A very basic background on the book can be found in the opening paragraph of a Duluth News Tribune opinion piece from 2014 written by the book's co-publisher, Donn Larson:

When Duluth business leader Monnie Goldfine and I published “The Will and the Way” in 2004, our idea was simply to acknowledge our community’s achievements after losing the steel plant and other key elements of our manufacturing economy like Diamond Calk, Klearflax, Coolerator and Clyde Iron. In his introduction to the book, Harold Frederick, once Duluth’s city attorney, wrote that its purpose “is not to provide a forum to brag about what occurred, but rather to serve as a navigational aid to the generation that is following.”