This book is out of the ordinary. As well as describing the many changes in Sheffield between 1914 and 1918, it tells about the troubling events in following years as poverty and riots took hold.It is also special in identifying hundreds of small as well as large Sheffield companies that worked to provide the necessities of war. With many previously-hidden facts, the book describes the city's 'national factories', the new Ministry of Munitions, the government's control of companies, arguments about the employment of women, an increased emphasis on workers' welfare, the impact of the Sheffield Committee on Munitions of War, and the special contributions of the Cutlers' Company.Compulsory call-up, conscientious objectors and the work of the Sheffield Military Tribunal are also brought to life, as are problems caused by a shortage of food and the eventual imposition of rationing. The city's German prisoners of war are introduced, as are the ravages of influenza and the terrible poverty and conflict that soon afflicted the city. These local changes are presented against a background of important national events and with more than 100 original photographs.

Founded in 1624, the Cutlers' Company of Hallamshire has played a crucial role in the history of Sheffield, as supervisor and regulator of cutlery and steel trades in "the steel capital of the world." This book, written by noted scholars and experts, provides a history of the company and its activities.

The book provides an important contribution to the technological and commercial history of crucible and electric steelmaking by thoroughly examining its development in Sheffield and American centres such as Pittsburgh. It also discusses cutlery, saw and file manufacturing, where the Americans quickly shed Sheffield's traditional technologies and, with the help of superior marketing, established a word lead by 1900. It is also shown, however, that this did not free the US from its dependence on Sheffield steel. Sheffield's innovation in special steelmaking, which began with the Hunstman crucible process in 1742, continued with a series of brilliant 'firsts', which gave the world tool, manganese, silicon, vanadium and stainless steel alloys. Thus the US continued to draw from Sheffield know-how, even in the twentieth century - a transfer of technology that was facilitated by the foundation of Sheffield's own subsidiary firms in America, the history of which is recounted here.

The book focuses on the historical evolution of firms, and industry leaders and their strategies. Sheffield's experience is then related to current historical and economic debates about industrial structure, entrepreneurship and UK decline. Sheffield is revealed (with some important qualifications) as a remarkably enduring and successful centre; and also a highly complex one, which cannot be fitted easily into present theories of mass production and entrepreneurial failure.

This 26-volume set is a wide-ranging, time- and subject-spanning examination of the phenomenon of political protest. What drives people to take to the streets, and how do their governments respond? These questions and many more are analysed in areas as varied as sixteenth-century German peasant uprisings, revolutionary Russians at the Paris Commune, women protesting nuclear weapons at Greenham Common, and the role Christianity played in protests across the ages. An impressive reference resource, this set also looks at the policing of protests and official responses to them.