Steel Dreams

Book excerpt: The Great Depression begins to silence the Roaring Twenties while Charles Schwab, Eugene Grace, and James Campbell dream of merging Bethlehem Steel and Youngstown Sheet & Tube into a mighty steel company. Cyrus Eaton, a dapper financial dynamo, has his own dream of industrial power and stands in their way. He will spare no expense. The parties hire famed lawyers Newton Baker and Luther Day and top accountants George May and A.C. Ernst. These are the Gehrigs and Ruths of the legal and financial world, and they battle before one immigrant judge who will decide the outcome. Along the way, a trio of high school friends have their own dreams tested in the crucible of life. Dance the Charleston in speakeasies, pay the mob for protection, stand in soup kitchen lines, and experience "$TEEL DREAM$."