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Podcast: New Books in the American South
Episode: John Joe Schlichtman, "Showroom City: Real Estate and Resistance in the Furniture Capital of the World" (U Minnesota Press, 2022)
Description: A unique and engaging account of local urban decision-making within the globalizing worldHigh Point, North Carolina, is known as the “Furniture Capital of the World.” Once a manufacturing stronghold, most of its furniture factories have closed over the past forty years, with production shipped off to low-wage countries. Yet as manufacturing left, the city tightened its hold on a biannual global exposition that serves as the world’s furniture fashion runway. At the High Point Market, visitors from more than one hundred nations traverse twelve million square feet of meticulous design. Downtown buildings—once courthouses, movie theaters...