Publisher's Synopsis
"Until his resignation in May 2015, Don Plusquellic had been the mayor of Akron, Ohio, for twenty-eight years. When he took office in 1987, Ronald Reagan was in the White House, the average price for a car was a little over $10,000, and later that year the US stock market would drop over 22 percent in one day--at the time the sharpest market downturn in the United States since the Great Depression. This was a harbinger of things to come in Akron as the Rubber Capital of the World hemorrhaged jobs. In the 1980s, over 26,000 people were employed in the plastics and rubber product manufacturing industries in greater Akron. By 2007, the number had slipped to only 7,220. The loss of jobs coincided with greater suburbanization--a blow to the city's housing market. Plusquellic was challenged with rebuilding a transforming city. Using news sources and extensive interviews, Love has crafted a superb political biography of the person some have ca
