Running Steel, Running America

“[A] remarkably sophisticated work. . . . Stein’s book is a model of meticulously researched, dispassionate scholarship. Few serious historians of the postwar United States can afford not to read [this book].” — Law and History Review

“One of the most important examinations of race and labor to appear in the 1990s. . . . An original, well-argued, and thought-provoking account of the American steel industry in the post-World War II world. . . . Insights about American political economy, the labor movement, Civil Rights strategies, and the law leap out on almost every page of this book. Through the lens of the steel industry, Stein usefully reframes the postwar historiography not only of race and liberalism but also of trade, economic planning, and foreign policy.” — Labor History

“This is a marvelous and important book, an immaculately researched, powerfully written analysis of key issues in U.S. economic and social policy from the 1950s to the 1980s.” — Business History

“[A] passionate book. . . . Combines old and new elements — an uncompromising old liberal faith that governments can salvage entire industries and provide every son a job as good as his father’s (and this is, necessarily, a book about men), with a sort of populist suspicion of the current bipartisan religion of free trade and globalization given political voice by Gephart, Buchanan, and Perot and intellectual voice by Dani Rodrik, William Greider, and the Sierra Club. It is thus an oppositional book, a distinctly minority view on what government has done but especially what it has not done but could and ought to do.” — Reviews in American History

“Stein’s important book about post-WW II American politics, economics, and race is an innovative interpretation of recent US history.” — CHOICE

“Judith Stein’s important book explores one of the great riddles of our time — why it was that a civil rights revolution dedicated to equal economic opportunity should have been followed by the disappearance of decent jobs for so many African Americans. Her case in point is the steel industry where, just as the EEOC lawyers triumphed, the industry collapsed and the contested jobs were gone forever. Stein documents, in fine detail, the indifference of the litigators — their willful indifference — to whether or not they were actually expanding the job opportunities of black workers. More important, Stein suggests, was the disjuncture between the nation’s economic and social policies, its failure to understand that the corollary of equal opportunity was the preservation of American jobs from predatory foreign competition. Stein’s book is a triumph of heroic research and clear thinking, and essential reading for anyone who cares about this country’s festering race problems.” — David Brody, author of In Labor’s Cause: Main Themes on the History of the American Worker

“Judith Stein’s brilliant achievement is to tell much the most complete and balanced account of the steel industry and the steelworkers' union, from the historic times of the New Deal through the civil rights era to the present day, that anyone has ever attempted. She examines with remarkable clarity, precision and objectivity the multiplicity of interrelationships involved, including those between and among labor, management, races, governments, economic policies, trade arrangements, domestic politics, and cold war and other international strategies. The book documents in compelling detail both the many accomplishments, particularly in race relations and in collective bargaining, and the all too frequent difficulties, indeed devastation, especially as a result of national trade and economic policies, which the industry and the union shared during the regimes of and at the hands of both liberal Democratic and conservative Republican administrations.” — Lynn R. Williams, retired president, United Steelworkers of America

“Running Steel, Running America is a provocative and brilliant account of postwar American politics, economics, and race, which weaves together a number of narratives often treated in isolation: labor, civil rights and affirmative action, politics, business, and international trade policy. This is one of the most sophisticated treatments of race and the modern American economy to come along in years.” — Eric Arnesen, University of Illinois at Chicago