Subscribers to AMM have read for years of mergers and acquisitions in metals, efforts to consolidate the steel industry and the motives of industry magnates like Lakshmi Mittal, Alexei Mordashov, Wilbur Ross and others.

As numerous, as complex and as detailed as many of those stories are—and surely will be in the future—AMM never had a reporter sitting in a closed-door meeting with the principals when a deal was on the table.

Craig Bouchard was there. As president of the former Esmark Inc., a Chicago-based company that started in steel with service center holdings but grew steadily in influence, strength and headline-grabbing activity, he lived through the twists and turns of one of the most interesting and volatile battles the steel industry has seen.

Bouchard, together with Old Dominion University professor and economist James V. Koch, delivers a firsthand account of the roller-coaster ride that Craig and his brother, James Bouchard, took as they led Esmark from a service center consolidator to a steel industry...