An elegy�angry, funny, and powerfully detailed�about the slow death of a Detroit auto plant and an American way of life. How does a country dismantle a century�s worth of its industrial heritage? To answer that question, Paul Clemens investigates the 2006 closing of one of America�s most potent symbols: a Detroit auto plant. Prior to its closing, the Budd Company stamping plant on Detroit�s East Side, built in 1919, was one of the oldest active auto plants in America�s foremost industrial city�one whose history includes the nation�s proudest moments and those of its working class. Its closing also reflects the character of the country in a new era�the sad, brutal process of picking it apart and sending it, piece by piece, to the countries that now have use for its machines. Punching Out is an up-close report, at once tender and angry, from the meanest, sharpest edge of America�s deindustrializa�tion, and a lament for a working-class culture that once defined a prosperous America�and that is now on the verge of eco�nomic extinction.