American Steel: Hotel Metal Men and the Resurrection of the Rust Belt.

• Author: Evans, Jeffrey

American Steel: Hotel Metal Men and the Resurrection of the Rust Belt

Most business books are little more than self-congratulation manuals, usually written by corporate would-be stars as much interested in their People magazine profiles as in the messages they have to convey. American Steel: Hotel Metal Men and the Resurrection of the Rust Belt, however, is a vivid and fast-paced story of one company's bold efforts to turn around America's moribund steel industry. Written by Richard Preston, a New Yorker journalist, American Steel seethes with urgency and passion.

American Steel concerns the efforts of the Nucor Corp., America's eighth largest manufacturer of steel, to make good steel at the cheapest price possible. Although it ranks No. 8, Nucor is actually a relatively small company, dwarfed by such giants as United Steel and Bethlehem, otherwise known as Big Steel. But Nucor is experimenting with steel-making methods that may catapult it into one of the largest steel-makers.

In Preston's words, Nucor's reviving of the American steel business would constitute "the biggest turnaround since Harry Houdini escaped from a coffin at the bottom of a river." And it is Nucor's willingness to experiment and take risks that enable it to achieve such impressive deeds - a willingness that Big Steel is simply too complacent to employ. Thus, American Steel is as much about management as it is about manufacturing.

Each year Americans consume the equivalent of five Great Pyramids of solid steel, much of which comes from overseas, particularly Japan. And the reason we import so much is because the Japanese and the Europeans have modernized and constantly updated steel-making methods. Not so Big Steel. Although American steel companies emerged from World War II utterly unchallenged in the world market, the Big Steel companies chose to rest on their I-beams rather than improve their technology. The result is a Rust Belt that stretches from New York to Illinois.

Because Nucor relies entirely on scrap metal to feed its steel mills, it hopes to convert the Rust Belt, quite literally, into new and shining steel. For Nucor, scrap metal is one of America's greatest natural resources. Nucor takes scrap metal - old cars, old factories, anything it can get - and melts it into liquid steel. In Preston's words...