For readers of Hillbilly Elegy and Strangers in Their Own Land *A New York Post Must-Read Book* *A Newsweek Best New Book* *One of The Week 's 20 Books to Read in 2017* *One of Bustle 's 16 Best Nonfiction Books Coming in February 2017* *Best Non-Fiction/2017 Books by the Banks* The Wall Street Journal: "A devastating portrait...For anyone wondering why swing-state America voted against the establishment in 2016, Mr. Alexander supplies plenty of answers." Laura Miller, Slate : " This book hunts bigger game. Reads like an odd ― and oddly satisfying ― fusion of George Packer’s The Unwinding and one of Michael Lewis’ real-life financial thrillers." The New Yorker : "Does a remarkable job." Beth Macy, author of Factory Man: " This book should be required reading for people trying to understand Trumpism, inequality, and the sad state of a needlessly wrecked rural America. I wish I had written it." In 1947, Forbes magazine declared Lancaster, Ohio the epitome of the all-American town. Today it is damaged, discouraged, and fighting for its future. In Glass House , journalist Brian Alexander uses the story of one town to show how seeds sown 35 years ago have sprouted to give us Trumpism, inequality, and an eroding national cohesion. The Anchor Hocking Glass Company, once the world’s largest maker of glass tableware, was the base on which Lancaster’s society was built. As Glass House unfolds, bankruptcy looms. With access to the company and its leaders, and Lancaster’s citizens, Alexander shows how financial engineering took hold in the 1980s, accelerated in the 21st Century, and wrecked the company. We follow CEO Sam Solomon, an African-American leading the nearly all-white town’s biggest private employer, as he tries to rescue the company from the New York private equity firm that hired him. Meanwhile, Alexander goes behind the scenes, entwined with the lives of residents as they wrestle with heroin, politics, high-interest lenders, low wage jobs, technology, and the new demands of American life: people like Brian Gossett, the fourth generation to work at Anchor Hocking; Joe Piccolo, first-time director of the annual music festival who discovers the town relies on him, and it, for salvation; Jason Roach, who police believed may have been Lancaster’s biggest drug dealer; and Eric Brown, a local football hero-turned-cop who comes to realize that he can never arrest Lancaster’s real problems. "If you want to understand the despair that grips so much of this country, and the love of place that gives so many the strength to keep going, Glass House is a place to start." ― Christian Science Monitor "There are some books that I think of as 'wake-up calls.' I’m talking about books that not only tell me something I don’t know, but that challenge and reconfigure a previously held belief, allowing me to see the world I live in with greater clarity and understanding...Glass House reveals that the Anchor Hocking Glass Co. of Lancaster, Ohio, wasn’t done in by the forces of globalization, but by private equity investors from Wall Street who drained the lifeblood from the company like a bunch of vampires, profiting mightily in the process." ― John Warner, Chicago Tribune " Glass House is among the best of the books to hit shelves in the last several years exploring what’s happened to the nation and the role that greed and the collapse of once solid institutions played in the demise of small-town, middle-class America. Among the others are George Packer’s The Unwinding and J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy ." ― Newsweek "A masterful detailing of the brokenness of the venture-capital-rooted economy. This is my favorite out of all the books I read in 2017." ― This Appalachia Life "A valuable contribution...Lays out a step-by-step account of Anchor Hocking’s slide, benefitting not only from Alexander’s strong reporting, but from candid interviews with key players. What is revealed is a complex system – Alexander argues it is deliberately complex - that allows savvy investors to make relatively small, highly leveraged bets on companies like Anchor Hocking." ― Forbes "Gripping...There are those who argue that leveraged acquisitions and restructurings of the sort that Anchor Hocking has endured make companies more efficient and steer capital to better uses...Alexander makes a persuasive case, though, that from the perspective of Lancaster, it’s been one big fleecing." ― Bloomberg Businessweek "For those still trying to fathom why the land of the free and the home of the brave opted for a crass, vituperative huckster with an unwavering fondness for alternative facts instead of the flawed oligarch Democrats served up, Brian Alexander has a story for you." ― The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette "A field study looking at the declining fortunes of the industrial city of Lancaster, Ohio." ― The Toronto Star "This well-reported book is all the stronger given the author’s connect