bygone days on Broadway (“Delsomma’s”). Mamet’s incisive thoughts about public issues – support for the arts, nudity in films, the roles given Jewish characters, even the posthumous rehabilitation of Richard Nixon – round out a far-reaching collection.

“An immensely lovable debut novel . . . It’s the kind of magic you’ll feel lucky to find.” —Ron Charles, The Washington Post  

SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA FIRST NOVEL AWARD
FINALIST FOR THE IRISH BOOK AWARD FOR NEWCOMER OF THE YEAR 
FINALIST FOR THE COMEDY WOMEN IN PRINT PRIZE

Meet Majella O’Neill, a heroine like no other, in this captivating Irish debut that has been called Milkman meets Derry Girls

Majella is happiest out of the spotlight, away from her neighbors’ stares and the gossips of the small town in Northern Ireland where she grew up just after the Troubles. She lives a quiet life caring for her alcoholic mother, working in the local chip shop, watching the regular customers come and go. She wears the same clothes each day (overalls, too small), has the same dinner each night (fish and chips, microwaved at home after her shift ends), and binge-watches old DVDs of the same show (Dallas, best show on TV) from the comfort of her bed. 

But underneath Majella’s seemingly ordinary life are the facts that she doesn’t know where her father is and that every person in her town has been changed by the lingering divide between Protestants and Catholics. When Majella’s predictable existence is upended by the death of her granny, she comes to realize there may be more to life than the gossips of Aghybogey, the pub, and the chip shop. In fact, there just may be a whole big world outside her small town. 

Told in a highly original voice, with a captivating heroine readers will love and root for, Big Girl, Small Town will appeal to fans of Sally Rooney, Ottessa Moshfegh, and accessible literary fiction with an edge.

“An immensely lovable debut novel . . . It’s the kind of magic you’ll feel lucky to find.” —Ron Charles, The Washington Post  

SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA FIRST NOVEL AWARD
FINALIST FOR THE IRISH BOOK AWARD FOR NEWCOMER OF THE YEAR 
FINALIST FOR THE COMEDY WOMEN IN PRINT PRIZE

Meet Majella O’Neill, a heroine like no other, in this captivating Irish debut that has been called Milkman meets Derry Girls

Majella is happiest out of the spotlight, away from her neighbors’ stares and the gossips of the small town in Northern Ireland where she grew up just after the Troubles. She lives a quiet life caring for her alcoholic mother, working in the local chip shop, watching the regular customers come and go. She wears the same clothes each day (overalls, too small), has the same dinner each night (fish and chips, microwaved at home after her shift ends), and binge-watches old DVDs of the same show (Dallas, best show on TV) from the comfort of her bed. 

But underneath Majella’s seemingly ordinary life are the facts that she doesn’t know where her father is and that every person in her town has been changed by the lingering divide between Protestants and Catholics. When Majella’s predictable existence is upended by the death of her granny, she comes to realize there may be more to life than the gossips of Aghybogey, the pub, and the chip shop. In fact, there just may be a whole big world outside her small town. 

Told in a highly original voice, with a captivating heroine readers will love and root for, Big Girl, Small Town will appeal to fans of Sally Rooney, Ottessa Moshfegh, and accessible literary fiction with an edge.

“We can no longer see ourselves as minor spectators or weary watchers of history a­fter finishing this astonishing work of nonfiction.” —Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy
 
Connor Towne O’Neill’s journey onto the battlefield of white supremacy began with a visit to Selma, Alabama, in 2015. There he had a chance encounter with a group of people preparing to erect a statue to celebrate the memory of Nathan Bedford Forrest, one of the most notorious Confederate generals, a man whom Union general William Tecumseh Sherman referred to as “that devil.” After that day in Selma, O’Neill, a white Northerner transplanted to the South, decided to dig deeply into the history of Forrest and other monuments to him throughout the South, which, like Confederate monuments across America, have become flashpoints in the fight against racism.
 
Forrest was not just a brutal general, O’Neill learned; he was a slave trader and the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. O’Neill encountered citizens who still hold Forrest in cult-like awe, desperate to preserve what they call their “heritage,” and he also talked to others fighting to tear the monuments down. In doing so he discovered a direct line from Forrest’s ugly history straight to the heart of the battles raging today all across America. The fight over Forrest reveals a larger battle, one meant to sustain white supremacy—a system that props up all white people, not just those defending the monuments. With clear-eyed passion and honest introspection, O’Neill takes readers on a journey to understand the many ways in which the Civil War, begun in 1860, has never ended.
 
A brilliant and provocative blend of history, reportage, and personal essay, Down Along with That Devil’s Bones presents an important and eye-opening account of how we got from Appomattox to Charlottesville, and of our vital need to confront our past in order to transcend it and move toward a more just society.
 

Poland, 1906: on a cold spring night, in the small Jewish cemetery of Zokof, Friedl Alterman is wakened from death. On the ground above her crouches Itzik Leiber, a reclusive, unbelieving fourteen-year-old whose fatal mistake has spurred the town’s angry residents to violence. The childless Friedl rises to guide him to safety — only to find she cannot go back to her grave. Now Friedl is trapped in that thin world between life and death, her brash decision binding her forever to Itzik and his family: she is fated to be forever restless, and he, forever haunted by the ghosts of his past.

Years later, after Itzik himself has gone to his grave, his son, Nathan, knows nothing of his bitter father’s childhood. When he begrudgingly goes to Poland on business, Nathan decides on a whim to visit his ancestral town. There, in Zokof, he meets the mysterious Rafael, the town’s last remaining Jew, who promises to pass on all the things Itzik had failed to teach his son – about Zokof, about his faith, and about himself.

Told in a series of firsthand accounts, from the Governor on down to the sister of one of the linchpins in encouraging the murderers, Troublefield is based on a true story, the double-lynching of two black men that occurred just behind the police station in Blacksburg, SC in 1912. Tracing the tensions that rose in the town between the white millworkers and the rising number of African Americans, Rivers paints a portrait of a town deeply invested in racism and a narrative to justify their fears and hatred; and a woman on the cusp of understanding her complicity in it all. Her novel asks, like Hillary Jordan’s Mudbound, whether it’s possible to see outside of your own perspective when you live in a town and a time governed by racism.
 

Haunted by the reemergence of a forty-year-old unsolved murder, detective Dave Robicheaux must also contend with a spate of serial killings of prostitutes and local dissension about the movie company that is shooting in town.

From the creators of the award-winning Three-Ring Rascals and 43 Old Cemetery Road series!

Is the sweet town of Appleton ripe for scandal?

Consider the facts:

•        Appleton Elementary School has a new librarian named Rita B. Danjerous. (Say it fast.)
•        Principal Noah Memree barely remembers hiring her.
•       Ten-year-old Reid Durr is staying up way too late reading a book from Ms. Danjerous's controversial "green dot" collection.
•        The new school board president has mandated a student dress code that includes white gloves and bow ties available only at her shop.

 
Sound strange? Fret not. Appleton's fifth-grade sleuths are following the money, embracing the punny, and determined to the get to the funniest, most rotten core of their town's juiciest scandal. Don't miss this seedy saga!