Glass House

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Brian Alexander is a former contributing editor for Wired magazine and an award-winning reporter on American culture. He is also a proud former resident of Lancaster, Ohio, where he was born and raised. His previous books include America Unzipped and The Chemistry Between Us.

Lancaster’s decline, though rooted in decades of financial exploitation, is often misunderstood, with some blaming the town’s residents for their struggles. Journalist Kevin D. Williamson harshly criticized Lancaster’s white working class, accusing them of self-centeredness and drug dependency, but the town’s hardships stem from corporate greed and mismanagement. Private-equity investors dismantled the community’s economic foundation by relocating company headquarters, severing ties between executives and workers, and exploiting tax incentives, leaving Lancaster to bear the costs. The collapse of the Anchor Hocking factory, once the town’s lifeblood, exemplifies how corporate takeovers devastated not only the company but the community itself, as successive owners prioritized profits over people. Once a thriving industrial hub where families lived comfortably and neighbors shared a strong sense of community, Lancaster now faces widespread unemployment, drug addiction, and crumbling infrastructure. Despite its residents’ admiration for free-market ideals, it was this very philosophy that enabled financial predators to exploit the town, leaving many in denial about the true causes of its decline. To understand the unraveling of the American Dream, one must examine the complex history of towns like Lancaster, where hope once flourished but now struggles to survive.

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