Judith Stein recounts two histories in tandem that all too frequentlyare narrated separately: “that of a changing [American] economy and thatof changing race relations” (2). The brilliant originality of RunningSteel is to bring the history of civil rights in employment together withlarger questions of national, indeed international, post-1945 political economy.The struggle for racial justice appears neither a beneficiary nor a casualty ofan easily invoked but vaguely defined “liberalism,” as in so manyother studies. Instead, the limits of fair employment prove an integral part ofthe making and unmaking of a political and economic totality with quite specificelements seemingly unconnected to race relations. In contrast to currentlyfashionable neoliberal accounts, Stein concludes “it was the foreigncommitments and economic policies of liberalism, not the excesses of racialreformers or the racism of the culture, that transformed American politics inthe postwar era” (6).