Bethlehem Steel: Builder and Arsenal of America is a historical analysis of the late Bethlehem Steel Corporation. Kenneth Warren writes this book; Kenneth Warren is a specialist in the American steel industry and knows the industry very well. In the opening chapters, Warren shows why western Pennsylvania became the leading iron-producing region in the United States during the second half of the 19th century, surpassing little Bethlehem. Iron Company of Eastern Pennsylvania. The company's geographic location hindered the development of the city of Bethlehem during these years, while contributing to the growth of the Pittsburgh region. Western Pennsylvania's proximity to West Virginia bituminous coal, cheaper water transportation on the Great Lakes, access to high-quality iron ore from Lake Superior, and proximity to expanding railroad construction in the Midwest made possible Pittsburgh's dominance in iron production. At the same time, Bethlehem Iron was continually struggling in eastern Pennsylvania due to declining demand for rails; as railroad construction declined in the East, a preponderance of lower-quality anthracite coal and a reliance on more expensive, often land-based transportation to markets. Yet Warren admires the efforts of early leaders Robert Heysham Sayre, John C. Fritz, and Joseph Wharton who "survived" the prolonged challenge from western Pennsylvania. Bethlehem leaders worked hard to find new products and update equipment. In the 1880s-1890s, Bethlehem Iron developed a niche in the production of armor plate for the U.S. Navy as well as for foreign buyers, which allowed the company to participate with the powerful Carnegie Steel (later U.S. Steel). The study examines the middle of the Bethlehem Steel article. ......the agreement throughout the book is that capital-intensive industries are dangerously slow to innovate, weighed down by aging technology, vast infrastructure and overhead, and limited managers. ability to anticipate market developments and threats posed by emerging competitors. Steelworkers and their unions figure uneasily in this company's history despite their importance to Bethlehem Steel's operations. Warren should have incorporated labor relations more into her analysis to examine managers' regard for another of their most important assets: their employees. In particular, the understudied topic of worker safety would have deepened its discussions of management priorities and policies in what was a very dangerous industry. The Bethlehem Steel facilities in Baltimore, for example, were notoriously dangerous, as Mark Reutter pointed out in Sparrows Point..