Quentin R. Skrabec

I requested this ER book because I enjoy history from a technological perspective; I was actively interested, not haphazardly clicking whatever. Alas, it demonstrates by negative example the skills involved in narrative non-fiction. I could never relax out of editor mode; I kept wanting to slash this or expand that or rearrange shifting themes and jiggly dates into coherent storylines. The style is business report, which doesn’t scale well to book length and complexity. It reads as though show more notes from various sources were collected without discrimination and strung together: a set of factoids in one paragraph, an overlapping set of factoids in the next paragraph, related paragraphs sequenced into chapters. So much potential here: the harvesting of rubber from its native jungle habitat in South America, the shift to plantations in Asia and experimental corporate colonies, the chemistry of making natural and synthetic rubber viable for mass manufacture, the transition from carriages to bicycles and automobiles and airplanes, the structure of tires (yes, really, illustrations would’ve been helpful), the intense personalities of prominent industrialists, the development of labor unions and application of management principles, the rise and fall of Akron OH. All there, sometimes mentioned in passing, sometimes occupying central place but obscured by clutter of extraneous and frequently duplicate details. Frustrating. show less

A rubber town in Ohio without rubber plants, a Motown in the steel belt, without engines.

Is this what the deindustrialization of America brought to Americans? When did it start? The end of the XIXth century, the roaring 20s, the recession 30s, the 1970s? Is it the fault of radial tires? the fault of Michelin, or because in the 1950s Japanese cars and their rubber products appear in the USA?

Is it the fault of management or the fault of Labor and unionization? Is it because the compassionate show more industry baron wants to take good care of his town, his region and give a job for life to his middle class workers? When all that remains is a fight between Labor and Management, then lost are the community initiatives, some may think. As this fight grows more bitter under the combined outside pressures of costs and globalization, the convulsions of this industry and their communities are brushed elegantly by Skrabec Jr.

Is it Charles Goodyear, or Harvey Firestone, or B.F. Goodrich, or F.A. Seiberling's fault? This book is captivating as it raises many questions from an American perspective while offering a retrospective of this industry that literally rivets the reader from page 1 onwards.

Again, fine style of Skrabec Jr. who shares the passion for his subject which affects us all and continues to do so with the many problems that rubber plantations in Vietnam continue to this day to create for the environment and the forests. This perspective is also in the midst of controversy depending who one listens to, environmentalist or industry advocates.

Is Rubber the evil narrative of past nasty rubber lords who gave to anti-alcoholic charities while knowing too well how toxic production was for their workers? Is it about union leadership? Too slow to understand how the tectonic plate on which they sat had already shifted?

Rubber is a great American industrial history that shows how elastic the profit of these products were for the rubber barons who reinvented themselves bankruptcies after bankruptcies until the time when they became, as great dinosaurs, extinct. show less

While an interesting story, the book suffers from some poor editing, really needs a more coherent, organized approach. Mostly chronological when perhaps themes followed all the way through would be better. There are some typos and it appears in several places he changed the tense or form of the verb and didn't check that the rest of the sentence was still grammatically correct. Some information is repeated in several places, which had me thinking I had lost my place.
If you can get by these show more distractions, the story of rubber is interesting. show less

Rubber is both a history of one component of American industry as well as that of Akron, Ohio. How Akron got to be Rubber City — a location not particularly close to a major seaport needed for the raw material — is a lesson on how a one industry town lives and dies through the fortunes of its manufacturing. In many ways, it was a precursor to the problems of hundreds of other communities that were unprepared for cheap imports in a relatively free-trade global marketplace. The rubber show more industry and Akron was able to survive a number of ups and downs as recessions, depressions, unionization, and world wars created a phenomenal group of rubber barons and at its peak employed 60,000 workers. While the story told is sometimes repetitive, it is an interesting peek into the world of American capital and labor (and its demise) over al most a 100-year period. Why tires are no longer made in Akron is an interesting story of lost opportunities, lateness in embracing new technologies, and the elimination of protective tariffs. There are many reasons why this industry, along with many others in the US, have lost out to global imports where labor and production is cheap. The author longs a little to much for economic nationalism that is not sustainable with today’s consumer. Still, there are lessons to be learned here. show less