Boom, Bust, Exodus

Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders owed much of their unexpected popularity in the 2016 primaries to their respective stances on trade and immigration policy.

Political elites and policy experts were bewildered by combative talk of building a wall and the ubiquity of anti-TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) sloganeering in what many saw as a bizarre election cycle. They have scrambled to explain both Trump's victory and the new political fault lines that have
emerged in both major political parties, largely around trade and immigration.

In struggling industrial towns and cities, the rise of Trump and Sanders was less of a surprise. These places have long weathered globalization's storm. Many feel left behind and sold short. They are anxious, and they're demanding answers.

Galesburg, Illinois, is one such city.

"In 2002, the town of Galesburg, a slowly declining Rustbelt city of 34,000 in western Illinois, learned that it would soon lose its largest factory, a Maytag refrigerator plant that had anchored Galesburg's social and economic life for half a century. Workers at the plant earned $15.14 an hour, had good insurance, and were assured a solid retirement. In 2004, the plant was relocated to Reynosa, Mexico, where workers spent 13-hour days assembling refrigerators for $1.10 an hour. In Boom, Bust, Exodus, Broughton offers a look at the transition to a globalized economy, from the perspective of those who have felt its effects most. In today's highly commoditized world, we are increasingly divorced from the origins of the goods we consume; the human labor required to create our smart phones and hybrid cars is so far removed from the end product we need not even think about it. And yet, Broughton shows, the human cost behind the shifting currents of the global economy remains a reality. Broughton illuminates these complexities through a tale of two cities that have fared very differently in the global contest to woo or retain fickle capital. In Galesburg, the economy is a shadow of what it once was. Reynosa, in contrast, has become one of the exploding 'second-tier cities' of the developing world, thanks to the influx of foreign-owned, export-oriented maquiladoras. And yet even these distinctions cannot be finely drawn: families struggle to get by in Reynosa, and the city is beset by violence and a ruthless drug war. Those left behind in declining of Galesburg, meanwhile, do not see themselves as helpless victims: many have gone back to school, scramble from job to job, and have learned to adapt and even thrive. It is a downsized existence, but a full-sized life nonetheless"--

"Boom, Bust, Exodus brings to life the human impact of global industrial change on the people who live with it. Chad Broughton combines a journalist's eye for color and the telling detail with a scholar's grasp of his subject and skill in putting it all into context. There are heroes here, but few
villains. Rather, Broughton tells in vivid prose what happens-both to people and their cities-when industry is ripped up from the places where it has always been and transplanted to places that weren't ready for it. Broughton knows the territory. He went to see and to listen, and he understands what
he saw and heard. The result is a classic of post-industrial scholarship." --Richard C. Longworth, author of Caught in the Middle: America's Heartland in the Age of Globalism

"Chad Broughton has written a deeply-observed and nuanced account of one of the stories of our time: the migration of a once-thriving American factory over the border into Mexico. When he learns of Maytag's plans to shutter its refrigerator plant, a move decried by a young Senator Obama, Broughton
begins a decade-long dive into the drama that envelops both Galesburg, Illinois, where townspeople are losing their $15.14-an-hour livelihood, and Reynosa, Mexico, where the same jobs will pay $1.10 and come with a cost. The results are both epic and surprising. The pitfalls of such a project are
many, but Broughton avoids pity and screed, delivering a story that is beautifully detailed and rich in human and historic dimension. Most of us talk about a global economy with a vague sense of what that really means. With Boom, Bust, Exodus Broughton has defined it indelibly." --Ann Marie
Lipinski, Curator, Nieman Foundation for Journalism, Harvard University

"Chad Broughton's Boom, Bust, Exodus is a beautifully written, humanistic portrayal of globalization as is lived on a day-to-day basis. Using production as a through line, Broughton takes us from the Midwest to the border to the Mexican interior and back, unsentimentally but empathetically
delineating the human consequences of capital mobility in North America in the 21st century." --Leslie Salzinger, University of California, Berkeley, author of Genders in Production: Making Workers in Mexico's Global Factories

"Broughton has written a powerful indictment of corporate greed and poor public policy, balanced by a tribute to the perseverance of the working-class people of two nations... While most readers will be familiar with the growth of economic inequality in the U.S., Broughton's unflinching, empathetic
account puts a human face to that idea." --Publishers Weekly

"Broughton's book provides ample documentation of a central truth of late-American history-namely, that capital has no country." --Kirkus

"In this richly reported book, Chad Broughton gives us a birds-eye view of the intended and unintended consequences of globalization. Boom, Bust, Exodus is a deeply-felt and narrative-driven work, an essential contribution to understanding the why behind the growing divide between those who have and
those who have not." -Alex Kotlowitz, author of There Are No Children Here and The Other Side of the River

"Chad Broughton's well-written and incredibly engaging book poignantly captures the effects of industry relocation on individuals and towns in our globalized economy....For those concerned about the consequences of capital mobility on the lives of ordinary people, Boom, Bust, Exodus is a must-read."
-William Julius Wilson, Harvard University

"Anyone wishing to understand the human dimensions of the grinding process of North American economic integration should read Chad Broughton's moving tale of two cities." -Emilio Kour�, Director of the Katz Center for Mexican Studies, University of Chicago

"Boom, Bust, Exodus is a story of intertwined lives....Connected by production and commerce, possession and dispossession, ownership and loss, profit and precariousness, the men and women and children caught in the shifting tides of a global economy have found in Chad Broughton a sympathetic and
informed voice." -Jacob S. Hacker, co-author, Winner-Take-All Politics

"A unique book, telling its story of the offshoring of a refrigerator plant at many levels-personal, local, national, international-and combining acute sociological analysis with life stories reaching across many years." -Andrew Abbott, Department of Sociology, University of Chicago

"Broughton grounds his tale with ample historical context, tracing the rise and fall of the middle class in post-World War II America and Mexico's evolving economic policies with the United States . . . The heart of "Boom" is the people Broughton profiles as they adjust to life with and without
Maytag." --Chicago Tribune

"As the economic watchword of the millennium, globalization is a clich�. But this story reveals the truly local results of this phenomenon. Though there aren't a lot of winners on the front lines, as in any good Dickens narrative, this tale shows that the human spirit rises above would-be
captors."--Library Journal

" Broughton describes a modern-day Dickensian nightmare, with workers flocking from formerly agricultural regions to work for Maytag and other US companies seeking to '"slough off not only union wages, pension obligations, taxes and regulations, but also any sense of obligation to the place where
they made their money."' The author writes winningly of individual workers in both cities, but this book is as discouraging as it is necessary."
---Boston Globe

"It took Broughton more than ten years to research and write this book, and he has crafted a narrative that reads like a novel, well placed a free of polemic. He puts a human face on economic inequity, and by showing that it is politics that brought us to the current predicament, he lets us see that
it is through politics that we can find our way out. " -Texas Observer

"[A]n extremely valuable account of how economic globalization is being experienced by those most directly affected by it." -CHOICE