The Rise and Fall of Pittsburgh Steel: 200 Years of Iron, Ambition, and the Forging of Modern America

“Hell with the lid taken off,” the “Steel Valley,” and the “Valley of the Giants” were phrases that, until the 1980s, rang proudly through Pittsburgh’s pulsing iron and steel economy. For more than two centuries, the Pittsburgh region was world-renowned for the scale and intensity of its manufacturing complex. Its myriad ovens and furnaces churned fire and soot into the dreary skies, causing the hills to glow with a fiery luminescence. At times, more than one-quarter of the world’s steel wa...