Money and Power: The History of Business |
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You Are Here: Home > History Books > Holland History > Item 61
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Money and Power: The History of Business
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by Howard Means
Sales Rank: 38004
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List Price: $23.50
$21.15
At Amazon
on 11-17-2008.
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Features
Cover Type: Paperback with 288 pages
Published by: WileyEdition: 1st Edition April 5, 2002
Written in: English
ISBN 10 Number: 0471216526
ISBN 13 Number: 978-0471216520
Book Dimensions:
8.8 x 6 x 0.9 inches
Weighs: 1 pounds
Product Review
"offers essential insight into the forces that drive the West's great economic engine" -- Continental Magazine, June 2001
"offers essential insight into the forces that drive the West's great economic engine" -- Continental Magazine, June 2001
"offers essential insight into the forces that drive the West's great economic engine" (Continental Magazine, June 2001) one of the best business books of 2001 (getAbstract , 15 January 2002)
Many of us take for granted that each day we can go out and buy pretty much anything we want, stop at Starbucks for coffee and go home to buy more stuff online--if we have the cash, that is.
How we got to this point--the world of business so seamlessly woven into our everyday lives--is the story of Howard Means' engrossing, fast-paced Money Power: The History of Business.
The book began life as a TV documentary on CNBC, produced by David Grubin and narrated by the late Jason Robards. Means was working from the show's cript, but he added new material, and his book stands easily on its own as a separate work of scholarship.
Trying to tell the history of business in 274 pages (or 2 hours of TV time) is quite the challenge, and Money Power is bound to start some arguments by what it leaves out. For instance, you'll find nothing on famed English economist Adam Smith (1723-1790), known primarily for The Wealth of Nations. IBM turns up as a bit player in the chapter on Bill Gates and cyberspace.
Retail dynasties such as Sears and Wal-Mart also are absent. The book (and TV show) went for people and personalities rather than institutions. One early example of entrepreneurship: the English seagoing trader Godric, born circa 1065, later to become St. Godric. We don't often think of businessmen as saints, and indeed, Godric didn't achieve sainthood for what he did as a trader. Sainthood came for his selfless life after he gave away his money and lived as a hermit, writing poetry and befriending wild animals.
This book has plenty of people who practiced questionable ethics.
Gates is portrayed as ruthless, but his philanthropy and desire to eventually give away most of his fortune are duly noted.
The story of Time Warner (leading up to the recent merger with AOL), is partially presented as a blend of class (Henry Luce, founder of Time Inc.) and crass (the Warner brothers). Yet, Means contends one company needed the other to thrive in the ruthless media competition of the late 20th century, just as that behemoth needed to bulk up even more by merging with AOL at the dawn of the 21st.
Another pair who needed each other was James Watt and Matthew Boulton. Watt's steam engine may have been revolutionary, but he would have gone nowhere fast without the entrepreneurial, numbers-oriented Boulton.
Watt had already failed on his own, and his previous partner, Scottish iron manufacturer John Roebuck, went bankrupt. The happy union of Watt and Boulton helped usher in the Industrial Age, just as Luce's publications (Time, Life and Fortune) did for the Information Age early in the 20th century. In the book (and the documentary), one subject flows into another to get us where we are now, with our economy ever more dependent on computers and the Internet.
Means brings his subjects to life, whether they are names plucked out of history or modern times, such as super salesman Robert Woodruff, who turned sugar and water into gold by marketing Coca-Cola all over the globe, making us desire a product that we could just as easily live without.
Woodruff's tale demonstrates that life in this country is full of second chances. A marketing whiz but an indifferent student, he lasted but one semester at Emory University in his hometown of Atlanta. When he died at the age of 95 in 1985 (spared by a month of knowing about the New Coke formula-change fiasco), he had donated $200 million to the school.
Money Power makes the case that life today, without great business people, would make us poorer in pocket and spirit.--USA TODAY, May 21, 2001
one of the best business books of 2001 -- getAbstract , 15 January 2002
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
Product Review
"Means threads together historical events as he illustrates past innovations and emerging patterns. The results are quite intriguing--unless you were already well aware of the similarities between the tulip craze that took control of the Dutch market in the early 17th century and the current tech-stock debacle."—eCompany Now, April 2001
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
Reader Reviews
This review is from: Money and Power: The History of Business (Hardcover)
Frankly, I did not know what to expect as I began to read this book. (The use of "The" in the subtitle is somewhat misleading.) Having read it, I consider this to be among the most enjoyable as well as most informative books about business I have read in recent years. Referring to a collaboration with David Grubin to produce a CNBC documentary, Means explains that "we followed the money to the personalities -- both definitive and representative -- that have dominated the last thousand years of business, and to some of the most defining and colorful events of the millennium." The personalities are Sir Godric, Cosimo de' Medici, Philip II, those involved with "Tulipmania", James Watt and Matthew Boulton, those involved with the Transcontinental Railway, J. Pierpont Morgan, John D.. Rockefeller, Henry Ford, Robert Woodruff, the key players involved in the merger which created Time Warner, and Bill Gates. Here are brief comments by Means on a few of the individuals and situations which are the focus of his attention throughout this book: "Born at a time when capital accumulation for the peasantry was nearly unthinkable, [Godric] was nonetheless a model of modern wealth creation: an up-from-the-bootstraps capitalist who transformed the hand fate had dealt him." "Cosimo helped to create a world that revolved not around God but around a society with man at the center. After five hundred years, power was shifting from the men of the Church to the men of business." "Gifted with unprecedented mineral wealth, [Philip} had set out to reverse the flow of history rather than look forward and embrace growth, and history has judged him accordingly." "James Watt is known to us as the father of the Industrial Revolution, and indeed the steam engine he brought to such perfection is the [italics] defining invention of the movement....He needed a partner [Boulton] to transform his genius into a product and to bring the product to a market where fortunes were waiting to be made....The steam engine [developed by Watt and promoted by Boulton] that would power the first locomotive would radically alter transportation across England and throughout Europe. Across the ocean, it would even pull a continent together. But its invention and manufacture would be left to other minds and hands." "Throughout the last millennium, it was control that created fortunes: control over the oceans or railroads, the highways or the airwaves. At the start of the new millennium, it's still control -- this time over cyberspace, the new wealth machine. Some things never change but here's the difference: This road to riches is open to everyone." I include these brief excerpts to suggest both the style and thrust of Means's presentation of material. As Grubin correctly points out in the Foreword, "Scientists and politicians, artists and scholars, all contributed to the millennium of change, but the world's businessmen -- its bankers and industrialists, merchants and entrepreneurs -- were a powerful driving force behind the stunning transformation." Means is to be commended for so skillfully guiding his reader through this immensely interesting process. Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to check out Mokyr's The Lever of Riches.
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Money and Power: The History of Business
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Price: $21.15
Updated on 11-17-2008.
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