This book, therefore, focuses on the relationship between industrial investment and social change, and it is only peripherally concerned with the well-studied impact of "deindustrialization." The firm that abruptly closes down and abandons its workers to the streets, although perhaps the dominant image of the problem, is actually much less typical than the plant that undergoes a more subtle process of cutbacks, attrition, and the gradual relocation or elimination of industrial jobs. The closure of any plant is of political and social concern, but the final shutdown of a factory-the act that draws the public's attention-usually comes only at the end of a long, silent process of job relocation. These evolutionary changes in the employment structure often mask much of the subtle drama of labor history and hide from the actors themselves both the profundity of the transformations and the continuities in the pattern of events. Such is the case with this history of RCA's radio and television assembly, which can be understood as a "runaway shop" only in the loosest sense, as the corporation shifted employment opportunities over the course of decades rather than simply relocating entire factories wholesale.