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Rust Belt Reads
Various books about the origins and eventual collapse of various heavy manufacturing industries in the US Rust Belt, the ramifications of that collapse and how certain cities coped and retooled for a global economy.
Score
A book’s total score is based on multiple factors, including the number of people who have voted for it and how highly those voters ranked the book.
1 |
Janesville: An American Story
by
4.09 avg rating — 7,555 ratings
score: 499,
and
5 people voted
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2 |
Detroit: A Biography
by
Scott Martelle (Goodreads Author)
3.71 avg rating — 1,109 ratings
score: 298,
and
3 people voted
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3 |
Exit Zero: Family and Class in Postindustrial Chicago
by
4.04 avg rating — 126 ratings
score: 294,
and
3 people voted
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4 |
Detroit: An American Autopsy
by
3.94 avg rating — 15,779 ratings
score: 292,
and
3 people voted
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5 |
Stayin’ Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class
by
4.11 avg rating — 968 ratings
score: 279,
and
3 people voted
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6 |
Blood on the Forge
by
3.82 avg rating — 571 ratings
score: 278,
and
3 people voted
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7 |
Crisis In Bethlehem
by
3.96 avg rating — 57 ratings
score: 197,
and
2 people voted
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8 |
And the Wolf Finally Came: The Decline and Fall of the American Steel Industry (Pitt Series in Social and Labor History)
by
4.13 avg rating — 83 ratings
score: 195,
and
2 people voted
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9 |
Factory Man: How One Furniture Maker Battled Offshoring, Stayed Local - and Helped Save an American Town
by
Beth Macy (Goodreads Author)
3.86 avg rating — 2,938 ratings
score: 191,
and
2 people voted
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10 |
Voices from the Rust Belt
by
3.68 avg rating — 309 ratings
score: 187,
and
2 people voted
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11 |
The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit
by
4.24 avg rating — 2,205 ratings
score: 186,
and
2 people voted
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12 |
The Ones Who Hit the Hardest: The Steelers, the Cowboys, the '70s, and the Fight for America's Soul
by
3.95 avg rating — 576 ratings
score: 183,
and
2 people voted
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13 |
Detroit City Is the Place to Be: The Afterlife of an American Metropolis
by
Mark Binelli (Goodreads Author)
3.84 avg rating — 2,077 ratings
score: 181,
and
2 people voted
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14 |
Steel: The Story of Pittsburgh's Iron and Steel Industry 1852 - 1902
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4.10 avg rating — 78 ratings
score: 176,
and
2 people voted
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15 |
Out of This Furnace
by
3.79 avg rating — 1,840 ratings
score: 168,
and
2 people voted
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16 |
Population: 485
by
Michael Perry (Goodreads Author)
3.93 avg rating — 5,873 ratings
score: 100,
and
1 person voted
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16 |
Steel: From Mine to Mill, the Metal that Made America
by
4.09 avg rating — 70 ratings
score: 100,
and
1 person voted
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16 |
Soul Full of Coal Dust: A Fight for Breath and Justice in Appalachia
by
4.31 avg rating — 757 ratings
score: 100,
and
1 person voted
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19 |
Once In A Great City: A Detroit Story
by
David Maraniss (Goodreads Author)
3.79 avg rating — 1,867 ratings
score: 99,
and
1 person voted
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19 |
American Steel
by
4.13 avg rating — 262 ratings
score: 99,
and
1 person voted
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19 |
Desperate: An Epic Battle for Clean Water and Justice in Appalachia
by
Kris Maher (Goodreads Author)
4.10 avg rating — 196 ratings
score: 99,
and
1 person voted
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22 |
Steel Town
by
3.42 avg rating — 142 ratings
score: 98,
and
1 person voted
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22 |
American Made: What Happens to People When Work Disappears
by
4.31 avg rating — 1,436 ratings
score: 98,
and
1 person voted
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24 |
Boom, Bust, Exodus: The Rust Belt, the Maquilas, and a Tale of Two Cities
by
Chad Broughton (Goodreads Author)
4.15 avg rating — 197 ratings
score: 97,
and
1 person voted
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25 |
Their Life's Work: The Brotherhood of the 1970s Pittsburgh Steelers, Then and Now
by
Gary M. Pomerantz (Goodreads Author)
4.43 avg rating — 695 ratings
score: 96,
and
1 person voted
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25 |
The Hard Way on Purpose: Essays and Dispatches from the Rust Belt
by
David Giffels (Goodreads Author)
3.95 avg rating — 495 ratings
score: 96,
and
1 person voted
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27 |
Rust Belt Chic: The Cleveland Anthology
by
Richey Piiparinen (Editor)
3.94 avg rating — 113 ratings
score: 95,
and
1 person voted
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28 |
Roots of Steel: Boom and Bust in an American Mill Town
by
3.80 avg rating — 75 ratings
score: 94,
and
1 person voted
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28 |
Harvey Pekar's Cleveland
by
3.97 avg rating — 1,355 ratings
score: 94,
and
1 person voted
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30 |
The Fall of an American Rome: Deindustrialization of the American Dream
by
3.50 avg rating — 2 ratings
score: 93,
and
1 person voted
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31 |
American Splendor and More American Splendor: The Life and Times of Harvey Pekar
by
4.03 avg rating — 6,936 ratings
score: 92,
and
1 person voted
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32 |
Made in Detroit: A Memoir
by
3.22 avg rating — 453 ratings
score: 91,
and
1 person voted
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33 |
Devil's Night: And Other True Tales of Detroit
by
3.62 avg rating — 257 ratings
score: 90,
and
1 person voted
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34 |
Rivethead: Tales from the Assembly Line
by
4.01 avg rating — 1,766 ratings
score: 89,
and
1 person voted
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35 |
Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City
by
3.99 avg rating — 212 ratings
score: 87,
and
1 person voted
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36 |
Making Steel: Sparrows Point and the Rise and Ruin of American Industrial Might
by
4.07 avg rating — 27 ratings
score: 83,
and
1 person voted
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37 |
Wives of Steel: Voices of Women from the Sparrows Point Steelmaking Communities
by
3.67 avg rating — 9 ratings
score: 82,
and
1 person voted
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38 |
Blast Furnaces of Sparrows Point One Hundred Years of Ironmaking on Chesapeake Bay
by
4.50 avg rating — 2 ratings
score: 81,
and
1 person voted
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39 |
Capital Moves: RCA's Seventy-Year Quest for Cheap Labor
by
3.79 avg rating — 155 ratings
score: 79,
and
1 person voted
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