Signed copies of Making Steel can be obtained by sending a check for $25, made payable to Mark Reutter, to:
Mark Reutter, Crown Associates
Box 39, 4401 Eastern Ave.
Baltimore, MD 21224-4403
And don't miss
Making Steel
UPDATES
Steel
was once the prototype and pacesetter of industry. Mark Reutter chronicles
the work, the life, and the people who made steel by focusing on
the 115-year history of a steel mill and company town in "Making
Steel."
Not just any steel mill. Established on the outer tip of Baltimore harbor, the
mill at Sparrows Point, Md., grew to be the largest steelmaking complex on the
globe. Out of the blaze and hiss of its furnaces came the tin plate for Campbell’s
soup cans, the tailfins of Thunderbirds, the cable for the Golden Gate Bridge,
and a way of life for tens of thousands of families.
Updated and expanded from its 1988 edition, Making Steel (UI Press/2004) features
a 24-page photo section (see a sampling in our online
photo gallery), an author’s preface, and a new chapter detailing the
economic and social costs of the financial collapse of Bethlehem Steel.
Among other disclosures, the new edition exposes the inner workings of Bethlehem
management and the U.S. bankruptcy court that resulted in the wiping out of health-care
benefits for 95,000 retired employees and handed the company’s properties
to billionaire financier Wilbur Ross, who in turn sold
the mills, at enormous profit, to multi-billionaire Lakshmi
Mittal.
The book’s final words are addressed to the politicians, executives, and
union officials who have stood aside as Sparrows Point and other mills have undergone
savage restructurings and job losses: the strong men and women who built America
deserve better.
What they're saying about "Making Steel":
“Mark Reutter is the Michael Moore of pen and paper. His book and his Making Steel Updates are must reading for anyone interested in what’s happening to American manufacturing and to the American worker.”
– Marc Steiner, “Marc Steiner Show,” WYPR (88.1 FM) Baltimore
“A poignant true tale, brought back in a new edition, Making Steel is enthusiastically recommended to economics students and professionals, historians, and lay readers alike.”
–
Internet Bookwatch, July 2005
“Cracked and I are both from Dundalk. For those of you not from around there, that’s a suburb of Sparrows Point, where once upon a time Bethlehem workers like my ol’ dad went home to rest up so they could go back and make some more steel and ships the next shift. For more on this and the generous, public-spirited outfit that used raw sewage to cool its mill, see Sparrows Point, a marvelous book by Mark Reutter.”
– Posting on Anvilfire.com
Originally posted
2/05; updated 11/05
© 2006 Mark Reutter