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LIFE ON THE LINE

ONE WOMAN'S TALE OF WORK, SWEAT, AND SURVIVAL

An interesting tale of personal fulfillment, as a sedentary journalist proves she can hack it on the factory floor of a General Motors plant, but one that provides disappointingly little insight into the larger issues confronting workers in today’s global economy. Wall Street Journal reporter De Santis had always covered business from the top down, writing about CEOs, earnings reports, mergers, and shareholder value. Raised in a privileged background, with an Ivy League education, she nonetheless longed to experience life on the factory floor. Hiding her journalism background, she applied for a factory job with GM and was eventually hired to work at a van manufacturing plant in Scarborough, Ontario. GM had already decided to close the Ontario plant 18 months in the future, thereby “downsizing” 2,700 workers (including the author). Unfortunately, De Santis isn’t really interested in the larger issues: “My interest wasn’t political in nature,” she admits; instead she focuses on “the people on the factory floor—who they were, how they got there” and what they’d do after losing their jobs. The work itself, from installing insulation panels to sweeping floors, proved physically exhausting; but De Santis comes across as tough, motivated, and genuinely concerned with her co-workers. She discovers the twin enemies of every factory worker: physical pain and mind-numbing monotony. Drugs and alcohol were the painkillers of choice among many of her co-workers. She meets a breathtaking diversity of people, from Chas the aspiring rock star to Lance the management wannabe to Gayle the avowed socialist. In one of her sharper insights, De Santis relates the patronizing attitude management often takes toward workers; when the factory achieved difficult production goals, management distributed free coffee, cheap baseball caps, and lots of “consultant hogwash” to “reward” the workers. While this is an absorbing and skillfully written personal account of one woman’s life on the factory floor, it’s doesn’t provide much of a window into today’s often-embattled workforce.

Pub Date: May 16, 1999

ISBN: 0-385-48977-3

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1999

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NIGHT

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children. 

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006

ISBN: 0374500010

Page Count: 120

Publisher: Hill & Wang

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

Well-told and admonitory.

Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Well-told and admonitory.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

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