Summary
Steel made the modern world. Until the 1850s, good steel could only be made in small quantities. For heavy industrial purposes, cast iron was too brittle and wrought iron too weak. But when the technique for mass-producing steel was developed, the world as we know it leapt into the modern age: Railroads, skyscrapers, ocean liners, huge bridges, internal combustion engines all combined to usher in a wholly new kind of civilization.
Steel: From Mine to Mill traces not only the story of working with iron from the time of early societies up to the present but also how steel – an alloy of iron – is crafted today. The author visits gigantic open pit iron mines, travels on a Great Lakes ore boat from the Lake Superior Iron Range to Cleveland, stands next to iron flowing as a flaming liquid from the bottom of a blast furnace, and walks half-mile-long rolling mills where semi-solid steel hisses and groans as it is pressed into sheets and slabs.
Our civilization is built on steel, and no other book is comparable to this one in cracking the door open to steelmaking’s astonishing history and industrial wizardry.
Author
Brooke C. Stoddard grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. He is a former writer for Time-Life Books and National Geographic Books. His stories and
articles have been published by Smithsonian magazine, the Washington Post and other journals.
He is also author of World in the Balance: The Perilous Months of June-October 1940.
www.brookecstoddard.com
From the Publisher
Steel was first published in 2015. I knew Brooke from the local business community. I was starting my online shop Yellow Dot Shop. I was so impressed with Brooke’s writing in this book and others that I asked if he’d like for me to sell the first edition of Steel. He agreed and orders came in from all around the country. I was the only one who carried this book at a reasonable price and it is the only book that covers the topic of steel in such detail. We ended up selling out every last copy of the book.
The first edition is a sumptuous hardback book, leaving no luxurious detail untried. When Brooke decided to print a 2nd edition of Steel, we needed to make it affordable. So we went with paperback this time and a slightly narrower book. All the photos are still in color and we’re using a nice quality paper to show the images.
We are excited to make this fantastic book available again! Pre-orders are now open. We will ship your book as soon as they arrive, around mid October.