Steeples and Stacks is an examination of the religion-based community group that formed in Youngstown, Ohio in 1977 in opposition to the proposed shutdown of a portion of the Youngstown Sheet and Tube's steel works, one of the most dramatic of the plant closings that have come to symbolize American deindustrialization. Church leaders and steel workers banded together to form a powerful ecumenical political coalition, established links with Washington lobbyists, and proposed to buy the plant and run it as a community industry. Though the proposal ultimately failed, the story of the coalition...