Billy, Alfred, and General Motors: The Story of Two Unique Men, a Legendary Company, and a Remarkable Time in American... |
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You Are Here: Home > History Books > American History > Item 415
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Billy, Alfred, and General Motors: The Story of Two Unique Men, a Legendary Company, and a Remarkable Time in American...
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by William Pelfrey
Sales Rank: 415474
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List Price: $27.95
$20.40
At Amazon
on 9-17-2008.
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Features
Cover Type: Hard Cover with 336 pages
Published by: AMACOM March 27, 2006
Written in: English
ISBN 10 Number: 0814408699
ISBN 13 Number: 978-0814408698
Book Dimensions:
9.1 x 6 x 1.3 inches
Weighs: 1.1 pounds
Reader Reviews
Are the other reviewers here reading the same book I am, or are they friends of the author? The poor quality of this book is too glaring to avoid. An honest reader has to wonder if it is self-published. (OK, AMACOM appears not to be a vanity press, but a Scribners it ain't.) Pelfrey is sometimes good at narrative, but after doing his cut-and-paste work, did he bother to read the finished product? We are ceaselessly flailed with redundant information. How many times do we need to know that Alfred Sloan's memoir was ghostwritten by a committee of 20? How many times do we need to know of Billy Durant's mother's Mayflower connection? How many times do we need to be told that Durant was a strong supporter of Prohibition and the Eighteenth Amendment? How many times do we need it driven home that Billy Durant was mercurial and that Alfred Sloan was stolid? How many times do we need reminding that General Motors became the greatest enterprise in corporate history? All of this is repeated as if for the first time. And all of this in the first thirty pages! Is this just sloppy or non-existent editing, or is it padding? For no apparent reason, where we would expect a series of sentences heading paragraphs, we are given a bulleted list. Since when does a book that "reads like a novel" have bulleted lists? I keep hoping that the repetition will taper off, that I'll no longer be subjected to gratuitously sensationalistic passages like, "Raised by a socialite divorcee in an era when single mothers were scorned," or awkward transitions like "...Durant was high on the list of Flint's most elegible bachelors. He married Clara Pitt...." I hope the story of Durant's first job, in his family's lumberyard, which Pelfrey (or rather the source he quotes) begins in intimate detail, will be rescued from the oblivion to which it's assigned a paragraph later. But I won't hold my breath. I suggest that, instead of heeding the misleading reviews here, you catch the author's talk on BookTv. It tells you everything the book does, but mercifully only once.
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Billy, Alfred, and General Motors: The Story of Two Unique Men, a Legendary Company, and a Remarkable Time in American...
Available from Amazon
Price: $20.40
Updated on 9-17-2008.
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