In the book, which "reads like a 1930s black-and-white movie," 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 of Cleveland, a dapper financial dynamo, has his own dream of industrial power and stands in their way. The parties hire Luther Day and Newton Baker also of Cleveland, as well as Cleveland firm Squire, Sanders, to battle before one immigrant judge who will decide the outcome. Dance the Charleston in speakeasies, pay the mob for protection, stand in soup kitchen lines, and experience the power of "Steel Dreams."