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AMERICAN MADE

Name: AMERICAN MADE
Author: Farah Stockman
ISBN: 978-1-984801-15-9

WHAT HAPPENS TO PEOPLE WHEN WORK DISAPPEARS

by Farah Stockman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 12, 2021

A worthy but at times stilted portrait of the lasting effects of job losses on factory workers.

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A Pulitzer Prize winner’s first book tallies the social, emotional, and financial costs of a company’s decision to shut down an Indiana factory.

Stockman shows the shattering effects of globalization on the unskilled workers sometimes called “the precariat” for the precariousness of their jobs. In this immersive account, she follows three former employees of the Rexnord bearings plant in Indianapolis after the company’s 2016 announcement that it was moving its operations to Mexico and Texas. Each worker’s life was upended by the shutdown and, the author argues in mostly persuasive fashion, represents a larger cause. Shannon Mulcahy, one of the first female steelworkers at the plant, embodies the women’s movement; Wally Hall, a descendant of slaves, the struggle for civil rights; and John Feltner, a vice president of United Steelworkers Local 1999, organized labor. Stockman examines the steep price the workers paid for the closure, which included having to train their Mexican replacements in order to get a severance package. Behind their stories lay the stark realities of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which has led to a loss of 700,000 U.S. factory jobs, according to the Economic Policy Institute, and of Trump’s failed promise to bring jobs back. The author notes that her research altered her view of free trade: “Supporters of free trade say it generates enough wealth to compensate losers. But we don’t.” Throughout, Stockman “re-created” scenes in ways some readers may sometimes find confusing or cringeworthy, as when she writes that one woman had “skin the color of a freshly unwrapped Hershey’s kiss” and another “had silky skin the color of salted caramel gelato.” She appears to be trying to capture a subject’s point of view, but she doesn’t enclose them in quotation marks, and it’s hard to be sure whose thoughts they reflect. The stylistic awkwardness aside, this book gives a valuable account of the many things work means to Americans.

A worthy but at times stilted portrait of the lasting effects of job losses on factory workers.

Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2021

ISBN: 978-1-984801-15-9

Page Count: 432

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2021

Categories:

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HOSTAGE

by Eli Sharabi ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 7, 2025

A dauntless, moving account of a kidnapping and the horrors that followed.

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Enduring the unthinkable.

This memoir—the first by an Israeli taken captive by Hamas on October 7, 2023—chronicles the 491 days the author was held in Gaza. Confined to tunnels beneath war-ravaged streets, Sharabi was beaten, humiliated, and underfed. When he was finally released in February, he learned that Hamas had murdered his wife and two daughters. In the face of scarcely imaginable loss, Sharabi has crafted a potent record of his will to survive. The author’s ordeal began when Hamas fighters dragged him from his home, in a kibbutz near Gaza. Alongside others, he was held for months at a time in filthy subterranean spaces. He catalogs sensory assaults with novelistic specificity. Iron shackles grip his ankles. Broken toilets produce an “unbearable stink,” and “tiny white worms” swarm his toothbrush. He gets one meal a day, his “belly caving inward.” Desperate for more food, he stages a fainting episode, using a shaving razor to “slice a deep gash into my eyebrow.” Captors share their sweets while celebrating an Iranian missile attack on Israel. He and other hostages sneak fleeting pleasures, finding and downing an orange soda before a guard can seize it. Several times, Sharabi—51 when he was kidnapped—gives bracing pep talks to younger compatriots. The captives learn to control what they can, trading family stories and “lift[ing] water bottles like dumbbells.” Remarkably, there’s some levity. He and fellow hostages nickname one Hamas guard “the Triangle” because he’s shaped like a SpongeBob SquarePants character. The book’s closing scenes, in which Sharabi tries to console other hostages’ families while learning the worst about his own, are heartbreaking. His captors “are still human beings,” writes Sharabi, bravely modeling the forbearance that our leaders often lack.

A dauntless, moving account of a kidnapping and the horrors that followed.

Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025

ISBN: 9780063489790

Page Count: 208

Publisher: Harper Influence/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025

Categories:

ISSUES & CONTROVERSIES | GENERAL CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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FIGHT OLIGARCHY

by Bernie Sanders ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 21, 2025

A powerful reiteration of principles—and some fresh ideas—from the longest-serving independent in congressional history.

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Another chapter in a long fight against inequality.

Building on his Fighting Oligarchy tour, which this year drew 280,000 people to rallies in red and blue states, Sanders amplifies his enduring campaign for economic fairness. The Vermont senator offers well-timed advice for combating corruption and issues a robust plea for national soul-searching. His argument rests on alarming data on the widening wealth gap’s impact on democracy. Bolstered by a 2010 Supreme Court decision that removed campaign finance limits, “100 billionaire families spent $2.6 billion” on 2024 elections. Sanders focuses on the Trump administration and congressional Republicans, describing their enactment of the “Big Beautiful Bill,” with its $1 trillion in tax breaks for the richest Americans and big social safety net cuts, as the “largest transfer of wealth” in living memory. But as is his custom, he spreads the blame, dinging Democrats for courting wealthy donors while ignoring the “needs and suffering” of the working class. “Trump filled the political vacuum that the Democrats created,” he writes, a resonant diagnosis. Urging readers not to surrender to despair, Sanders offers numerous legislative proposals. These would empower labor unions, cut the workweek to 32 hours, regulate campaign spending, reduce gerrymandering, and automatically register 18-year-olds to vote. Grassroots supporters can help by running for local office, volunteering with a campaign, and asking educators how to help support public schools. Meanwhile, Sanders asks us “to question the fundamental moral values that underlie” a system that enables “the top 1 percent” to “own more wealth than the bottom 93 percent.” Though his prose sometimes reads like a transcribed speech with built-in applause lines, Sanders’ ideas are specific, clear, and commonsensical. And because it echoes previous statements, his call for collective introspection lands as genuine.

A powerful reiteration of principles—and some fresh ideas—from the longest-serving independent in congressional history.