The Introduction sets up the arguments of the rest of the book by focusing in particular on the collision within our legal system and our society between the concrete and deeply personal realities of employee injury and the impersonal abstractions that characterize law and business. The Introduction presents the theoretical framework, narrative strategies, and some of the evidentiary basis through which the book conducts those investigations. The Introduction is provocative and seeks to demonstrate how history writing can be a form of social criticism that both enriches and is enriched by social theory, while remaining empirically grounded.