Book

Closing: The Life and Death of an American Factory

1999 Cathy N. Davidson Featured

About the Book

The story of the White Furniture Company–a century-old, family-owned business that was bought out by a huge corporate conglomerate and later closed–puts a human face on the economic realities of the 1990s. Bill Bamberger took his revealing and powerful photographs during the last four months of operation on the factory floor, working side by side with the White employees. Cathy Davidson’s text focuses on six people who represent every economic level in the American workforce: CEO, executive assistant, middle manager, supervisor, skilled artisan, and manual laborer. 31 full-color and 61 black-and-white photographs

Notes

The story of the White Furniture Company–a century-old, family-owned business that was bought out by a huge corporate conglomerate and later closed–puts a human face on the economic realities of the 1990s.

Bill Bamberger took his revealing and powerful photographs during the last four months of operation on the factory floor, working side by side with the White employees. Cathy Davidson’s text focuses on six people who represent every economic level in the American workforce: CEO, executive assistant, middle manager, supervisor, skilled artisan, and manual laborer. 31 full-color and 61 black-and-white photographs

 

Reviews

10 reviews

Eloquent and elegiac – Closing is a testament to the human spirit and to the dignity and importance of work.

Lee Smith

The book tells a simple, deep, timely, and moving story.&nbsp;<em>Closing&nbsp;</em>is a classic.

Melissa Fay Greene

Closing is a poignant reminder of how vulnerable we all are to change. The workers, hurt and stunned, open their lives to the book.

John Sayles

Closing shows us clearly, from start to finish, the overwhelming effect on its employees of the closing down of a single, small, family business in a particular small place; yet in its calm and farsighted sympathy it underlines the fragility of all our working lives.

Reynolds Price

Closing is a beautifully composed elegy celebrating a vanishing way of life. These understated, evocative photographs by Bill Bamberger and this poetic text by Cathy N. Davidson ask, in effect, ‘Does one have to sell one’s soul in order to survive in contemporary America?’

Joyce Carol Oates

If there’s an untold story in America today, this is it. This sad, engrossing, and utterly unique book explores the precise moment of a factory closing with such eloquence and clarity of purpose that it feels like a great novel.

Martin Scorsese

A reminder . . . of the casual, forgotten face of sadness and of a life erased.

Publisher’s Weekly

Closing is the best kind of documentary-telling a specific story about specific people in a large context that means something…. In a better world,&nbsp;<em>Closing&nbsp;</em>would be on the reading lists of every corporate board and business school.

USA Today

An unflinchingly fair analysis. Hard-edged and realistic. Closing…issues a bold challenge to ‘business as usual.”<em>&nbsp;</em>

New York Times Book Review

“Here is a stupendous book, a complete answer to any who believe that all that counts in a company is its bottom line, and that the only people with a stake in it are its shareholders.”

The Economist, October 23, 2001 - Print Edition