Introduction: When workers disappear -- Down in the hole: steelmaking Pittsburgh in the 1950s -- Dirty laundry: labor and love in the working-class home -- "You are only poor if you have no one to turn to": race, geography, and cooperation -- Doctor New Deal: social rights and the making of the...

"Shannon, Wally, and John built their lives around their place of work. Shannon, a white single mother, became the first woman to run the factory's dangerous furnaces at the Rexnord manufacturing plant in Indianapolis and was proud of producing one of the world's top brands of steel bearings....