Sloss Furnaces and the Rise of the Birmingham District: An Industrial Epic (History of American Science and Technology) - Hardcover

Lewis, W. David

9780817307080: Sloss Furnaces and the Rise of the Birmingham District: An Industrial Epic (History of American Science and Technology)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0817307087 ISBN 13: 9780817307080

Publisher: University Alabama Press, 1994

Sloss Furnaces and the Rise of the Birmingham District contradicts earlier interpretations of southern industrialization by showing that Birmingham, which became a leading symbol of the New South, was in fact deeply rooted in the antebellum plantation system and its "peculiar institution," slavery. As Lewis demonstrates, southern businessmen pursued their own indigenous model of economic growth and were selective in how they imported capital, machinery, and technical expertise from outside the region. The racial crises that erupted in Birmingham during the 1960s can be traced, in part, to labor-intensive developmental strategies that were present from the birth of a city that might have become a bastion of industrial slavery if the South had won the Civil War.

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About the Author:

W. David Lewis is Distinguished University Professor at Auburn University.

Review:

“David Lewis has produced a masterpiece in his Sloss Furnaces . . . which deserves to be ranked with such seminal and influential works as Cash’s Mind of the South.” – Edwin T. Layton, University of Minnesota

“In his study of Sloss-Sheffield Steel and Iron Company of Alabama, W. David Lewis brilliantly combines an expertise on iron and steel technology and industrial economics with a lively appreciation for purely human factors. . . .Impeccably researched, Sloss Furnaces is an exciting and convincing work destined to alter our understanding of the southern industrial economy after the Civil War and beyond.” – Bertram Wyatt-Brown, University of Florida

“The ‘whys’ of Birmingham’s story—the tale of a place of great potential that never really reached its potential—is well told in Lewis’s sweeping historical reconstruction of the region, its industrial base, labor force, political and economic institutions, and more. The book reflects the history of technology at its best, interweaving an array of themes and topics all interconnected with a relatively peripheral manufacturer of pig iron, the Sloss Furnaces company and its successors. . . . The past is indeed seamless and Lewis has written far more than a history of technology, as he approaches the limits of holistic history. . . . [This is] a book of uncommon power.”—American Historical Review

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