We read this one for our Copia Automation employee book club. I breezed through it as an audiobook over the weekend. It was an easy read, and the audiobook narrator felt perfect for the subject matter. It was also my first time making use of Spotify Premium’s new 15h/month audiobooks, which I’m pumped about. Time to cancel my Audible!

A peek into the auto-making heartland of America as it was through the author’s childhood up to the late 80’s. Hamper has a great sense of humor and a knack for bringing you into his slice of life. It’s a quick read, and mostly light-hearted. I particularly enjoyed the long-running bit where he pretended to narrate his riveting as if it were a competition with the Japanese auto workers, and he came out on top. Reading as someone who’s spent my whole life hearing about industrial Michigan as a hollowed-out wasteland, it was interesting to reconcile that with the vibrancy of Flint MI as described in the book.

There are some darker undercurrents to the book. There’s a pervasive sense that these factory jobs, while providing a good living for the workers, cause deep mental trauma. Starting from Hamper’s father, who couldn’t hold down a job, to Hamper’s more light-hearted means to pass time on his shifts with drugs, alcohol, hijinks, etc., up until the factory-induced anxiety attacks that plague Hamper towards the end of the book. There’s a message about the difficult monotony of industrial life. While Hamper view automation and robotics as the enemy in the book, maybe these kinds of jobs really are best left to the machines.