Wheels of Fortune is the story of the rise and fall and transformation
of the rubber industry in Akron, a book rich in anecdotes and
photographs. This is history told by people who lived it, on the factory
floors and in executive offices, their voices ringing through a
narrative that has all the heroes and villains and epic sweep of a
Steinbeck novel. For more than a century after Dr. Benjamin Franklin
Goodrich came to town, in 1870, Akron, Ohio was the rubber capital of
the world. The city prospered along with the tire factories, becoming a
model for Middle America's industrial success. Its people worked in the
rubber shops and lived in neighborhoods fostered by companies like
Goodyear and Firestone. Even the air they breathed was heavy with the
odors of rubber. But by the 1980s, most of the rubber industry had gone
south, first the plants and then the company headquarters, a result of
stubbornness in the union ranks, intransigence in the corporate
boardrooms, and takeovers by foreign competitors. Akron began an awkward
metamorphosis from a stronghold of blue-collar labor to a research and
development center, finding its new identity in the broader fields of
polymer science and technology.