Wrecked : the Edmund Fitzgerald and the sinking of the American economy
Publication Information
East Lansing : Michigan State University Press, [2025]
Physical Description
xviii, 203 pages ; 23 cm
Summary
"When the Edmund Fitzgerald went down in a Lake Superior storm on November 10, 1975, more than a ship and twenty-nine lives were lost. Wrecked tells the story of America's most infamous shipwreck, as well as an even larger one-the wreck of the American industrial economy during the last third of the twentieth century. The Fitzgerald disaster was both a human tragedy and an indictment of American industrial policies that eventually cost the nation thousands of jobs and hundreds of wrecked communities. Wrecked tells the story both about the reasons for the decline of manufacturing in the industrial heartland of the United States, centered in the upper Midwest, and also about the causes of the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald, and the legal machinations that followed for the survivors. The book conveys the sense of loss that still is felt by the survivors, along with the outrage over the disappearance of manufacturing and the jobs that went with it, and the inadequate maintenance and legal maneuvering over liability for the sinking of the ship. Wrecked captures a time that has passed and a critique of what went wrong, and why"-- Provided by publisher.
Contents
- The wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald
- The wreck of the American economy
- The lake they call Gitche Gumee
- Rock bottom
- Just call Toby
- A bone to be chewed
- A red sea
- The rise and fall of the American shipbuilding industry
- Christmas in July
- Hard knock life
- Great nations build things.