Making Steel
Sparrows Point and the Rise and Ruin of American Industrial Might
An expanded and updated edition featuring 26 pages of photos, an author's preface, and a new chapter detailing the devastating effects of Bethlehem Steel's bankruptcy titled "The Discarded American Worker"
Paper – $28.95
978-0-252-07233-8
Publication Date
Paperback: 01/01/2004
Cloth: 12/31/2004
Cloth: 12/31/2004
About the Book
Making Steel chronicles the rise and fall of American steel by focusing on the fateful decisions made at the world's once largest steel mill at Sparrows Point, Maryland. Mark Reutter examines the business, production, and daily lives of workers as corporate leaders became more interested in their own security and enrichment than in employees, community, or innovative technology. This edition features 26 pages of photos, an author's preface, and a new chapter on the devastating effects of Bethlehem Steel's bankruptcy titled "The Discarded American Worker."About the Author
Mark Reutter, has been a reporter for The Baltimore Sun and has published in The Wilson Quarterly, Barron's, and The Nation. He is currently a business and law editor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.Reviews
"Reutter makes a telling case for the argument that, as long as things were going well, Big Steel had no interest in remaining competitive."--Barron's"Brilliant . . . makes a convincing case that real people, specifically the top executives at the biggest steel corporations, helped bring their industry to ruin. Reutter pored over a century's worth of documents, interviewed more than a hundred former managers and workers and then organized this mass of material into a gripping, tragic story."--Chicago Tribune
"What is striking about Mr. Reutter's account is that the decision at Bethlehem Steel and elsewhere seems to have been . . . a curious result of hubris, bureaucratic caution and a provincial timidity."--New York Times Book Review
"The strength of this book is Reutter's wonderful social and economic history of the community. . . . This is another side of the story of American steel, the human side, and it has much to teach."--Fortune
"Mr. Reutter weaves his story with great skill. . . . Given the tremendous increase in competition from at home and abroad, the market will no longer tolerate the management attitudes Mr. Reutter has so vividly described."--Wall Street Journal
Related Titles
