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Rivethead: Tales from the Assembly Line | 
 enlarge | Author: Ben Hamper
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Category: Book
List Price: $19.99
Buy Used: $0.95
You Save: $19.04 (95%)
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Rating:  45 reviews
Sales Rank: 53619
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 260
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.3 x 0.7
ISBN: 0446394009
Dewey Decimal Number: 331.76292092
EAN: 9780446394000
ASIN: 0446394009
Publication Date: July 1, 1992
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Paperback. Heavy wear to cover, inside texts still in good condition. Some age browning to pages.
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Product Description
A former "shoprat" in a Michigan auto plant offers a gritty account of life in the world of manufacturing, on and off the assembly line. Reprint. NYT. PW.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 40 more reviews...
 A good-natured blue collar Hunter Thompson January 30, 2008
Right from the gitgo Ben Hamper's Rivethead grabs you with gritty gusto of passages such as the above; Hamper is an extraordinary writer about life for the ordinary guy... at least the ordinary guy who winds up as an automotive assembly-line worker for General Motors in Flint, Michigan--once considered the Automobile Capital of the World. The author is a natural shop rat, growing up in Flint, with an alcoholic mostly absentee father and a long-suffering, working-three-jobs mother trying to raise the family as practicing Catholics.
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For my complete review of this book and for other book and movie
reviews, please visit my site [...]
Brian Wright
Copyright 2008
If you ever wondered why factory workers drink, read this.... September 2, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The endless monotony and idiot bosses drive anybody with an IQ above their shoe size to do something to kill the thought that, if they're lucky, they only have 30 more years of mind numbing drudgery to go before they can retire. I'm not saying alcohol abuse is the proper outlet, but it does seem to be the most common and most convenient. Good book, excellent portrayal of what exactly "blue collar America" does for a living.
riveting tale from the assembly line.. July 6, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Ben Hamper shares his life as a worker on the GM assembly line in Flint, MI. Bold, frank, honest and often hilarious. This book was recommended to me years ago and for some reason I never read it until now. Hamper chronicles a part of American history (manufacturing jobs) that seem to be going stateside or as Ross Perot once described in a quip about NAFTA, what's that whoosing noise? manufacturing jobs headed to Mexico. This is prose for the ages. Loved the book.
Hilarious story of a dying breed April 18, 2007
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
I grew up with people like Ben Hamper in a place which was much like Flint. For the first couple years of my adult life, I did the kind of work he did. What he describes is the tail end of a lifestyle; the lifestyle of the shop rat. It's dirty, monotonous and smelly. Many of the people you work with are either below average in intelligence or in sanity. Drugs, booze and having no concept of "forethought" are fundamental parts of the culture. It's nihilism with a rivet gun. If you come from a place like that, chances are, your only way out is via a jail cell or a career in the military. Or, you could win a workmans comp suit. Which is presumably how Ben got out.
I miss rust-belt working class america. It's a hard life, and it doesn't have much in the way of rewards, but the people who make it up are genuine in ways that others are not: they have a lot of heart and spirit. Ben's book brought it all back in a great galloping rush of memories. If you've ever wondered what the factory working classes are, or at least were like (back when we had factories); read the book.
 I have my own tales from an Assembly Line March 29, 2007
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
I didn't really like reading this book because I too work in a (once) major three Auto plant. I didn't feel that it properly portrayed some of the workers. It made it sound like all workers are like the author where they just really don't give a damn about anything except having a joking time on the job. It also made the workers sound like they were underachieving, undereducated, bottom of the barrel workers and I didn't care to have that stigma for all of us. I hold two bachelor degrees, like my job and take it serious!
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