Goodwin was made a partner at 29 after successfully getting the troubled Rosythe Royal Dockyards ready for privatization during the Thatcher era, no small achievement for a young man.
Instead, when the subject demands it, he manages deftly to flit back and forth among the decades (throughout the book, he is particularly good on the regular outbreaks of labour unrest, be it in the San Francisco dockyards or the fields of the Central Valley).