Authors: Ken Iverson.
Hardcover, 196 pages
Publisher: Wiley
Publication Date: 1997-10


Reviews :

    A visionary, maverick, and genuine American business hero, Ken Iverson is one of the most closely-watched business leaders in the world. Credited with single-handedly rejuvenating the rapidly declining American steel industry to the status of world-class producer, Iverson is one of the most successful and, as he likes to point out, one of the lowest-paid CEOs in the U.S. In his long-awaited book, Ken Iverson shares his ideas, observations, and the lessons he's learned about what it takes to grow a super-competitive, world-class organization....

Authors: Thomas K. McCraw.
Paperback, 260 pages
Publisher: Harlan Davidson
Publication Date: 2000-03
Edition: 1

Reviews :

    Unique for its breadth of coverage and depth of analysis this uncommonly readable book is certain to become a classic. Five of the book's ten chapters provide in-depth analyses of representative companies and the remarkable people who led them. These firms include McDonald's, Procter & Gamble, Boeing, General Motors, and Ford-all of which began as entrepreneurial startups and grew to become big businesses. Their success stories are counterbalanced by a detailed dissection of the monumental failure of RCA, long the world leader in consumer electronics but today all but extinct.

Interspersed with the company-centered chapters are five brief "overview" chapters: one each on women and African Americans in business, and three on vital sectors of American business: first finance, then chemicals and pharmaceuticals, and, most recently, computers, Silicon Valley, and the Internet.

With 35 photographs and a comprehensive bibliographic essay, this compact, enjoyable work will be highly appreciated by anyone interested in how American business powered the twentieth century....

Authors: Earle Dunford. George Bryson.
Paperback, 128 pages
Publisher: The History Press
Publication Date: 2008-09-11


Reviews :

    Under the Clock tells the story of Miller & Rhoads, from its incarnation as a little dry goods store in 1885 through more than a century as a beloved Richmond landmark. Earle Dunford, longtime city editor for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, and George Bryson, a Miller & Rhoads veteran for thirty-nine years, usher us behind the scenes at the famous department store, sharing anecdotes they have collected from the many devoted shoppers and loyal employees who remember the good old days at Miller & Rhoads. Meet them under the clock to read about the famous Tea Room, Book and Author Dinners, fashion shows, Sara Sue hats, Christmastime with Santa Claus and countless other memories of a bygone era in shopping....

Authors: Lawrence L. Rouch.
Paperback, 136 pages
Publisher: University of Michigan Press/Regional
Publication Date: 2003-10-03


Reviews :

    Amply illustrated, The Vernor's Story -- From Gnomes to Now captures the spirit and genius of the people who transformed Vernors into an iconic American soft drink that has spanned two centuries of shifting public taste. With over seventy photographs depicting the history of the company, The Vernor's Story is an insider's look at early operations, as well as the firm's famous marketing blitz, featuring Vernor's distinctive green and gold packaging and its engaging gnome.
Add to that the legion of devoted Vernor's fans, and the beverage itself, a unique, spicy, mysteriously flavored carbonated ginger drink that's appealed to generations of Michiganders and others alike, and you have the makings of a great American success story.
A treasure on its own and sure to be a future collectible, this is a fascinating slice of Americana for Vernor's fans everywhere.
Lawrence Rouch is President of Studio3/Innovations, a marketing and consulting firm representing fine artists in the automotive and fine-arts fields.
...

Authors: Brett Cole.
Hardcover, 226 pages
Publisher: Wiley
Publication Date: 2008-09-29


Reviews :

    This book focuses on the 11 men, lawyers and bankers, who are responsible for the creation of Wall Street's merger industry. It specifically concentrates on the events and personalities who dominated Wall Street during the takeover battles of the 1970s and 1980s. Lawyers Joe Flom and Marty Lipton, the godfathers of modern M&A, educated bankers on takeover laws and regulations as well as tactics. Flom and Lipton were also superlative businessmen who built their own firms to become Wall Street powerhouses. The two men drew into their orbit a circle of bankers. Felix Rohatyn, Ira Harris, Steve Friedman, Geoff Boisi, Eric Gleacher and Bruce Wasserstein were close to Lipton. Robert Greenhill and Joe Perella were close to Flom.

M&A Titans provides insight into the culture of the different investment banks and how each of the bankers influenced the firms they worked in as they became more powerful. Some such as Gleacher, Harris, Wasserstein, Perella and Greenhill clashed with the men running their firms and left. Others such as Friedman and Boisi stayed and profoundly influenced how the firm did business. The career of Michael Milken, perhaps the notorious name on Wall Street in the 1980s, is also examined as well as the actions and tactics of his firm, Drexel Burnham Lambert. Milken and Drexel paved the way for the growth of private equity and helped popularize attacks on management by investors such as Boone Pickens and Carl Icahn....

Authors: Adam Cohen.
Paperback, 336 pages
Publisher: Back Bay Books
Publication Date: 2003-06-03


Reviews :

    In this brisk, engaging chronicle of one of the most stunning success stories in American business history, Adam Cohen takes us inside eBay the corporation--where all the important players, including eBay's founder Pierre Omidyar and CEO Meg Whitman, demystify their roles and tell the story straight--as well as inside the community of eBay's passionate users, who buy and sell everything from antique pickle jars and record albums to Ford trucks and $40,000 computer servers. His book reveals the many surprising ways in which eBay's "virtual marketplace" has indelibly changed not only the face of American business but the American cultural landscape....

    In the short but wild history of the Internet, few companies have developed such an ideal approach to utilizing the uniqueness of the medium for business as eBay--hence the title of Adam Cohen's colorful and insightful corporate biography The Perfect Store. Cohen, chief technology writer for Time magazine before joining The New York Times' editorial board, is the only journalist to receive complete cooperation from the company for such a project, and the combination of access and experience leads to a well-researched and well-written tale capturing the essence of this online auction-house phenomenon. In the process, Cohen reveals how the pioneering site first developed into a vibrant virtual community, then a cultural icon and a model for Web-based commerce that reported revenue of $749 million in 2001.

From its beginnings as a hobby site on a Silicon Valley PC, to its maturation as a real company under the burgeoning fiscal pressures of cyberspace, to its present status as one of the few original e-business practitioners to survive the dot.com implosion, eBay has always been part of the crowd while managing to stand out from it. Cohen helps us understand why by taking us inside the heads of major players like Pierre Omidyar, the cofounder who imbued his site with a Libertarian philosophy responsible for its heart and soul, and Meg Whitman, the seasoned manager who brought business savvy and a Harvard MBA to its roller-coaster world. What helps make the book so readable and informative, though, are Cohen's accompanying observations of the many other people and events that also helped eBay develop its trademark direction and characteristic personality: the company that formulated its distinctive logo, the Kansas City clothing-iron collectors whose pastime was transformed by the upstart Web site, the quirky listings that generated controversy (and publicity) like the one in 1999 for a "fully functional kidney," even detractors who decry its big-business underpinnings. Fans of the site, along with students of the online world in general, will find Cohen's account both instructive and enjoyable. --Howard Rothman ...

Authors: David Collis. Cynthia Montgomery. David Collis. Cynthia Montgomery.
Paperback, 256 pages
Publisher: McGraw-Hill/Irwin
Publication Date: 2004-07-17
Edition: 2

Reviews :

    Corporate Strategy by Collis and Montgomery employs a single consistent framework for the analysis of corporate-level strategy. Based on the latest research in the resource-based view of the firm and organizational economics, it develops a rigorous approach to the many important issues surrounding the scope of the firm. Starting from the analysis of how valuable resources contribute to the competitive advantage of a single business, the book progresses through the analysis of scale, scope and vertical integration within an industry, to the treatment of diversification and the management of multi-business firms. As such, it perfectly complements those required strategy courses that develop the notions of strategy as the internal consistency and external positioning of single business firms. This new edition has been completely updated, including a new chapter on corporate transformation.. ....

Authors: Paul Dolan. Thom Elkjer.
Hardcover, 240 pages
Publisher: Bloomberg Press
Publication Date: 2003-11
Edition: 1

Reviews :

    TRUE TO OUR ROOTS sets forth the simple but powerful management principles that enabled Fetzer Vineyards under Paul Dolan to become one of America's biggest and best-know wineries even as it was becoming a model for sustainable business practices everywhere. Dolan and Fetzer led the California wine industry toward profound change in how wineries and grape growers preserve their environment, strengthen their communities, and enrich the lives of their employees, without sacrificing the bottom line.

Filled with personal anecdotes and practical wisdom, this book offers inspiration and guidance to business managers who see the compelling need to build and grow healthy, sustainable organizations....

Authors: Ellen Hawkes.
Hardcover, 464 pages
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Publication Date: 1993-03-22


Reviews :

    An account of financial and personal scandal at the Gallo winery describes how Ernest Gallo's legal action against his brother, Joe--who wished to use the Gallo name for his cheese company--revealed long-hidden Gallo secrets. 40,000 first printing. Tour....

Authors: Robert Mondavi.
Paperback, 376 pages
Publisher: Harvest Books
Publication Date: 1999-10-07


Reviews :

    In 1965, after a notorious family feud, Robert Mondavi-then fifty-two years old-was thrown out of his family's winery. Far from defeated, Mondavi was dedicated to a vision of creating a superior wine. What has happened since that fateful day is one of the greatest success stories of American business. Today, the Robert Mondavi Winery is one of the most respected in the world, and Mondavi is the man who is most responsible for the worldwide recognition of American wine making, as well as changing America's palate for fine wine and fine food. In Harvests of Joy, Mondavi shares how, through his passion for excellence, he achieved this extraordinary position, one he reached not without pain and sacrifice. With invaluable insider tips on his approach to both wine making and to running a business, Mondavi's inspirational story is "a grand example of the fact that in America you can pretty much be, do, or accomplish, whatever you set out to." (Ventura County Star) ...

    Wine is Robert Mondavi's business, but it is also his life. The founder of the Robert Mondavi Winery in Napa Valley, now in his mid-80s, tells the story of his business and his life, laying out the lessons he learned in each, with writer Paul Chutkow.

Beginning with the legendary fallout in the 1960s with his younger brother and the rest of his family over the direction of the family-owned Charles Krug Winery, Mondavi describes how, at the age of 52, he started the Mondavi Winery, with the vision of making his wines, and those of all California wineries, equal in reputation to France's. The way Mondavi tells it, he almost single-handedly built up not only his business, but also the reputation of Napa Valley as a tourist destination, and of wine as a source of good health. He emphasizes his vision, drive, perfectionism, willingness to innovate, and work ethic, attributing many of his values to his immigrant Italian parents.

But Mondavi acknowledges that there were many sour grapes, some of his own sowing: the fallout with his brother that led to a multimillion dollar court settlement, the breakup of his 40-year marriage, the friction between him and his two sons over the winery, and the financial crisis after the company went public in 1993. Now, happily remarried, relations improved with his sons, and the business a successful global corporation, Mondavi sums up his life's lessons: "What you need is common sense, a commitment to hard work and the courage to go your own way." He also highlights 15 basic components of his philosophy of success, such as having confidence in yourself and always staying positive. He writes, "Out of all the rigidities and mistakes of my past, I've learned one final lesson, and I'd like to see it engraved on the desk of every business leader, teacher, and parent in America: The greatest leaders don't rule. They inspire." --Dan Ring ...