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Short Takes
| Forging America: The Story of Bethlehem Steel. By The Morning Call. [Bethlehem, Penn.]: The Morning Call, 2003. 118 pp., illus., bibl. $7 (newspaper tabloid format).
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Bethlehem Steel was one of the centerpieces of American industrialization and urbanization in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. As America's second-largest steel company, it employed well over 100,000 people by the 1970s. Its steel armored American warships, supported many of New York's skyscrapers, and built the Golden Gate Bridge. As with the American steel industry generally, Bethlehem Steel collapsed in the 1990s. Forging America was published to commemorate its history.
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Divided into nine chronological chapters, Forging America traces the history of Bethlehem Steel from 1840, when Welsh immigrant David Thomas fired up the first commercially successful anthracite blast furnace in the Lehigh Valley, through the company's glory days, to its slow decline beginning in the 1970s and its death in the 1990s. The closing pages of the edition include a 4-page chronological timeline and a 2-page bibliography.
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| Although published in tabloid form, Forging America's length and quality could easily have justified a paperback book format. The text is detailed (although unreferenced), well organized, and very well written. While modestly commemorative, the authors treat labor-management issues in a balanced manner and freely note poor decisions on the part of corporate management. Moreover, the text provides readers with the broader economic and historical context in which Bethlehem Steel rose and fell. Illustrations are concentrated in a 14-page section in the center of the publication, rather than being distributed through the text, a modestly unfortunate decision. While other works exist that deal in more detail with specific elements of Bethlehem Steel's history, Forging Steel provides readers with a very good, introductory overview of the history of one of America's iconic industrial corporations. |
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