Steel City

This three-part study provides the definitive story of the steel industry in Sheffield from the era of Huntsman's crucible to the Iraqi 'Supergun'. The author has produced a fine portrait of this aspect of the industrial history of Sheffield ... he provides a detailed record and analysis of the changes the city has experienced. However, this is not just a local study but includes wider discussion of some of the more general reasons for British industrial decline. Its breadth of coverage and detail make it likely to remain the standard reference work on the industry in Sheffield for many decades to come. * Richard Perren, University of Aberdeen, Labour History Review, Vol. 61, No. 3 Winter 1996 * In this excellent book ... Tweedale has made a valuable contribution to our understanding of the complexity of steel making technology and the innovating process of diffusion in the tradition of Nathan Rosenberg. * Business History Review * Excellent volume ... Tweedale has provided a fascinating account and has shown how a local case study can be effectively used to make a major contribution to the debate on Britain's alleged decline. In this context Steel City looks set to join Pollard's History of Labour in Sheffield as a seminal work on a key centre of British industrial capitalism. * Economic History Review * This excellent book manages to be both scholarly and a pleasure to read. It provides a masterly survey of the rise and adjustments of an almost unrivalled localised complex of steel and steel using trades which until now has never been comprehensively analysed ... This book can be most warmly recommended to business historians and indeed to all who are fascinated by Britain's alleged long-term economic failure and especially to those who are sceptical of simple explanations of either growth or decline. * Business History * The argument is perforce a complicated one, impressively researched and rendered in vigorous prose ... Superbly produced and with an excellent bibliography, this volume belongs in graduate libraries serving programs in British and industrial history. * Choice * The remarkable history of Sheffield and its steel industry has at last found a worthy author, Geoffrey Tweedale, and the result is a superb book ... It is a truly amazing account, brilliantly researched and written, which describes how a tradition of manufacturing iron tools and the development of crucible steelmaking led to the largest concentration of steel industries in the world. * Materials World * This is a carefully researched and sympathetic study of an industrial district, its institutions and firms through growth, expansion, and, more recently, painful adjustment and change ... The book will be of interest in terms of business economics and history and for those wanting to understand the historical nature of industrial clusters and competitive advantage. * Metals Industry News *