Men of Steel is an engaging journey through an abandoned steel mill. It interweaves memoir, interviews with retired steelworkers and the history of steel through the mill’s rise and demise in a narrative and photographic tapestry. The origin of Simonds Saw and Steel, an early 20th century specialty alloy steel producer on the banks of the Erie Canal in Western New York is traced through successive owners to modern times through the voices of men involved in the work of manual steel making, the labor movement, social issues of race and gender, and the human and environmental costs of a secret contract for radioactive steel. The ultimate bankruptcy of the mill is examined in the context of the root causes of the steel industry’s decline that left the steelworker as bereft and abandoned as the property where they worked, one of the nation’s industrial tombstones—where time has stopped and layered up, and where things left behind blend with the action of nature reclaiming the site.
