At its formation in 1901, the United States Steel Corporation was the earth's biggest industrial corporation, a wonder of the manufacturing world. Immediately it produced two thirds of America's raw steel and thirty percent of the steel made worldwide. The behemoth company would go on to support the manufacturing superstructure of practically every other industry in America. It would create and sustain the economies of many industrial communities, especially Pittsburgh, employing more than a million people over the course of the century. A hundred years later, the U.S. Steel Group of USX makes scarcely ten percent of the steel in the United States and just over one and a half percent of global output. Far from the biggest, the company is now considered the most efficient steel producer in the world. What happened between then and now, and why, is the subject of Big Steel, the first comprehensive history of the company at the center of America's twentieth-century industrial life.Granted privileged and unprecedented access to the U.S. Steel archives, Kenneth Warren has sifted through a long, complex business history to tell a compelling story. Its preeminent size was supposed to confer many advantages to U.S. Steel—economies of scale, monopolies of talent, etc. Yet in practice, many of those advantages proved illusory. Warren shows how, even in its early years, the company was out-maneuvered by smaller competitors and how, over the century, U.S. Steel's share of the industry, by every measure, steadily declined. Warren's subtle analysis of years of internal decision making reveals that the company's size and clumsy hierarchical structure made it uniquely difficult to direct and manage. He profiles the chairmen who grappled with this "lumbering giant," paying particular attention to those who long ago created its enduring corporate culture—Charles M. Schwab, Elbert H. Gary, and Myron C. Taylor.Warren points to the way U.S. Steel's dominating size exposed it to public scrutiny and government oversight—a cautionary force. He analyzes the ways that labor relations affected company management and strategy. And he demonstrates how U.S. Steel suffered gradually, steadily, from its paradoxical ability to make high profits while failing to keep pace with the best practices. Only after the drastic pruning late in the century—when U.S. Steel reduced its capacity by two-thirds—did the company become a world leader in steel-making efficiency, rather than merely in size. These lessons, drawn from the history of an extraordinary company, will enrich the scholarship of industry and inform the practice of business in the twenty-first century.

The problems of the U.S. steel industry have been a source of public controversy for over twenty years. The industry has grown substantially smaller since the 1960s and hundreds of thousands of steelworkers have lost their jobs. Some steel firms and many steel mills have shut down entirely,profoundly affecting regional economies based on steel and its related industries. An industrial transformation of this magnitude has inevitably given rise to efforts to identify its underlying causes. This book is a contribution to that effort.

The history of modern liberalism has been hotly debated in contemporary politics and the academy. Here, Judith Stein uses the steel industry--long considered fundamental to the U.S. economy--to examine liberal policies and priorities after World War II. In a provocative revision of postwar American history, she argues that it was the primacy of foreign commitments and the outdated economic policies of the state, more than the nation's racial conflicts, that transformed American liberalism from the powerful progressivism of the New Deal to the feeble policies of the 1990s. Stein skillfully integrates a number of narratives usually treated in isolation--labor, civil rights, politics, business, and foreign policy--while underscoring the state's focus on the steel industry and its workers. By showing how those who intervened in the industry treated such economic issues as free trade and the globalization of steel production in isolation from the social issues of the day--most notably civil rights and the implementation of affirmative action--Stein advances a larger argument about postwar liberalism. Liberal attempts to address social inequalities without reference to the fundamental and changing workings of the economy, she says, have led to the foundering of the New Deal state.

From the age of railroads through the building of the first battleships, from the first skyscrapers to the dawning of the age of the automobile, steelmakers proved central to American industry, building, and transportation. In A Nation of Steel Thomas Misa explores the complex interactions between steelmaking and the rise of the industries that have characterized modern America. A Nation of Steel offers a detailed and fascinating look at an industry that has had a profound impact on American life.

The second edition has incorporated all the revisions necessitated after the issue of Amendment No. 1 of January 2012 to IS 800:2007. The book is primarily designed for the students of civil/structural engineering at all levels of studies—undergraduate, postgraduate and diploma—as well as for the professionals in the field of structural steel design. It covers the fundamental concepts of steel design in the perspective of the limit state design concept as per IS 800:2007, with the focus on cost-effective design of industrial structures, foot bridges, portal frames, and pre-engineered buildings. The connection design details are discussed concurrently with the design of members. The book covers the subject matter, with the help of numerous practical illustrations accompanied by step-by-step design calculations and detail-ing, in 14 chapters—including a chapter on pre-engineered buildings. Solved examples as well as exercises are provided in each chapter to enable the development of a strong understanding of the underlying concepts and for testing the comprehension acquired by the students. The geometrical properties of rolled steel sections, often required as per the revised clauses of IS 800:2007 and not appearing in the existing steel tables, are given in the Appendix A for ready reference.

Reviews and describes both the fundamental and practical design procedures for the ultimate limit state design of ductile steel plated structures The new edition of this well-established reference reviews and describes both fundamentals and practical design procedures for steel plated structures. The derivation of the basic mathematical expressions is presented together with a thorough discussion of the assumptions and the validity of the underlying expressions and solution methods. Furthermore, this book is also an easily accessed design tool, which facilitates learning by applying the concepts of the limit states for practice using a set of computer programs, which can be downloaded. Ultimate Limit State Design of Steel Plated Structures provides expert guidance on mechanical model test results as well as nonlinear finite element solutions, sophisticated design methodologies useful for practitioners in industries or research institutions, and selected methods for accurate and efficient analyses of nonlinear behavior of steel plated structures both up to and after the ultimate strength is reached. Covers recent advances and developments in the field Includes new topics on constitutive equations of steels, test database associated with low/elevated temperature, and strain rates Includes a new chapter on a semi-analytical method Supported by a companion website with illustrative example data sheets Provides results for existing mechanical model tests Offers a thorough discussion of assumptions and the validity of underlying expressions and solution methods Designed as both a textbook and a handy reference, Ultimate Limit State Design of Steel Plated Structures, Second Edition is well suited to teachers and university students who are approaching the limit state design technology of steel plated structures for the first time. It also meets the needs of structural designers or researchers who are involved in civil, marine, and mechanical engineering as well as offshore engineering and naval architecture.

Supplements include a Companion Website (www.oup.com/us/simon) as well as a comprehensive Test Bank for instructors. --

Volta Redonda is a Brazilian steel town founded in the 1940s by dictator Getúlio Vargas on an ex-coffee valley as a powerful symbol of Brazilian modernization. The city’s economy, and consequently its citizen’s lives, revolves around the Companha Siderurgica Nacional (CSN), the biggest industrial complex in Latin America. Although the glory days of the CSN have long passed, the company still controls life in Volta Redonda today, creating as much dispossession as wealth for the community. Brazilian Steel Town tells the story of the people tied to this ailing giant – of their fears, hopes, and everyday struggles.

Since the early twentieth century, thousands of Mexican Americans have lived, worked, and formed communities in Chicago’s steel mill neighborhoods. Drawing on individual stories and oral histories, Michael Innis-Jiménez tells the story of a vibrant, active community that continues to play a central role in American politics and society. Examining how the fortunes of Mexicans in South Chicago were linked to the environment they helped to build, Steel Barrio offers new insights into how and why Mexican Americans created community. This book investigates the years between the World Wars, the period that witnessed the first, massive influx of Mexicans into Chicago. South Chicago Mexicans lived in a neighborhood whose literal and figurative boundaries were defined by steel mills, which dominated economic life for Mexican immigrants. Yet while the mills provided jobs for Mexican men, they were neither the center of community life nor the source of collective identity. Steel Barrio argues that the Mexican immigrant and Mexican American men and women who came to South Chicago created physical and imagined community not only to defend against the ever-present social, political, and economic harassment and discrimination, but to grow in a foreign, polluted environment. Steel Barrio reconstructs the everyday strategies the working-class Mexican American community adopted to survive in areas from labor to sports to activism. This book links a particular community in South Chicago to broader issues in twentieth-century U.S. history, including race and labor, urban immigration, and the segregation of cities.