Nothin' But Blue Skies: The Heyday, Hard Times, and Hopes of America's Industrial Heartland

The economic boom and bust of the Rust Belt cities (Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo, etc.) is one of the most significant events in 20th century American history. Edward McClelland's wide-ranging survey attempts to explore the causes and impacts of this decline, as technological disruption and racial tensions led to the migration of jobs to the South and West. It's an important story and McClelland pulls together some interesting anecdotes, but his overall narrative is quite surface-level and it frequently makes lazy and unsupported economic arguments that blame (for example) rising income inequality, the supposed sell-out of the working class by the Democratic Party, and the decline of the manufacturing base (e.g., with unexamined assertions like, "You can’t grow an economy without making things, producing stuff").