"The richly documented history of Mexican South Chicago here yields a sophisticated, rounded, and compelling study of the evolution of an immigrant place. Attentive to structural factors shaping migration and assimilation, Innis-Jiménez also tells textured human stories of the work, play, and solidarity that created and recreated an enduring community, snatching life from discrimination and hardship." —David Roediger, University of Illinois 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. Michael Innis-Jiménez is a native of Laredo, Texas and Assistant Professor in the Department of American Studies at the University of Alabama. He lives in Tuscaloosa where he working on his next book on Latino/a immigration to the American South. In the Culture, Labor, History series

Despite being geographically cut off from large trade centers and important natural resources, Pittsburgh transformed itself into the most formidable steel-making center in the world. Beginning in the 1870s, under the engineering genius of magnates such as Andrew Carnegie, steel-makers capitalized on western Pennsylvania’s rich supply of high-quality coal and powerful rivers to create an efficient industry unparalleled throughout history. In City of Steel, Ken Kobus explores the evolution of the steel industry to celebrate the innovation and technology that created and sustained Pittsburgh’s steel boom. Focusing on the Carnegie Steel Company’s success as leader of the region’s steel-makers, Kobus goes inside the science of steel-making to investigate the technological advancements that fueled the industry’s success. City of Steel showcases how through ingenuity and determination Pittsburgh’s steel-makers transformed western Pennsylvania and forever changed the face of American industry and business.

An economist examines the decline of American cities and offers a strategy for their rejuvenation based on respect for property rights. American cities, once centers of opportunity, are all too often plagued by poverty and decay. One need only look at the ruins of Detroit to see how far some cities have fallen. Yet other examples, like Boston and San Francisco, show that such a fate is reversible. In Boom Towns, Stephen J.K. Walters diagnoses the root causes of urban decline in order to prescribe remedies that will enable cities to thrive once again. Using vivid evocations of iconic towns and the people who helped shape their development, Walters shows how public revitalization policies often do more harm than good. He then outlines a more promising set of policies to remedy the capital shortage that continues to afflict many cities and needlessly limit their residents’ opportunities. With its fresh interpretation of one of the American quandaries of our day, Boom Towns offers a novel contribution to the debate about American cities and a program for their restoration.

Business genius and hedonist, Charles Schwab entered the steel industry as an unskilled laborer and within twenty years advanced to the presidency of Carnegie Steel. He later became the first president of U.S. Steel and then founder of Bethlehem Steel. His was one of the most spectacular and curious success stories in an era of great industrial giants. How did Schwab progress from day laborer to titan of industry? Why did Andrew Carnegie and J.P. Morgan select him to manage their multmillion-dollar enterprises? And how did he forfeit their confidence and lose the preseidency of U.S. Steel? Drawing upon previously undiscovered sources, Robert Hessen answers these questions in the first biography of Schwab.

Report to the President on investigation no. 332-103 under section 332 of the Tariff Act of 1930.

After a young woman is found dead in her apartment, Detective John Steel is brought in. A British cop working with the NYPD, he is a man with unique talent for finding trouble and winding up his partner, Detective Samantha McCall. Soon, another woman goes missing, and the duo must find out why. But there is a cost: the dead woman is the girlfriend of one their own, and the missing woman may have something the killer wants. As the clock ticks, the investigation runs deeper and an old enemy shows his face. Will any of them see the end of this alive?