Book of the week: Crash Course by Paul Ingrassia

(Random House, $26)

“If you’ve ever wondered why a Detroit clunker often costs significantly more” than an import, you’ll get your answer in Paul Ingrassia’s Crash Course, said Jonathan Yardley in The Washington Post. Having covered the auto industry for a quarter of a century, the Wall Street Journal reporter gives a “vivid” account of the dysfunction that drove Detroit off a cliff. Among his targets: the system known as the “jobs bank,” which paid laid-off workers 95 percent of their salaries indefinitely. No wonder senior workers happily volunteered to step off the assembly line. In Ingrassia’s telling, the “single biggest villain” is the United Auto Workers, said Felix Salmon in The New York Times. He blames its leadership for fostering an antagonistic relationship with GM and Chrysler. Perhaps so. Still, Ingrassia is too pessimistic about both companies’ futures. Indeed, their “dip in and out of bankruptcy court was the best thing that had happened to either company in decades.”

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