"If you want a real whiff of life from the assembly line to the unemployment line, pack away your Bruce
Sprinsteen CDs and pick up Rivethead."
--Boston Globe
"Clear and unimpeachable testimony...a fresh voice....This book may well do for the industrial grunt what
Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest did for the truly insane-give them some respect."
--Tom Bodett, Los Angeles Times
"An irreverent, at times wickedly funny, look into the American workplace."
--Chicago Tribune
Time Warner Trade Publishing Web Site
March, 2000
Summary
"This can't be what Henry Ford had in mind...
Not since Hunter Thompson has an American writer delivered the kind of open-throated, full-barreled blast of truth
and gritty reality that Ben Hamper unleashes in this journey through the belly of the American industrial beast.
A former assembly line riveter at GM's Truck and Bus division who rose to national prominence on the pages of Esquire,
Harper's and Mother Jones, Hamper-a.k.a. The Rivethead-uses a hard-edged, driving prose style to chronicle his
outrageous career as an unhinged assembly line grunt. From pulling double shifts to drinking and drug-taking, from
GM's idea of quality control (a life-sized "Quality Cat" who patrolled the line) to the gonzo characters
who worked by Hamper's side, tis is an extraordinary story of humanity trapped in a netherworld of crashing noise,
suffocating boredom, and absurdity that is by turns hilarious and tragic.
