Customer Reviews

Steel Giants: Historic Images from the Calumet Regional Archives

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That vast amalgam of the steel industry that lined virtually the entire South Shore of Lake Michigan never ceased to amaze me as I flew over it on my many trips in and out of Chicago from the East Coast, and it was equally depressing to watch the slow demise and near disappearance of Big Steel over the last thirty years leaving what appears to be a vast alley of soot and rust. It never occurred to me that I would ever need to know more about the subject than my own personal observations noted above. That all changed when I was engaged to design an exhibit based on the Steel Industry on the Lake Michigan South Shore.
The current meager supply of easily accessible information was vastly improved by the publication of "Steel Giants". This impressive photographic compilation of the now vanished industry puts in one place access to vast archives formerly easily available only to scholars and those willing to travel to Indiana. Due to the source material itself, it's not not the perfect compendium of the industry that might have been compiled by an independent eye. It is instead what the steel industry saw as important to note for reasons of publicity or record. That other book will have to be left to other enquiring industrial archaeologists yet to come. So take this book for what it is---a vast self-portrait of the Twentieth Century steel giants as they saw themselves. That said, it comprises a magnificent and beautifully produced corporate photographic record that you can actually hold in your hands and appreciate at a cost far less than a plane ticket.

I think anyone who has either worked, lived, or has a family member that worked at either Inland Steel or USS Gary Works must have this book. Very few words but lots of very interesting and previously unseen by many people in and or from the area. The adjacent areas to these two mills have come full circle. They both started as sand dunes and now are re-approaching that same state again. AS the Steel Industry in these areas have gone, so have the areas (cities). Again, this is a must for anyone from these areas. Besides many of my fathers pictures are in this book. Regardless IT'S A MUST.

Having grown up in northern Indiana, this is a terrific history lesson of the Indiana steel mills and the powerful force they were in the Calumet region. Beautifully laid out and documented, it took me back to my teenage days visiting the Indiana Dunes and seeing those "steel giants" in the background and the beautiful sunsets they created as a result of the pollution. Now when I visit, I am hardly aware of them. McShane and Wilk have done a great job of capturing a by-gone era.

I was raised in the shadows of the steel behemoths on the southern shore of Lake Michigan. My father, relatives and most of the fathers with whose children I grew up worked in the mills. Though we were told of our community's economic history, it took the publication of Steel Giants to illustrate the massive efforts of men and machinery that were required to build and run these enormous economic engines.

Steel was what made America great. It provided material resources for the railroads and made us the `arsenal of democracy' during both world wars. But the making of steel also required the sweat and blood of several generations of European immigrants, poor whites and African Americans who populated Gary and East Chicago. Steel Giants chronicles all this exceptionally.

The book provides an excellent pictorial presentation of the development of the Steel Industry in Northwest Indiana. It presents background information identifying the development of the communities during the subsequent construction of two of the largest steel producing facilities in the United States.

i bought this for my son because his father worked in the mills,and he is enjoying this book so much,if you're from Indiana or in any way connected to the steel mills this ia a great book to have.