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Caught in the Middle: America's Heartland in the Age of Globalism | 
 enlarge | Author: Richard C. Longworth
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Category: Book
List Price: $25.95
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Rating:  10 reviews
Sales Rank: 28736
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 320
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 6.1 x 1.4
ISBN: 1596914130
Dewey Decimal Number: 330.977
EAN: 9781596914131
ASIN: 1596914130
Publication Date: December 26, 2007
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Product Description
A sharp, brilliantly reported look at how globalization is changing America from the inside out. The Midwest has always been the heart of America—both its economic bellwether and the repository of its national identity. Now, in a new, globalized age, the Midwest is challenged as never before. With an influx of immigrant workers and an outpouring of manufacturing jobs, the region that defines the American self— the Lake Wobegon image of solid, hardworking farmers and factory hands—is changing at breakneck speed. As factory farms and global forces displace old ways of life, the United States is being transformed literally from the inside out. In Caught in the Middle, longtime Chicago Tribune reporter Richard C. Longworth explores the new reality of life in today’s heartland and reveals what these changes mean for the region—and the country. Ranging from the manufacturing collapse that has crippled the Midwest to the biofuels revolution that may save it, and from the school districts struggling with new immigrants to the Iowa meatpacking town that can’t survive without them, Longworth addresses what’s right and what’s wrong in the region, and offers a prescription for how it must change—politically as well as economically—if it is to survive and prosper.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 5 more reviews...
 Great Book . . . Troubling Book September 24, 2008
Everett D. Fager (Plymouth, IN United States)
"Caught in the Middle" is a fascinating look at what is happening to the Midwest's economy. It is both scary, and at the same time, hopeful. Richard Longworth offers a research based analysis of the attitudes and practices that are keeping the Midwest from becoming a leader in the global economy. The book is brutally honest in its assessment of what will happen to individuals and communities that do not become risktakers and acquire the education necessary for highly skilled professions. If midwestern states will cooperate and if the major research universities work together, there is hope.
 Interesting - but not much meat September 16, 2008
John R. Miller (O'Fallon, MO USA)
This book does an excellent job of pin-pointing the issues that middle America faces, and does point out some bright spots - all be it in a mostly negative tone. It does not provide much in-site into what the author would do to address some of these dire problems. I can't say I "enjoyed" reading this, but it did help to clarify some of what I instintually felt was amiss in the Midwest. It did not give me much hope for the future - given the tendency of the area to be very State oriented. Until the states can come together and work as a region - we will continue to be know as the "fly-over" part of the Country but the Costal snobs.
 Solid data and final chapter recommendations deliver! August 28, 2008
Foosballfan (Midland, MI USA)
I recommend Caught in the Middle because Longworth uses lots of data to make his points and get the reader to understand the history of the midwest and the challenges that lie ahead. There are several chapters in the middle of the book that kept me from giving a 5 star rating, they are simply not as compelling as the first few and the last. The last chapter offers insightful and practical solutions. In my case, I used the data in the book to create some excitement around a regional initiative we are trying to begin in Michigan, the one state where new initiatives and collaboration is needed as we face severe economic challenges.
Global is to Ghetto as Education is to Unemployment April 11, 2008
Thomas J. Hickey (River Forest, IL USA)
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
I found this book interesting, because I was Senior Economist and Deputy Director of Economic Analysis for the Indiana Department of Commerce in the 1980's for the Administration of Governor Robert Orr. During those years I was also co-chair for the Economic Development Task Force of the Great Lakes Commission, an interstate compact with a charter from the U.S. Congress like the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
One of Longworth's theses is that the Midwest manufacturing region must be treated as a whole region, and that the individual States cannot address the economic adjustment to globalization in isolation from one another. I can agree that States stealing employers from one another cannot make the needed economic adjustments imposed by globalization; this is merely a zero-sum game for the region, and is not a remedy. While with the Great Lakes Commission I found that the Economic Development Task Force benefited its participants to the extent that we shared our research findings. But the Commission could take no action on economic development.
Contrary to Longworth I found that effective action is possible with the State governments, and that the best instrument for the State government action is the fiscal budget's public investment sectors. The Indiana's budget is about nine percent of its gross state product, and about half of the total budget is public investments: i.e. higher education, primary and secondary education, highways, airports, and water ports. These public investments facilitate development of the State economy's tax base and thus yield increases in tax collections independently of tax rates.
In 1986 I made an econometric model which exhibited an employment-maximizing allocation of public expenditures for Indiana's budget, and found that the optimal allocation implied very large increases to Indiana's primary and secondary education. These findings supported Governor Orr's "A+" legislative agenda for a $300 million increase in primary and secondary spending, which was enacted.
Longworth advocates improved primary and secondary education in Chapter Ten of his book. And former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan also advocates improved education in Chapter Twenty One of his recent book The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World.
Global is to ghetto as education is to unemployment, because education is the means for supplying the needed enhancements of human capital that turns globalization into opportunity instead of unemployment due to a ghetto economy.
On balance I thing that this book written by a journalist is well researched in many respects and is informative about Midwest economic history.
a book for its time April 1, 2008
Abe J. Goldsmithh (lake forest, illinois)
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
CAUGHT IN THE MIDDLE
By Richard C. Longworth
Reviewed by A. J. Goldsmith
What parts of our Middle West are ready for the challenges of globalization? What parts aren't?
Veteran reporter Richard C. Longworth drove more than 11,000 miles throughout the Midwestern states of Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Missouri and Ohio.
The result of his journey is a must- read book for our elected and wannabe-public officials, for university and college leaders and for the rest of us, Midwesterners who are "Caught in the Middle."
The subtitle is "America's Heartland in the Age of Globalism."
In every one of its 14 chapters, Longworth, a retired, award-winning, global correspondent for The Chicago Tribune, slays the dragons that are close to every heart in Middle America and sets out the challenges now facing us.
"By nature, Midwesterners can be aloof and uncommunicative that nature is hurting them now," the author a native of Boone, Iowa, says.
He finds that much of the region is in denial when it comes to coping with the present.
Longworth spares no feelings as he lays out what is not being done in Middle America to meet global competition, what is being ignored in this 21st century battle for economic survival and what can be accomplished if state boundaries are ignored, if universities limit competition to athletics broadening cooperation in many other areas and if truly, comprehensive planning is begun.
Longworth says: "The Midwest does two things for a living--farming and heavy industry--and globalization has turned both upside down."
The author found dying farm towns and crumbling old factory towns. Forget them, he says. Don't throw money at them. Let them go. There is a new economy to prepare for.
He spares no sympathy for Detroit and Cleveland, just two of several cities that have withered. He totally writes off many other towns that have seen their manufacturing jobs move first to southern states, then to Mexico and now to China. White collar jobs have moved to India and even to Dominican Republic.
Ann Arbor with the University of Michigan's brainpower is the new center for the auto industry, leaving Detroit far behind. Longworth says that Gary, Indiana, is a "slum" where 10 workers produce as much steel as 100 workers did 25 years ago.
"Indiana people seem to be content to be mediocre people living in mediocre cities," Longworth charges.
Dying also are Indiana's auto-industry-dependent cities of Muncie, Anderson, Kokomo and Marion.
And then there is Warsaw, Indiana, and Kalamazoo, Michigan, where the production of orthopedics is centered. High school students in Warsaw learn skills that will aid them in the production of orthopedics.
Not always negative, Longworth points to Greenville, Michigan, where 2,781 jobs were lost when Electrolux joined other companies that left earlier. Greenville only had 8,000 people. Now the first of six solar-panel plants is under construction and all are expected to be on line by 2010.
"Hundreds of rural farms are doomed. Small farms sell out when the factory jobs leave. Mega farms take their place."
Education is one key to meeting the globalization menace. Factory workers made good money and didn't value education for their children. Some can be retrained; many are too old.
Longworth writes that rural whites and urban blacks are globilization's losers; they are a new underclass.
"The new golden era is open to anyone with education, skills, imagination and creativity."
A high school education is minimal, but too much of high school is wasted especially the senior year. Why not let high school students take college courses that prepare them for the global world?
Community colleges must play a more important role in educating young people for the global world, retraining laid off workers and, importantly, teaching immigrants without whom, Longworth believes, our economy cannot function. The author cites, as examples, the small meatpacking towns in Iowa.
"The Midwest needs all the immigrants it can get. This is true of the more educated Asians and Africans and even more true of the uneducated Latinos."
Major universities must emphasize research and forget about educating undergraduates leaving that task for the smaller colleges and community colleges.
"Thirty percent of new jobs require a college or community college degree."
To my chagrin, Longworth fails to mention the amazing research that is being conducted by my alma mater, Purdue University, in a number of a different areas.
Longworth writes that the top schools need to wean themselves from state support replacing it with corporate and foundation dollars. They need to stop competing in areas where they are not truly competent and stress those areas in which they have the most expertise. They should talk to one another and do what is best for the Midwest in a global environment.
State boundaries are artificial, many decreed by the 1787 Northwest Ordinance or set after the Louisiana Purchase. The boundaries make no sense today in a globalized world.
He cites the European Union that today has blended Europe's states with a single currency and now allows unencumbered border crossings by EU residents.
The historical tensions between rural and urban interests in a state - so well-known to the Chicago metropolitan area- need to go in a time of globalization if there is to be survival. Chicago has more in common with Milwaukee than it does with such Illinois cities as Vandalia, Danville or Rock Island. Legislators seeking to balance interests within a state are doomed to failure and will never be able to meet globalization's challenge. It is better that elected officials look beyond their borders to solve interstate solutions to such mutual problems as rapid mass transit and acquiring global businesses.
There is little reason for each state in the Midwest to have individual offices seeking business in China. It would be much better if they pooled their efforts on behalf of the entire area.
As America looks forward to a 2009 presidential election, Longworth comments on the political mindset.
"In all Midwestern states like Iowa and Wisconsin, post election maps showed vast seas of rural red surrounding a few blue islands Chicago, Milwaukee, Iowa City, Cleveland and other big cities and college towns."
"The farther away an American lives from a city, the more likely he or she is to vote republican."
"Caught in the Middle" may be redundant at times, but that is because Longworth met similar problems and attitudes in the areas he visited and mindsets that were distressingly similar.
I thought that Longworth could have spent a little more time in Wisconsin. Maybe it was too cold?
Caught in the Middle. Published by Bloomsbury, USA. 2008
1058 words
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