The Last Machine was a half-million pound extrusion press installed in the Ansonia, CT, mills of the American Brass Company in 1979 in an effort to save the brass industry in America. Brass had thrived in Connecticut's Naugatuck River Valley since the early 19th century, and the valley had come to be known as "Brass Valley.? The last mills closed in 2013 and the extrusion press was the last major machine scrapped and removed from Brass Valley in 2016. The book records in words and picture the dismembering of the machine and the disappearance of one of America's founding manufacturing regions.