Talking Steel Towns captures the voices of the steel-driving men who built the ships and tanks for two World Wars as well as the Empire State Building, the Golden Gate Bridge, the United Nations and the Twin Towers ¿ and the voices of the Steel Valley women who fought their own battles against poverty and prejudice in the harsh world of the blast furnace.

Jenkins argues that the Klan drew from all social strata in Youngstown, Ohio, in the 1920s, contrary to previous theories that predominately lower middle-class WASPs joined the Klan because of economic competition with immigrants. Threatened by immigrant movement into their neighborhoods, these members supposedly represented a fringe element with few accomplishments and little hope of advancement. Jenkins suggests instead that members admired the Klan commitment to a conservative protestant moral code. Besieged, they believed, by an influx of Catholic and Jewish immigrants who did not accept blue laws and prohibition, members of the piestistic churches flocked to Klan meetings as an indication of their support for reform. This groundswell peaked in 1923 when the Klan gained political control of major cities in the South and Midwest. Newly enfranchised women who supported a politics of moralism played a major role in assisting Klan growth and making Ohio one of the more successful Klan realms in the North. The decline of the Klan was almost as rapid. Revelations regarding sexual escapades of leaders and suspicions regarding irregularities in Klan financing led members to question the Klan commitment to moral reform. Ethnic opposition also contributed to Klan decline. Irish citizens stole and published the Klan membership list, while Italians in Niles, Ohio, violently crushed efforts of the Klan to parade in that city. Jenkins concludes that the Steel Valley Klan represented a posturing between cultures mixed together too rapidly by the process of industrialization.

Founded in the Mahoning Valley during 1837, a tiny settlement of secular German immigrants grew into one of the most influential centers of Jewish life in the Midwest. Home to nationally renowned rabbis and Zionist firebrands alike, the community produced an astonishing array of leaders in an impressive range of fields throughout the twentieth century. This notable legacy ranges from the entertainment juggernaut of Warner Brothers to the Arby's fast-food empire and the prominent Youngstown Sheet & Tube, among many others. Authors Thomas Welsh, Joshua Foster and Gordon F. Morgan trace the unique history of one of Ohio's oldest Jewish communities from its humble beginnings into the challenging climate of the new millennium.

Development and struggle, 1802-1840 -- Brier Hill coal and "merchantable" pig iron, 1840-1856 -- Railroads, coal, iron, and war, 1856-1865 -- Expansion and depression, 1865-1879 -- The pressure of steel, 1879-1894 -- Steel, consolidation, and the fall of iron, 1894-1913

Brazil's Steel City presents a social history of the National Steel Company (CSN), Brazil's foremost state-owned company and largest industrial enterprise in the mid-twentieth century. It focuses on the role the steelworkers played in Brazil's social and economic development under the country's import substitution policies from the early 1940s to the 1964 military coup. Counter to prevalent interpretations of industrial labor in Latin America, where workers figure above all as victims of capitalist exploitation, Dinius shows that CSN workers held strategic power and used it to reshape the company's labor regime, extracting impressive wage gains and benefits. Dinius argues that these workers, and their peers in similarly strategic industries, had the power to undermine the state capitalist development model prevalent in the large economies of postwar Latin America.

Spanning the famous Homestead steel strike of 1892 through the century-long fight for a union and union democracy, Homestead Steel Mill—the Final Ten Years is a case history on the vitality of organized labor. Written by fellow worker and musician Mike Stout, the book is an insider’s portrait of the union at the U.S. Steel’s Homestead Works, specifically the workers, activists, and insurgents that made up the radically democratic Rank and File Caucus from 1977 to 1987. Developing its own “inside-outside” approach to unionism, the Rank and File Caucus drastically expanded their sphere of influence so that, in addition to fighting for their own rights as workers, they fought to prevent the closures of other steel plants, opposed U.S. imperialism in Central America, fought for civil rights, and built strategic coalitions with local environmental groups. Mike Stout skillfully chronicles his experience in the takeover and restructuring of the union’s grievance procedure at Homestead by regular workers and put at the service of its thousands of members. Stout writes with raw honesty and pulls no punches when recounting the many foibles and setbacks he experienced along the way. The Rank and File Caucus was a profound experiment in democracy that was aided by the 1397 Rank and File newspaper—an ultimate expression of truth, democracy, and free speech that guaranteed every union member a valuable voice. Profusely illustrated with dozens of photographs, Homestead Steel Mill—the Final Ten Years is labor history at its best, providing a vivid account of how ordinary workers can radicalize their unions.