Publisher's Synopsis
HIGH STEEL does for the world of ironworkers - the brave men who scale the beams of skyscrapers hundreds of feet in the air - what THE PERFECT STORM did for deep sea fishing and RIVETHEAD did for assembly line workers. From the early days of steel construction in Chicago, through the great boom years of New York city ironwork, and up through the present, High Steel follows the trajectory of careers inextricably linked to both great accomplishment and catastrophic disaster. The personal stories reveal the lives of ironworkers and the dangers they face as they walk across the windswept, swaying summits of tomorrow's skyscrapers, balanced on steel girders sometimes only six inches wide. Rasenberger explores both the greatest accomplishments of ironwork - the vaulting bridges and towers that define America's skyline - and the deadliest disasters, such as the Quebec Bridge Collapse of 1907, when 75 ironworkers, including 33 Mohawk Indians, fell to their deaths. HIGH STEEL is an accessible, thrilling, and vertiginous portrait of the lives of some of our most brave yet unrecognized men.
