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On the battlefields of business
Writing about business can be rather like writing about warfare. Clashes of competitors in the marketplace, rivals in the boardroom, and corporate adversaries in the courtroom can be the stuff of drama worthy of Tolstoy -- when the tales are told skillfully. This month's featured books all deal with conflicts that have shaped business and economic destinies. Though there may not be a War and Peace among these titles, each brings battles over strategy and values to life, retelling sagas in which profit and loss take on the dimensions of victory and defeat. |
REVIEWS BY E. THOMAS WOOD
One chapter could have been titled "Management Secrets of Genghis Khan." (One key principle: When subordinates make mistakes, behead them.) Another might have been called "Merger Integration: Lessons from Machmud of Ghazni." (This 10th-century Afghan empire-builder finalized his acquisitions of towns and cities by putting most inhabitants to the sword, enslaving the rest, and torching anything he couldn't carry off.) In breezy prose filled with thought-provoking asides, Crossen traces the changing relationship between force and wealth over the centuries. In the time of Genghis, wealth creation was a zero-sum game; he could get rich only by impoverishing others. As the book fast-forwards through the origins of international trade, the creation of paper money, and the industrial revolution, we end up contemplating the unfathomable coffers of Bill Gates -- who, depending on your point of view, got rich either by creating great wealth for society as a whole or by monopolizing technological resources with all the ruthlessness of Machmud of Ghazni.
How the Wealthiest People of All Time -- from Genghis Khan to Bill Gates -- Made Their Fortunes By Cynthia Crossen Times Books, $25.95 ISBN 0812932676
This book seethes with that euphoric passion. An entire industry spent decades engaged in a morally indefensible enterprise, and Zegart names the names of those responsible. Drawing on revelations that have emerged from the flood of anti-tobacco litigation in recent years, he presents the tobacco companies' actions for judgment in the harsh light of history. Zegart does not come across as an anti-tobacco zealot. His writing is not laced with adjectives. Instead, in the studied manner of the best investigative reporters -- and lawyers -- he carefully assembles damning facts to indict the suspects. The author makes all requisite attempts to maintain balance: We do learn, for instance, why some tobacco scientists may have actually thought their efforts were improving public health, and we learn that the book's hero, plaintiffs' attorney Ron Motley, is no saint (ask his ex-wife and the kids he rarely sees). Ultimately, however, balanced reporting on systemic evil is neither possible nor desirable. Civil Warriors will make your blood boil.
The Legal Siege on the Tobacco Industry By Dan Zegart Delacorte Press, $25.95 ISBN 0385319355
The authors sketch the scenes that led to the merger of the German maker of Mercedes-Benz and the third-largest U.S. car manufacturer -- each a proud and sprawling corporation with deep historical roots in its home country. In this instance, there were three parties in the strategic equation. Besides Chrysler and Daimler-Benz, the team of billionaire investor Kirk Kerkorian and former Chrysler chief Lee Iacocca was also in play, making its own hostile bid for Chrysler. No sooner was that battle over than the Germans launched their offensive. Daimler chairman Juergen Schrempp proposed a merger of equals, but (in the view of Vlasic and Stertz, both reporters for The Detroit News) Schrempp smoothly outflanked Chrysler chairman Bob Eaton to get his way on all major points of contention in the negotiations. The authors' contention that Chrysler pretty much got fleeced in the deal is open for debate, but their expertise is undeniable, and they tell their story in a manner that will hold the attention of readers far beyond Detroit.
How Daimler-Benz Drove off with Chrysler By Bill Vlasic and Bradley A. Stertz William Morrow, $26 ISBN 0688173055
The fact that America experienced an economic boom unprecedented in world history after World War II, with consequences that still benefit us today, is widely known. But two aspects of that boom are often forgotten: the fact that few expected it to happen, and the extent to which government initiatives enabled it to happen. Sobel's narrative touches frequently on these two neglected topics, highlighting the paradoxical distinctiveness of the postwar economic explosion. Fear of a return to the Depression of the 1930s dominated discussion of the economy as the war ended. Support for massive federal programs, especially those that promoted home-ownership and higher education, spanned the political spectrum. The scope of Sobel's book is the entire half-century indicated in the title, and he succeeds in making sense of economic developments throughout the five decades. But the sharpest focus remains on the warrior generation, conveying vividly the economic miracle that spanned the working lives of those who came home amid such uncertainty in 1945.
How a Generation of Enterprising Americans Created the World's Most Prosperous Society By Robert Sobel Truman Talley/St. Martin's Press, $27.95 ISBN 0312208901
Briefly noted David A. Lereah's The Rules for Growing Rich: Making Money in the New Information Economy is a sane and sober guide for investors in today's tempting but perilous markets. Lereah, chief economist for the Mortgage Bankers Association, explains in plain English the principals of economic and investment analysis in the new century. For those of us who can't fully subscribe to either old-fashioned "investing on fundamentals" or the now-deflated super-optimism of tech-stock investors, Lereah offers a third way.
Making Money in the New Information Economy By David A. Lereah Crown, $25 ISBN 0812930568
Public-radio and public-television audiences are familiar with the common-sense advice of Chris Farrell, a commentator on the syndicated weekly radio program Sound Money and the host of the PBS series Right on the Money. Farrell's new companion book to the TV series is Right on the Money: Taking Control of Your Personal Finances. In it, he synthesizes the plainspoken but often insightful observations that make his work in broadcast media so accessible to ordinary savers and investors.
Taking Control of Your Personal Finances By Chris Farrell Villard Books, $23.95 ISBN 0375503692)
In The Third Shift: Managing Hard Choices in Our Careers, Homes, and Lives as Women, Michele Kremen Bolton illuminates a few paths to inner peace for working women who feel overwhelmed by conflicting obligations. "The third shift," the author explains, "is the job a woman works in the wee hours of the morning, after a full day at the office and a busy night at home -- the job of lying awake and second-guessing decisions she has made about her life." Drawing on both empirical research and personal experience, Bolton shows how women can stop working so much of this unpaid overtime.
Managing Hard Choices in Our Careers, Homes, and Lives as Women By Michele Kremen Bolton Jossey-Bass, $25 ISBN 0787948543
Nashville journalist E. Thomas Wood is the author of Karski: How One Man Tried to Stop the Holocaust (John Wiley & Sons).
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Certainly the cheekiest of these selections is Cynthia Crossen's The Rich and How They Got That Way: How the Wealthiest People of All Time -- from Genghis Khan to Bill Gates -- Made Their Fortunes. In almost every case, as Crossen trenchantly profiles rich folk from the last couple of millennia, the same image comes to mind: a playground bully hoarding all the toys. If some of today's most successful business people occasionally behave like sociopathic warlords, well, maybe that's because so many of their role models were, quite literally, sociopathic warlords.
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Journalist Dan Zegart turns in a battlefield-reporting performance worthy of Ernie Pyle in Civil Warriors: The Legal Siege on the Tobacco Industry. Reporters tend to be cynical critters, steering clear of commitments to causes of any kind. For business reporters, especially, it's rare to engage any topic with unbridled passion -- not just because of our obligation to avoid biased reporting, but because we know that most stories turn out to embody ambiguities of one sort or another. When a journalist encounters a story of clear-cut right and wrong, then the work process becomes a form of euphoria.
Bill Vlasic and Bradley A. Stertz narrate a different type of warfare in Taken for a Ride: How Daimler-Benz Drove off with Chrysler. This meticulously researched, fly-on-the-wall account of the merger of two automotive giants makes a chess game into a spectator sport.
Now to a book whose true subject is the aftermath of a particular war: Robert Sobel's The Great Boom 1950-2000: How a Generation of Enterprising Americans Created the World's Most Prosperous Society. Sobel, a professor at Hofstra University and a prolific author of business works, died in 1999 soon after he completed this book. It is both a fitting memorial to him and an homage to those who fought the war that ended in 1945 and won the peace that followed. The Great Boom is, in effect, the business-book companion to Tom Brokaw's bestseller, The Greatest Generation.