5 comments about In Their Time: The Greatest Business Leaders of the Twentieth Century.

1. This book explores how context, over time, creates different types of opportunities, and how business legends can be defined by the types of opportunities they pursued. What distinguishes this book from similar studies of legendary leaders, managers and entrepreneurs, is the underlying theme of contextual intelligence-the profound awareness and sensitivity to macro-level factors driving the creation, growth or transformation of business at a particular time. The authors discuss and assess the great names in business in the context of their time, organizing the book by decades, beginning in 1900 through the end of the last century. The book makes for fascinating,d enjoyable reading. This is a top-notch contribution to the study of those who have created and shaped business enterprises.



2. Gives good sense of American economy combined with history and the leaders who shaped the economy.
   It gives excellent details about how the business leaders leveraged the environment (business context) to succeed.
   It is very inspirational to anyone thinking of creating a business and dreaming of making it big.



3. I bought this book for one of my MBA courses. It is a great outline of business in America. I really enjoyed reading the book from the intro to the conclusion!



4. This is an important read beyond the standard insights of Collins, Charan and others. The historical settings of each leader are detailed to set the traits and skills of each business leader in context of the social and economic realities of their times.
   
   Get two copies and give one to someone you admire and start a conversation on how important the social and economic realities are to business.



5. 
   I recently read Paths to Power, co-authored by Anthony Mayo and Nitin Nohria with Laura G. Singleton, as well as this book in which Mayo and Nohria also focus on some of the greatest business leaders of the twentieth century. As in Paths to Power, rather than limiting their attention to a set number of exemplary leaders - in chronological order -- and then devoting a separate chapter to each, Mayo and Nohria chose instead to examine the evolution of 20th century business leadership in terms of the ten decades, assigning to each an appropriate theme while frequently cross-referencing throughout the entire century. For example, Chapter One (1900-1909) is titled "The Land of Opportunity"; Chapter Six (1950-1959) is "Feeding the Machine of Consumption"; and Chapter Ten (1990-1999) is "Reengineering, Restructuring, and Reality Check."
   
   In my opinion, as in their later book (Paths to Power), Mayo and Nohria's role, is more that of cultural anthropologists than as biographers or even business historians. They create a social and economic context within a 100-year framework as they examine what differentiated outsiders from insiders in business leadership in the 20th century.
   
   In the city where I live, we have a number of outdoor markets at which slices of fresh fruit are offered as samples of the produce available. In that same spirit, I frequently include brief excerpts such as these from a book to help those who read my review to get a "taste." Here is a representative selection from the material that Mayo and Nohria provide:
   
   "The business executives of the first decade were driven, opportunistic, and innovative. They operated on a large scale and constantly expanded their base of power. They built businesses that often had far-reaching impact on the way society lived, but they were, for the most part, less concerned about the way people worked; there was generally little regard for progressive employment practices. The focus was not on the quality of work life or necessarily on the quality of the product; it was often the quantity of the output. For many, there was no better way to secure quantity in the 1900s than through consolidation, and the move toward consolidation subsequently spawned another fundamental shift in business - a focus on productivity and efficiency." (Chapter One, Page 31)
   
   Note: The business leaders discussed in this chapter include Clarence M. Wooley (American Radiator Company), Cyrus H.K. Curtis (Curtis Publishing Company), and Frank C. Ball (Ball Brothers Company).
   
   "Although innovation and technical competence were the principal drivers of products in the 1940s, marketing, advertising, and standardization drove products and services in the 1950s. Sales volume was further increased because many products followed a planned-obsolescence life cycle. Successful businesses adopted this use-and-replace strategy, which was aided significantly with the rise in products manufactured with plastic or other synthetic materials. The lack of focus on product quality would eventually become a major liability for U.S. manufacturers, but that was hard to see in the general prosperity of the 1950s and 1960s as corporate profits continued to rise."
   
   Note: The business leaders discussed in this chapter include Howard J. Morgens (Procter & Gamble), C. Kemmins Wilson (Holiday Inn), Raymond A. Kroc (McDonald's), and Malcolm P. McLean (SeaLand Service).
   
   "As we have seen in our analysis of previous decades, the full impact of the entrepreneur's work is often not visible for many years; these businesspeople often push the limits of what is possible and even what is conceivable. By their nature, entrepreneurs and their businesses are ahead of the curve, and it is relatively dangerous to assess performance and impact as it is unfolding.
   
   Note: The business leaders discussed in this chapter include Alfred M. Zeien (Gillette Company), Louis V. Gerstner Jr. (IBM Corporation), and Meg Whitman (eBay).
   
   Those who share my high regard for this brilliant book are urged to check out the aforementioned Paths to Power as well as Stuart Crainer's The Management Century and Stewart H. Holbrook's The Age of the Moguls: The Story of the Robber Barons and the Great Tycoons. (obtaining a copy of it is well worth the effort.) In his book, Holbrook examines a number of "lords of capital" who, in his words, "made `deals' purchased immunity, and did other things which in 1860, or 1880, or even 1900, were considered no more than `smart' by their fellow Americans, but which today would give pause to the most conscientiously dishonest promoter....They were a motley crew, yet taken together they fashioned a savage and gaudy age as distinctively purple as that of imperial Rome, and infinitely more entertaining." The group Holbrook considers is divided into three categories: promoters, bankers, and industrialists, with merchants in the latter group. They include Jim Fisk, Jay Gould, Charlie Gates, Thomas William Lawson, Henry H. Rogers, Henry Morrison Flagler, and Samuel Insull; Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Cyrus McCormick, Philip D. Armour, Henry Clay Frick, Henry Ford, and the Du Ponts; also the Guggenheims, Andrew W. Mellon, James J. Hill, Edward Henry Harriman, Henry Villard, the first two Vanderbilts, and the Astors. Some of these names remain familiar in our own time; others do not. All were "tough-minded fellows, who fought their way encased in rhinoceros hides and filled the air with their mad bellowings and the cries of the wounded." A colorful lot indeed.
   
   Holbrook's account of 19th century robber barons and great tycoons "sets the table" for the "feast" of information and analysis that Anthony Mayo and Nitin Nohria so skillfully provide.

5 comments about Wild Ride: The Rise and Fall of Calumet Farm Inc., America's Premier Racing Dynasty.

1. I vividly remember the reports in the sports section concerning the death of Alydar and then the financial collapse of Calumet Farm. Little did I know then that it was as criminal as anything found on the front page of a major daily.
   
   Ann Hagedorn Auerbach does an outstanding job of piecing together the jagged financial picture of the crumbled puzzle pieces left by J.T. Lundy. The book also poses poignant questions - many remaining unanswered today - concerning the death of a great champion who seemingly was worth more in death because of the huge insurance windfall gained by Lundy.
   
   And please don't be fooled by the pomp on major race days covered on national TV/cable; the Thoroughbred industry is driven by racers graduating to the stud farm and commanding oftentimes six figures per mating.
   
   Though the book is about 10 years old, you will wonder if there are more Lundy's cooking up schemes to defraud others while striding nonchalantly under the backdrop of beautiful turf, colorful silks and million-dollar runners.



2. At last a detailed explanation as to what caused the implosion of the seemingly solid Calumet Farms throughbred racing dynasty. How could things go so wrong, so fast? An interesting mix of human pettiness, ignorance and weakness, greed, and then the Farm was lost to greater and greater accelerating debt. Detailed portraits of many of the Calumet favorites, especially Alydar, who's accidental death stopped the cash machine that was keeping the farm afloat in a sea of debt. Interesting crosscurrents of bad feduciary management by the trust's bank managers, criminal activity, gangland ties, possible drug peddling for cash, contracts that were fast and loose and pledged the same assets over and over again. If you like racing and remember the Calumet lock on winning and its great horses, this is a fascinating book. If you are looking for just a "horse" book you should look elsewhere, but this is a great story from the get-go.



3. By far and away, this is the best book I have ever read. It is enthralling, astounding in its detail, it is meticulously researched, beautifully and stylishly written. Auerbach's book is the classiest piece of reading I have completed. I couldn't put it down, and it will lead you along the road from awe to woe. I could read anything about the Bluegrass and the thoroughbred industry, but this book will cross genres from horse fans to general public.
   
   But be advised, it is an involving read and you need to concentrate. But I found my emotions building with every chapter and a sure void when I discovered that the book ends before the completion of the Calumet story which, by my own research, continues long after the close of pages in 1995...



4. I could hardly put this book down!! In fact, after I finished it in two days, I read parts of it again!! The author gives factual details about a terrible tragedy, and the loss of a wonderful horse. With the recent interest in horseracing, after the tragic loss of Eight Belles, people should be aware that horseracing is not all mint juleps and fancy hats.
   Wild Ride is a gripping tale of what happened to Alydar, the horse that propelled the last Triple Crown Winner, Affirmed, to his status in history.
   Even if you are not a horseracing fan (which I was not, until I read this book!), you will learn so much about the behind-the-scenes events of an American tragedy. Somewhere else I read these quotes: "Dogs and cats have become our pets, but horses, we have deemed, should be our slaves"...........and "Every person who has ever owned a pet will stand before God to testify as to his master's stewardship". Keeping those thoughts in mind, the book will justify the author's purpose for getting this TRUE story out in the open. EXCELLENT READ!!!!



5. A fantastic book that provides thrills and suspense from cover to cover. The book details the story of the revered Calument Farms that dominated the American horse racing scene for most of the 20th century before a sudden collapse into bankruptcy. It's a story of a rise of the American Dream and then a fall into shame due to deceit and greed.
   
   This book would be enjoyed by horse racing enthusiasts as well as just about anyone that enjoys a good suspense thriller.

3 comments about Chasing Daylight: How My Forthcoming Death Transformed My Life.

1. This is an excellant book which we coulde all learn from on bring all our relationship to victory.



2. There is a peacefulness and great joy in this heartwarming story of fully living life even in the face of death. I am grateful for having had the experience of reading it and for the reminders of how to live life with gusto.



3. I found this book to be inspirational. I also found it to be painful to read. The author faces his own iminent death and does so with great dignity. There are great lessons to be learned but it is nonetheless a difficult topic and a difficult read.

5 comments about The Age of Heretics: A History of the Radical Thinkers Who Reinvented Corporate Management (J-B Warren Bennis Series).

1. Reviewing the basically 1970's ingenuity in the business world, Art Kleiner teaches us that many of the lessons and interpretations of that era are amazingly more profound today than then.
   
   Corporations, explained as to their purpose in the beginning, flourished in postwar America They had sense of duty and power. They were inclined not only to make money, but to make societal declarations. And, amid those developmental periods, many of the leaders are referred to as heretics - leaders who change the corporation or the industry of the corporation (usually for the better).
   
   One General Foods leader said, "Don't get stuck (in the changes) on changing General Foods." Instead, the change was to be made on the industry - the greater good.
   
   Among the many experiments in industry was how to use LSD to greaten perspective. "Engineers were particularly good candidates for LSD research. They were often emotionally sensitive men with painful early lives. . . this resulted in the choice of a vocation that dealt with inanimate objects, sparing further emotional pain. LSD was a marvelous tool for discovering and releasing buried feelings." Hmmm.
   
   Many of the factories of the 1960's were run or managed by the engineers. "In the early 1960's. . . you wanted to become an engineer or physicist. In the early 1970's, there were only two appropriate choices: to be an artist or to save the world. . . In the early 1980's, you would set your sights on becoming an investment banker or corporate magnate . . .In the early 1990's, you would be preparing for a career launching some new Internet-driven entrepreneurial enterprise." Interestingly, in these times, the 1970's calling may be returning - and that may well be why this book was edited and republished as the greener world demands "changes" or concepts to "save" the world.
   
   And, as the book focused mostly on the 1970's, the majority of the research was artistic or about saving the world. The intelligentsia created future predicting programs - we would run out of oil, but would change our dependence by 2025. This was made in 1970! These were impressive minds.
   
   Other predictions were created out of sheer genius or happenstance luck. But, the methodology and expertise hint that the former as opposed to the latter is true.
   
   This book's thorough review of the detailed observations made by brilliant people of that generation is both enlightening and refreshing. Businessmen are more than pencil-pushing bottom liners. They show heretical actions by being motivated by things other than corporate profit. Corporations, as displayed here, are good so long as they adapt. And, adaptation usually arises from the heretics who lead the corporate enterprise to do something not previously encouraged by the mainstream.
   
   One similar book on this need for corporate America to adapt and morph to newer and bigger domains is outlined in William Taylor's "Mavericks at Work: Why the Most Original Minds in Business Win." Heretic or maverick, each is what is adored by the respective author for forging business forward.
   
   As a last note, this author is talented. The research is thorough. The development is well organized. This is not a quickly delivered thesis. And, those points alone make this worthwhile reading.



2. Jesus was considered a Heretic by the religious establishment of his time. He also had some radical ideas about wealth, economics, and the personal finances of his followers. "The Age of Heretics: A History of Radical Thinkers Who Reinvented Corporate Management" is a compelling and informative look at those who dared to be different and changed the way their company and possibly the world does business. Rejected in their times, these are men and women who are now retroactively honored for their ideas and innovation in the modern era. Many of today's business practices are very much due to their own once 'heretical' ideas. A highly recommended addition to personal, corporate, academic, and community library Business Studies reference collections, "The Age of Heretics" is inspiring and enlightening reading for any business person who fears their ideas may face initial rejection.



3. I thoroughly enjoyed Art Kleiner's The Age of Heretics. It's the best book I've read on the evolution of corporate culture. I highly recommend it to anyone with a serious interest in organizational development and leadership.
   
   Here's why I enjoyed the book so much.
   
   The Age of Heretics provides a detailed account and an excellent synthesis of the evolution of organizational cultures from "vernacular" (or community-minded) cultures to "numbers cultures," and to the "sensing cultures" that are still emerging today.
   
   The book recounts fascinating stories of corporate "heretics," lively and visionary individuals who, beginning in the 1950s, recognized that corporate cultures were casting aside human values and idolizing management by the numbers, to the detriment of employees, corporate performance and society as a whole. The heretics Kleiner chronicles include names you probably know such as Kurt Lewin, Douglas McGregor, W. Edwards Deming, Warren Bennis and Tom Peters, as well as unsung heroes such as the academic Eric Trist, Charlie Krone of Procter & Gamble, Edie Seashore of the National Training Labs, and Lyman Ketchum and Ed Dulworth of General Foods. Each heretic's story is both interesting to read and valuable for its lessons about how to bring about change in organizations.
   
   Another compelling benefit that comes from reading The Age of Heretics is that the book presents important insights and practices related to corporate culture that emerged since the 1950s. Some of my favorites were Kurt Lewin's freezing process for organizational learning, National Training Labs' T-Groups, Chris Argyris' Action Theory, Procter and Gamble's high performance technician systems, Royal Dutch/Shell's scenario planning, and GE's Work Out.
   
   To move forward, it's important to understand how we've gotten to where we are today. In the field of organizational development, no book does that better than The Age of Heretics.



4. It's important for fans of Kleiner's other work (his extremely useful "Who Really Matters" and his many periodical articles) to note that this is a HISTORY - valuable to those who want the story behind many organizational development trends (some lasting, some not), but less interesting perhaps to those looking for more immediate advice on how to tackle corporate management issues. If you are a real "student" of corporate management and change theory (or 20th century business and American cultural history), this is for you; if not, you'll probably find the extensive personal history of the various figures behind such movements as "activity based costing" and "reengineering" less than compelling reading.
   
   As a history of the various individuals behind the scenes of each wave of "heretical" management theory, this is a really valuable work - it is well-researched (the bibliography alone makes it worth the price) and fairly well-written (though the religious history framework for the book gets in the way more often than not and the text lacks competent editing). And in the final chapter, Kleiner does begin to get a bit more forward-thinking (for example, as he discusses how reengineering might have evolved to be more successful). My guess, however, is that most people who come to this book in the "Management" section of their bookstore (which is where the book jacket lists it to be stocked) will arrive at the end feeling not much closer to a solution for what ails them (if they finish it at all) and in need of other books to get them on their way.
   
   With specific regard to this new edition, the foreword and the preface don't add much, and the text changes seem comparatively modest (and are as often for the bad as for the good). My sense is either edition would probably serve you equally well.



5. If you are interested in the history of corporate culture and change management, you will enjoy Art Kleiner's Second Edition of "The Age of Heretics", covering a timeframe from post World War II to the present. His approach of utilizing the analogy of heretics in religious history to heretics in modern business was initially pre-biasing my opinion negatively, but I have read other works by Mr. Kleiner, so I suspended my pre-judgment, resulting in a delightful sojourn through the past 60+ years of management practices in the corporate world. His analogy is appropriate, examining the institutions that influence how commerce has evolved as a result of and in spite of those institutions.
   
   Coming from a scientific background myself, it was hard not to notice the underlying subtle observation that a lot of these "unsung heroes" he writes about originally came from a scientific background, became somehow dissatisfied with it, and turned towards more human oriented approaches. It is not difficult to note that one thousand years ago the prevailing institutions of influence on commerce were religious, whereas today the institutions influencing commerce are secular corporations. That contrast is made through all nine chapters of the book. Mr. Kleiner clearly weaves how the successes and failures of these heretics influenced and were influenced not only from within their own corporations but through outside relationships with other corporations and governments in the global arena.
   
   It gives pause for thought on what are considered to be generally accepted measures (tangible and/or intangible) of success. Mr. Kleiner contrasts tangible versus intangible successes throughout the book. It is a very thought provoking read.

5 comments about Marlin Firearms: A History of the Guns and the Company That Made Them.

1. Good Service, Good Price, Very Good Book. Book is full of very complete detail, illustrations are excellent, chronological approach to subject is appreciated. Very Happy with purchase!



2. Mr. Brophy did his homework in writing this beautifully bound and informative book, but somehow, probaably due to Marlin Firearms being lax in their record keeping, especially serial numbers and the appropriate dates of manufacture, I was unable to pinpoint the data needed to establish the exact history of this gun. I have been forwarded to another source for possibly gaining a more accurate record of this guns manufacture. A fine book other than this.



3. huge collection of data, photo's and info on Marlin. can't imagine the effort that must have been expended in collecting what is printed in this book. A bargin concidering what is offered between the pages for the reader.



4. A very comprehensive book for anyone with an interest in firearms. Well-written and illustrated. It contains a great deal of detail for the Marlin user and collector. Since it seems to go in and out of print on a regular basis, anyone interested in the book should get one while it's available. The cost of a used volume seems to increase each time it becomes unavailable. If you like gun books you won't regret buying a copy of this one.



5. This book is a must have for any Marlin collector or anyone who is interested in or wants to know about Marlin firearms. Tons of information, great pictures...well worth the money spent.

5 comments about Bloomberg by Bloomberg.

1. My confidence in Mike Bloomberg's courage, judgment, and self-discipline is confirmed. This update to my review posted last August is written a day after he decided finally not to run for president. The decision, which I am sure was an extremely difficult one for him, confirms my view that he has the capacity to be a truly great man in American history.
   
   Bloomberg has stated publicly that there are many ways to exert a positive influence on society without holding high political office. The degree to which humankind is at a crossroads manifests itself more clearly with each passing day. Unlike most of us though Bloomberg has the resources to make a significant difference. May he use those resources with the greatest wisdom and insight. And may he indeed surround himself with men like Kurzweil, Diamond, and Davies.
   
   With the admission that my concern about his ego appears to be unfounded, here is my review as originally published...
   
   First, I apologize for the length of this review. I would not write at such length if I did not think the subject was of very great importance. I hope you may find the review useful.
   
   Normally I do not review books of this genre but Michael Bloomberg, with his wealth, ambition, street smarts, and interest in political change, has appeared at a tipping point in the history of this country. He has no qualms about entering the political arena and with his vast fortune he could profoundly influence the course of our nation and ultimately that of the world. The question is, will he act wisely and with deep insight or will he use his wealth and influence in a well meaning but ultimately destructive manner?
   
   Mike Bloomberg may be short in stature but if he gets it right he will be remembered as a towering, perhaps even heroic, figure in American history. If he gets it wrong though, all the fame and goodwill he has built up over the years will be lost forever. After reading this book I conclude that the capacity for great deeds is certainly there. The question is, will his ego get in the way?
   
   Bloomberg by Bloomberg is a remarkable autobiography, as much for what it reveals about Mike Bloomberg the man and how he thinks as for the interesting and often amusing stories he tells about his rise from obscurity to fame and riches.
   
   Bloomberg's success stems from seeing a niche in the world of high finance and filling it. He had a technically inclined mind (degree in electrical engineering), got an MBA from Harvard, and became a star Wall Street securities trader, or as he honestly describes it, a salesman. He had the immense good luck to be fired from Salomon Brothers and turned his $10 million severance into a $5 billion financial information empire.
   
   In short he was at exactly the right place at exactly the right time with exactly the right skills and hard driving personality. He saw an opportunity to offer a unique and valuable service, used his brain, worked 12-hour days, six days a week for years, and lived the rags to riches American dream. But ultimately he was lucky.
   
   What distinguishes Bloomberg from so many other self made men is that he is willingly acknowledges that luck played a large part in his success in life just as it does for each of us. This is but one example of the kind of honesty that pervades the book and one of the reasons I admire the man even though I disagree with him of a number of important public policy issues.
   
   Actions not only speak louder than words, they inspire and motivate with far greater power. Bloomberg is not your stereotypical billionaire. He leads by example.
   
   He was one of the youngest Eagle scouts in history. He used National Defense loans to pay his tuition at Johns Hopkins but when he was rejected for military service because of flat feet he didn't just say thanks for the pass from Vietnam and let it go at that. He tried to get his congressman and others to exert political influence to have the rejection overturned and his status changed to 1A, in those days a sure ticket to the jungles of Southeast Asia. He failed at the effort and never served but that one incident of trying to fulfill a commitment to duty speaks volumes about the man and stands in such glaring contrast to some others currently on the national political stage.
   
   Bloomberg before he became mayor of New York drew the same salary as his lowest paid employee ($19,000 in 1998) and the rest of his remuneration came from his holdings in Bloomberg LP. When the company does well he and all of his employees share in the profits. If it does poorly everyone takes a pay cut. (Why does this sound like the way we were taught that capitalism is supposed to work?)
   
   One of the nation's most generous philanthropists, Bloomberg approaches his stewardship to the community with the same energy and enthusiasm as he does to his business. And he is not shy in admitting he likes approval and being in the limelight. All of which gives him, for all his brashness and self promotion, an endearing humanness.
   
   But if you are going to enter the national political arena during a time of great turmoil and danger, you had better know what you are doing and you better be prepared for the law of unintended consequences. If ever there was a time when this nation needed decisive but wise leadership this is it.
   
   Bloomberg with typical bluntness admits "stubborn isn't a word I would use to describe myself; pigheaded is more appropriate." (p. 251). But he can also listen and after repeated prodding, eventually get the message. "One of us is stupid, and it's not him" he recalls when a budding entrepreneur, after four tries, finally convinced him to expand into broadcasting. (p. 115).
   
   The most disappointing aspect of the book is Bloomberg's conventional thinking about a host of issues from the economy to education. Like most `futurologists' he extrapolates the present into future. The computers will be more powerful, the distribution systems will be faster. You'll be able to select just what you want and filter out the rest, etc. etc. This is not very deep stuff.
   
   Yes, Bloomberg has made some major improvements in New York City schools. It's wonderful that more kids are graduating and math scores are up. Bloomberg with his 'take command' management style deserves much of the credit. But what good is it to go to college, study an lot of advanced math and physics to get a degree in computer science when Bill Gates wants to import thousands of computer scientists from India and pay them a faction of what similarly trained Americans would cost? It's the same story in field after field.
   
   The problems facing this society go far deeper than simply bad management. They are in fact rooted in the very way contemporary technological society is organized. There are no doubt solutions but these would require changes far more sweeping than most elites are willing to admit.
   
   Confronting them honestly would provoke a firestorm from vested interests, including powerful universities and think tanks who with arrogance and pomposity cling to outdated paradigms, and - with a handful of exceptions such as Lou Dobbs - the intellectual light weights who populate the media and parrot their pabulum. Bloomberg talks about thinking outside the box but at least the ideas in the book seem to indicate a pretty small box.
   
   The mayor's solution to illegal guns in New York City: hire private detectives to hunt down gun stores in the South who sell to New York criminals, then sue them. He even got the U.S. Council of Mayors to sign on although some of them have since backed away after getting an earful from their constituents. Well intentioned but a totally futile approach in a country with 100-200 million firearms in civilian hands and 50,000 licensed gun dealers.
   
   It turns out that less than one percent of the stores account for 40% of the guns used in crime in this country. Spend a lot of time, money and effort to shut down a handful of bad apples and the criminals will just go down the street to others. Plus, this kind of tactic raises a huge red flag in the minds of millions of potential supporters in Middle America who might otherwise be tempted to vote for him. Are there smarter solutions? Sure. Just contact the cities with low crime rates and find out how they tackle the problem.
   
   This kind of short sighted, ill advised action lends credence to the belief that however brilliant a businessman and however well meaning he may be, Bloomberg appears more likely to sow havoc in 2008 than to bring unity, purpose, and direction to our nation. It is not a question of intelligence but of insight, two very different qualities.
   
   Over the years I have worked for a number of men like Mike Bloomberg. In almost every case they have been excellent problem solvers and opportunists on the mundane level but hardly a one of them would qualify as a really deep strategic thinker. The key indicator is with whom do you surround yourself, very smart 'technicians' or the likes of Ray Kurzweil, Jared Diamond, and Paul Davies?
   
   Funding an independent third party while not running as a candidate himself could have a profound and positive impact but it would demand the ultimate in personal self discipline and self sacrifice for a man with Bloomberg's ego. It would be the greatest challenge of his life.
   
   Mike Bloomberg is a smart man with a good heart. I for one believe he's up to that challenge.



2. I'm a huge Mike Bloomberg fan, and really enjoyed the autobiographical parts of this novel and the story of his company's genesis. The generic computer stuff I could have done without, also the story didn't really flow and was a bit choppy. Overall a good, quick easy read. But I definitely could've used some more Bloomberg, Mike that is.
   
   Unfortunately there is surprisingly very little written about this great man.



3. I bought this book on 1 January when news first came out of the University of Oklahoma "bipartisan" gathering, but I did not have a chance to read it until this week. I went to Oklahoma, only to see this good man embarrassed by a truly rotten press conference that invited mockery. My three page trip report is at Earth Intelligence Network.
   
   I'm going to summarize what I learned from this book,and then conclude with an observation on how Bloomberg could go to the next level while simultaneously cleaning up our government and educating the 5 billion poor free, one cell call at a time.
   
   There is absolutely nothing in this book that is conceited or self-serving. This is straight talk from a hard worker, an Eagle Scout at a very young age, an ethical businessman, an inspired information entrepreneur. This is an honest worthy book I wish I had noticed sooner.
   
   The author lived in a one-room studio apartment for his first 10 years, working 12 hours a day as a matter of routine, not counting his early morning jogging, where he says he gets his most creative thoughts.
   
   It certainly helped that he had a $10M termination payment from his first job, but this book positively lights up around the combination of open workspace, open mind, how to create a company on the fly, fully integrating customer views, ignorning banks and other pyramidal consultants. The author discovered the "power of us" a quarter century before Business Week did its cover story on this topuc, 21 June 2005.
   
   What I was not expecting, and what made the book riveting for me, is the complete well-paced coverage of how the author realized he could monetize financial data, then information about the people behind the data, and then information on the politics behind the people.
   
   A few of my fly-leaf notes:
   
   + Build from scratch, don't buy over-priced companies or capabilities.
   
   + Trust me, or go out the door.
   
   + Do'ers with fires in their belly make for a great team
   
   + Pioneered compact low-cost workstations with English buttons
   
   + Excelled at rapid prototyping where good intention was better than any business plan
   
   + Really superb overview of how numbers can lie, how dangerous an automated numbers game can become
   
   + Outsiders do what's asked; insiders do what's needed.
   
   + Superb vision for the future of the hand-held cell phone as the single device, he knew this long before Eric Schmidt came along to help Google.
   
   + Corrects my long-standing mis=hearing of Marhsall McCluhan's book title, The Medium is the Massage (not Message, that was a separate quote)
   
   + Really excellent stories aabout how hard Bloomberg had to fight to be accredited both in Washington DC and in Tokyo as a legitimate news organization
   
   + "Ignorance and arrogance are a deadly combination." I wish he had realized Oklahoma would be a dead end--bi-partisan is code for keeping the two-party spoils system. Transpartisan is where its at, visit Reuniting America, 110 million strong and growing. See the definitive book on the death of the two parties, Running On Empty: How The Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It.
   
   + I agree with his view that computers should not be allowed in the classroom throughout elementary school.
   
   + Throughout the book, it is clear the author knows what I learned from Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, both personally and through his book, Miles to Go: A Personal History of Social Policy, Change is Hard. Specificially, big change takes 25 years (I am in year 18 of reforming secret intelligence and creating public intelligence, he is now in year 1 of reforming democracy and saving the Republic as well as moral capitalism).
   
   + The chapter on Management 101 is decent, sensible, and worthy of study.
   
   + I've spent hard time trying to do digital innovation, and the details in this book just blew me away as I followed the innovations the author led back in the 1980's when CIA tasked me with creating a "smart desktop" for clandestine operations. Had I known then about this man, I would have gone to his doorv and offered to help him put CIA out of business. There is still time.
   
   I put the book down with both a feeling of pain--the Oklahoma debaacle should never have happened--and hope. This author embodies three big ideas: moral informed capitalism, honest informed self-governance, and educational reform.
   
   I have three ideas I offer to anyone who can reach the author, I do not believe the book I created for him (Democracy 2008, see it at Earth Intelligence Network) was delivered to him by his staff, one reason he got humiliated in Oklahoma.
   
   Idea #1: Fund a global "True Cost" project within the Natural Capital Institute's rapidly growing World Index of Social and Environmental Responsibility (WISER). Get Paul Hawkins in to energize everyone, and become the Moody's for true cost information (e.g. designer T-shirts with 4000 gallons of water, water bottles whose plastic required more water to make than is contained in the bottle, etc). This will change markets within 2-3 years, especially since ScanBack would allow Bloomberg to deliver this information to end-users via their cell phone at the point of sale.
   
   Idea #2: Forget about running for President. It's a lousy job. BE the virtual president, forming a Transpartisan Sunshine Cabinet (Senators Nunn and Graham should be respectively Defense and Intelligence), and leveraging True Majority and Reuniting America to lead a national conversation firmly grounded in a balanced budget, on how to orchestrate $1 trillion a year in planning giving to eradicate the ten high level threats by harmonizing the twelve policies, while also creating the EarthGame to help the eight demographic challengers avoid our mistakes.
   
   Idea #3: Examine Telelanguage.com and figure out how to register and put online 100 million volunteers who can use Skype, Telelanaguage, and their Internet connection to teach the 5 billion poor in any one of 183 languages, one cell phone call at a time.
   
   The above will sound self-promoting, it is not. I have labored with 23 other co-founders to do Mike Bloomberg's staff work for the next decade, and if someone can get him to carefully consider these ideas, I give them to him freely. I don't need a job, but I do need a planet my three boys can grow up in, and I believe that if Mike Bloomberg stops trying to leverage political has-beens (with a few exceptions), and instead creates an architecture that can deliver public intelligence in the public interest, he will achieve his grand vision, faster, better, cheaper.
   
   Thank you, those whom Dick Cheney has inspired into reading my non-fiction reviews. I never, ever, expected to be of service to the Nation in quite this way. If my reviews help us restore the Republic, of, by, and for the people, working with moral capitalists and leaders like this author and John Bogle (The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism then the author's unbridaled optemism could be warranted.
   
   See also:
   The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All
   Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People
   A Power Governments Cannot Suppress
   All Rise: Somebodies, Nobodies, and the Politics of Dignity (BK Currents)
   One from Many: VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization
   THE SMART NATION ACT: Public Intelligence in the Public Interest



4. This is the book that motivated me to finally take my GMAT and apply to b-school. I find the Bloomberg story to be uplifting, from his darkest days of being out of a job to his shoestring budget method of value creation, I highly recommend this book if you are struggling with management or motivation issues. Plus, let's face it, the guy is brilliant. Bloomberg lays a foundation in this book for the reader to put the him/herself into a mindset conducive to success.



5. I have never used a Bloomberg terminal myself, but that doesn't stop me from appreciating the amount of innovation that Bloomberg has brought to the market. This book is an inside track on how the company was founded, its early history, the clients, and some of the struggles that any startup has to endure. It's always interesting to learn about the real personalities behind today's mega-brands, and how they got there. This book does not disappoint.
   
   Clearly, Michael Bloomberg is a big believer in outworking the competition - it's a constant theme throughout the book - and his lifestyle and achievements reflect it. The book itself is split into two parts: about the company, and about Michael Bloomberg himself. The former is a fascinating case study for any entrepreneur (and a highly recommended read), and the latter you'll have to judge for yourself.

5 comments about Swoosh: Unauthorized Story of Nike and the Men Who Played There, The.

1. Nike's story is one of the most fascinating in business, especially for those of us that grew up in Nike's prime. The authors did an incredible job of storytelling, starting with a young Phil Knight and his MBA thesis all the way to the early 90's... Lots of inside "dirt" but hardly a gossipy work. You will be amazed at the inner workings of this company.



2. Great Book! It really surpassed my expectations. A must read for everyone who wants to learn more of sports brands history! great inside stories too...



3. This is one of the best marketing books I know of. Written by a marketing pro (and wife of Nike`s first marketing head Rob Strasser) the reader is shown the inner workings of one of the premiere marketing driven corporations of the western world.
   This is not the story told by some outsider, who collected his informations from interviews with present and former managers, wrote the book under the dictate of some format guidelines from his publisher (not over 300 pages etc.) who then turned to another project.
   My belief is, that J.B.Strasser put her very heart into this book to commemorate the work and achievements of her deceased husband and his work mates at Nike. So she shares with the reader the key facts and episodes, which made Nike successful.
   As a marketing pro she also presents a rich picture about those key episodes and actions, which propelled Nike to success.



4. A very detailed (maybe too much) and thick book (+500 pages), it is also an amazing one.
   
   Although now somewhat old - practically twenty years have gone by since the end of the story - it doesn't at all take away the interest of this book.
   
   In it, you will learn the story of how a sportswear empire has been built from scratch. And more important, you will discover the players behind the Swoosh (some chapters concentrate on a character, but it doesn't stop the flow of the story).
   
   Particulary interesting:
   
   - How Nike began as an import business
   - How Knight dealt with the Japanese suppliers
   - How the company morphed from distributor to owner
   - How the Nike brand (worth about billions today) was created
   - How they outsmarted their Japanese suppliers - soon to be competitors
   - What type of marketing strategy they implemented to take on the world
   
   Personally, I appreciated more the first 330 pages of the book (up to the successful IPO). I found the next 200 pages not as exciting, yet the first part of the book is worth the money!



5. every little tid bit you needed to know ( and some you wish you didn't) about the culture of NIKE. Great reading!

3 comments about Start Your Own Personal Training Business (Startup).

1. I was looking for a book that would provide detailed, in-depth information. I did not find what I was looking for here.
   
   It has helpful information if you are completely new to the industry. If you have ANY experience couples with some common sense, then this is not what you're looking for.
   
   It did have a resources guide in the back that I found helpful, but that's about it.



2. We enjoyed this book as it provided up with information that helped us make a decision on whether to pursure a career in the fitness industry. I would recommend it.



3. I found this book to be a great read. Very well-written, easy to read-nice and to the point. I really liked the real life examples they reference in the book. They have real life stories of personal trainers and how they started out in the industry. The book gives a great side by side comparison of a personal trainer starting their own studio vs. a trainer starting out with an in-home business. The only thing keeping this from a 5, in my opinion, is they don't really do into detail about the "next step." For example, you need to obtain a business license, permit etc., but they do not go into any details. But there are other books out there for this. I would also recommened reading Personal Training for Dummies, they go into great detail about how to really launch your business, and what exactly you will need.

5 comments about Myself and Other More Important Matters.

1. Charles Handy has had a most interesting professional life. His roles have included
   global executive with an oil company; academic administrator who developed a framework for business education for Britain; head of a think tank based in one of the Queen's official residences, a commentator on life for the BBC Radio, and a best selling author. This is a man worth getting to know.
   
   The book's title is accurate. While the basic framework is Handy's life story, it really is a platform for his much broader discussion about capitalism and where it is going.
   
   To cite one concrete example, Charles Handy coined the term "Shamrock Organization" to refer to the structure of the corporation of post industrial Capitalism. One leaf of the Shamrock is a core of full time employees. The other leaves are interim employees brought in for project assignments (think temporary retail employees brought in around Christmas) and specialists brought in to solve complex problems beyond the time/competence of the full time team. This Shamrock Organization has three leaves. I think most of us would recognize that there is actually a fourth leaf in the Shamrock: suppliers who so readily integrate themselves into the company, it is hard to distinguish them from the core employee group. Think of the people who sell mobile phones at Staples or Costco. They are not part of the organization and yet they are part of it. Handy pointed out the Shamrock organization yeas ago and gave it a name. He said that within the Shamrock, who lives on what leaf of the Shamrock is terribly important. But the customer only sees the entire Shamrock and doesn't care about the individual leaves. The implication about Handy's acute observations are still not effectively dealt with by corporations. Most talent management policies focus only on the full time employee group while ignoring the others components. If indeed the customer only sees the entire Shamrock, who should be invited to the company picnic? Who should be eligible for bonuses?
   
   Another Handy gem for Board consideration is to ask, "If this product or service did not exist, would we invent it today?" I find that a simple and powerful question.
   
   Let me quote the following paragraph about the use of cliché's to drive business:
   
   "The language organizations have invented for themselves is pretentious, unrelated to what actually happens on the ground. Every organization claims that they care deeply for its customer, although you might be dubious if you are still trying to get to their helpline after forty minutes. Every organization proclaims that their employees are their most previous asset, even while making swathes of them redundant. Every business is committed to excellence and to aiming for world-class even though research suggests that only a tiny few achieve it. Then there are the pseudo-technical terms that make the obvious seem clever: core competencies, JIT, 360 Feedback, CRM. "
   
   I could go on and on and on. You get the picture.
   
   Now get this book.
   
   
   Laurence Stybel
   Boardoptions.com



2. Where other business gurus offer glib answers and seem overly ego-driven, Handy has always specialized in helping us question what our organizations are for; how best to structure them; how work fits into life and what our driving purpose is.
   
   Handy is the author of The Empty Raincoat, The Elephant and The Flea, The Age of Paradox, 21 Ideas For Managers, and other books that help us stop, think and analyze exactly what it is we are doing at work and what we are for.
   
   Myself and Other More Important Matters is Handy's autobiography so far. It is a pleasure to read, and you learn about leadership, work, management, life, parenting, yourself, while you are enjoying reading it.
   
   There is a growing consensus now that, after decades of process improvements, what people are looking for in the organizations they work for, invest in, lead and buy from is organizations that act more like people and less like machines. It is time for the more human organization to emerge. Handy has been teaching us this for years.
   
   My own area of interest is business leadership. This book is full of insights into organizations, their culture and how to lead, such as "Great leaders seem to live with a mix of humility and confidence, which includes the ability to admit on occasion they were wrong."
   
   From McGregor's Theory X and Theory Y to Aristotle's definition of happiness or 'eudaimonia' meaning to flourish and be fulfilled - challenging the prevailing assumption in the west that hedonism is happiness - to how JoHari windows work, the learning you pick up almost in passing from reading this book is rich and deep and enjoyable.



3. Where other gurus offer glib answers and seem overly ego-driven, Handy has always specialised in helping us question what our organizations are for; how best to structure them; how work fits into life and what our driving purpose is.
   
   Handy is the author of The Empty Raincoat, The Elephant and The Flea, The Age of Paradox, 21 Ideas For Managers, and other books that help us stop, think and analyze exactly what it is we are doing at work and what we are for.
   
   Myself and Other Important Matters is Handy's autobiography so far. It is a pleasure to read, and you learn about leadership, work, management, life, parenting, yourself, while you are enjoying reading it.
   
   There is a growing consensus now that, after decades of process improvements, what people are looking for in the organizations they work for, invest in, lead and buy from is organizations that act more like people and less like machines. It is time for the more human organization to emerge. Handy has been teaching us this for years.
   
   My own area of interest is business leadership. This book is full of insights into organizations, their culture and how to lead, such as "Great leaders seem to live with a mix of humility and confidence, which includes the ability to admit on occasion they were wrong."
   
   From McGregor's Theory X and Theory Y to Aristotle's definition of happiness or 'eudaimonia' meaning to flourish and be fulfilled - challenging the prevailing assumption in the west that hedonism is happiness - to how Johari windows work, the learning you pick up almost in passing from Handy is rich and deep and enjoyable.



4. This book was an interesting read, but not entirely captivating. Some of his attitudes were contradictory, which he admitted. But by the second or third time he discussed a belief some action should be taken for the good of all (education and home ownership among them), then rationalized his opposite action, I was done taking any more time with this book.



5. I recently read this book on a weekend retreat at the Canoe Bay Resort in northern Wisconsin. The library there featured "Myself and Other More Important Matters". I picked the book and found that it was easy to digest over a weekend and I recommend it. It is full of rich perspective and inspiring stories and relates well to the times we are in. Charles Handy's messages are relevant to architects and designers as well as their clients. I am giving this book to several friends.
   James P. Cramer

5 comments about The Men Who Loved Trains: The Story of Men Who Battled Greed to Save an Ailing Industry (Railroads Past and Present).

1. .
   In one way or the other, THE MEN WHO LOVED TRAINS is the book Rush Loving, Jr., a journalist and specialist in business and transportation, has spent most of his career preparing. For a debut book, even a non-fiction one, THE MEN WHO LOVED TRAINS is very effective in covering the modern railroad merger movement yet fun to read with a can't-put-it-down quality and a surprisingly vivid cast of characters. In the early 1960s, Loving begins, the modern merger movement was already underway following Norfolk & Western's acquisition of the Midwestern Wabash Railroad. The N&W brass then asked itself where next to try a merger and the answer was obvious: The Pennsylvania Railroad, "Pennsy" or "PRR" to its friends. The two roads had a kindred history of cross-ownership, complementary coal routes (Pennsy-anthracite / the Norfolk-bituminous), excess Midwestern lines crying for rationalization, nicely meshing home regions (Industrialized Northeast / Upper South) that would eliminate the freight-car handoffs that made so many huge railway yards imperative, similar "command" or top-down military-style departmental operating cultures, even a history of shared passenger livery ("Tuscan Red.") The mighty Pennsylvania, with its extensive Northeastern route system, coveted electrified line from Washington to New York, and far reach into the industrialized eastern Midwest was proud to call itself "The Nation's Standard." Such hubris would play such a large part in wrecking the road and its successor.
   
   The marriage that sounded so good in theory was shot down by the Interstate Commerce Commission, an agency not far from its Progressive Era / New Deal origins that was beginning to look increasingly archaic by the 1960s. (The ICC wouldn't let N&W and Pennsylvania merge, but it had a suggestion of its own: have PRR merge with NYC--the New York Central.) It wasn't until nearly thirty-five years later, 1997, that Norfolk Southern (a merger of Norfolk & Western plus Southern Rwy.) bought nearly sixty percent of Conrail, most of that successor to the old Pennsylvania, later Penn Central routes. Meanwhile rival CSX needed the eastern half of Conrail's (previously New York Central's) famous old "Water Level Route" mainline of New York City - Albany - Buffalo - Cleveland - Toledo - Chicago so desperately that, all told, it settled for just over forty percent of Conrail. The two carriers paid, pledged or put up stock totaling nearly Twenty BILLION dollars, the result of a "never-say-die" debt race. Even the "mere" $600 million less CSX owed did not buy a proportional share relative to the sixty percent NS got. What CSX did get, looked a great deal like the old Central--minus the western half of the Water Level route. Norfolk Southern's acquisitions paralleled even more closely the exx-PRR lines. People still argue about whether NS cheated CSX.
   
   What happened in between makes for much of the history in this yeasty and well-laid-out book, which comes out readable, fun--yet with a moral in the middle. In merger matters the ICC's opinion was law, but even it couldn't keep railroad executives from climbing the corporate ladder. On October 1, 1963, an attorney from charming Bedford, Virginia and previous CEO of the Norfolk & Western (Roanoke, VA), Stuart Saunders, reported to his new job as CEO of the mighty Pennsylvania Railroad (Philadelphia). Saunders was not a railroad guy of the type who rides in locomotive cabs, sets up steam-engine drawn excursions, or likes to talk with the hourly employees. Saunders was a businessman specializing in investment at that precise time in American business culture when it started to look as though the latest management techniques, along with conglomerating a palate of unrelated subsidiaries, would be key to corporate success--knowing a core industry intimately was not quite so high a priority. No doubt that the Pennsylvania Railroad was a step up in grade from N&W, if not in class. October first should have been one of the proudest days of his life. Yet fate intervened in the form of a statement released by the Kennedy Administration, that very day. Doing its own end-run around the stolid ICC, the Administration opined that a merger of Pennsylvania and New York Central was not in the public's interest.
   
   As early as the mid-1950s, many prime American railroads were losing the patronage of businessmen who forsook Pullman comfort for aircraft speed. It was almost inevitable that first-class service would decay. New York Central's Twentieth-Century Limited, favored by celebrities and famous for Alfred Hitchcock's witty portrayal of Eva Marie Saint stowing away Cary Grant in the 1959 film North by Northwest--was cancelled in 1963. Well, actually no. The deluxe services of the train were dropped, the boutonnières for passengers, the red carpet leading to the train, stewardesses (as they were called then) and white-tablecloth diner all got tossed. A train without a name, only a number, kept running the same route. But increasingly less emphasis was put on punctuality or upkeep of equipment. And the shorter the train, the larger the union-mandated crew relative to revenues.
   
   When the mid-Sixties hit, most of the railroads of the Northeastern United States faced a quadruple challenge: Air travel by the general public began to soar owing to the new domestic-route jets. The toll-free, federally funded Interstate Highway System led to bigger trucks, carrying heavier loads faster, and with a truck's traditional advantage of not having to tie up along a specified rail route. Most American railroads -- especially the Eastern lines here discussed -- lacked the money to innovate with the kind of high-techish stuff that now dominates railroad freight travel, especially piggyback trailers and shipping cubes. In fact, many saw their roads deteriorating and couldn't do a thing about it. Finally, Suburbia, cheap gas, more cars per family and the impromptu spirit of the Sixties made for a generation of young people whose parents had relied heavily on trains for intercity travel during World War II, but themselves rarely saw the need for one - sometimes not even the inside of one. America had lost the habit of including rail in its long-distance travel options.
   
   After assuming the CEO post at Pennsy in 1963, Saunders and his opposite number at the New York Central, Al Perlman, spent the next four-and-a-half years or so trying to plan a merger anyway. They tried to anticipate the inevitable headaches that would result when and if the two systems actually were allowed to mesh together in (hopefully) revenue-earning reality, not theory. The Central was a smaller road than the Pennsy, but together a new merged system would have allowed for service cuts and rate consolidation, which is where the American railroad industry, of which most observers predicted only a slow decline, had ruefully settled. Al Perlman is generally portrayed in railroading-business writing such as this as a hot-tempered but good-hearted, with an innovative flair for the operations side of railroading that Saunders lacked. Saunders was a smooth guy, a Southern gentleman by training and a Philadelphia Main Line suburban resident who settled into genteel (and largely exclusive) Main Line historic societies and country clubs with surprising speed, given the customary standoffishness of Main Liners to strangers. He put that suave quality to good purpose in stumping for a PRR/Central merger, eventually winning over reluctant politicians of both parties, labor, most media, and community-leader types. Working all sides, Perlman and Saunders eventually persuaded the decision-makers that a Penn/Central merger would work.
   
   They were mistaken. The new, merged Penn Central's first day was February 1, 1968. Eight hundred and seventy-one days later, in the spring of 1970, it filed for bankruptcy, the biggest American bankruptcy ever. In the brief interim the new Penn Central never really jelled as an operating railroad. In fact, no one in his wildest dream could have imagined how poorly the non-merged merger came down. Freight cars that used to be computer-located (using a type of colored bar-code plaque that was the peak of innovation in the late Sixties) got lost or got sent - AWAY - by yard manages already facing a yard full of mystery freight. Needless to say, the customers stayed away in droves. Penn Central's employees were incompatible Central vs. Pennsy. The computers were incompatible. Scheduling proved incompatible. And the increasingly rickety commuter coaches and dilatory long-distance diesels provided passenger service incompatible to the human spirit.
   
   After the crash and the ensuing bankruptcy of a score of regional Northeast railroads dragged into the maelstrom, it took a long time to find politically acceptable solutions. Yet, by the mid-Seventies, a culture and polity traditionally suspicious to "socialism" found itself with local-government commuter systems, a federally-controlled service to operate the remaining passenger trains (Amtrak); and finally a mopping up and consolidation of the overly vast, tangled and superfluous number of freight railroads (Conrail, 1976).
   
   Not all the news was bad: Conrail's steady recovery and return to profitability pleased its friends and astounded its detractors. The Conrail during this period was run by two bosses with different operating styles and personalities. Stanley Crane was an industry insider, a veteran who knew not only how to run a large rail system but also whom in Washington to talk to for increased funds, relaxed rules, and the like. He was succeeded by the innovative David LeVan, a down-to-earth type who loved to schmooze with the rail crews on the ground and in the cabs of locomotives. At one point it looked as though Conrail would die simply because it didn't have enough federal funding, even though the balance sheet was headed toward profitability. LeVan had to go to the head of Conrail's biggest labor union and ask for a twelve-percent pay cut across the boards. His rep as a "regular guy" got the almost unheard-of consent of the workers.
   
   The Eighties held a combination of ironic developments and surprise. Nineteen-eighty saw the beginning of the end of the hallowed and hated Interstate Commerce Commission; few mourners were present when the ICC finally closed shop for good, in 1995. (That's because in the meantime, Congress had set up a modern agency, the Surface Transportation Board ("STB"), which was far less tied to rigid categories of service, areas of service, rates of service and employees in service.) Since the government-controlled Conrail was still off-limits, big Southern-based carriers forced themselves into bed with partially compatible routes and contrary corporate cultures. The Norfolk & Western's top-down executive structure that would have meshed so well with the old PRR clashed badly with the more congenial and collegial Southern Railway, epitomized by the urbane Graham Claytor and his brother Robert. The two roads agreed to merge, effective 1982.
   
   Part of the reason was fear, not operating economies in and of themselves. In 1980, an incredibly large (and to some observers, awkward) merger tied most other Southern lines together: the predominately east-west C&O/B&O (or "Chessie System") got hitched to the "Family Lines," already an amalgam of coal roads like the L&N and Clinchfield under the protective wing of the mostly route-incompatible Seaboard Coast Lines, whose famous streamliners "Silver Star" and "Silver Meteor" still run today, under Amtrak. In 1986 the corporation took railroad slang to heart and officially christened the railroad and related operating divisions "CSX" for Chessie, Seaboard and that certain "je ne sais quois" represented by the X factor.
   
   Who were the losers in all these goings-on? Marketing and railroad-ops specialists in Penn Central, most of them ex-NYC, the innovative train guys who got shoved aside by the bean-counters. Lyndon Johnson, trying to play catch-up to the Japanese, who decreed that the new experimental Metroliner must attain 150 mph, when in fact the trainset behaved not at all like a bullet train but very much like the souped-up electric commuter train it is at heart. Financial institutions and individual investors who relied on wildly bogus, inflated financial data when they invested in Penn Central. The traveling public who suffered the rapid deterioration of long-distance service in the Sixties and on into the underfunded Amtrak era. Commuters. A labor union that had to take a twelve percent pay cut or risk killing its employer. The American taxpayer, who had to pay for rehabilitation of roads and services that never should have sunk so low in the first place. Last but not least, the remaining two American-headquartered mega-survivors from the Southeast: Norfolk Southern and CSX, which together ran up almost twenty billion dollars in debt after a preventable bidding war over Conrail.
   
   It was Loving's great talent - plus opportunity - that he knew how to portray his more vivid characters. THE MEN WHO LOVED TRAINS is populated with almost as many colorful guys as a novel out of Elmore Leonard or Carl Hiaasen. A "blue-eyed Jew from Minnesota," Al Perlman, ran the New York Central from 1955 until the Penn Central merger in 1968; he ranks high in Loving's esteem for his creativity and custom of forging consensus within the company. But Perlman and his fellow ex-NYC "green hats" clashed in terms of corporate culture with the Pennsy's more buttoned-down "red hats," and those divisions were never really resolved. David LeVan, his duty done at Conrail, left and entered another facet of American transportation: he opened a Harley-Davidson dealership in Gettysburg, PA. Fear a threat of hostile takeover from the South? Say hello to the Claytor brothers, Graham and Robert, who loved railroading so much that they spent innumerable hours in diesel cabs or hunkering with workers on the ground. Robert even qualified to operate the iconic N&W Class J streamlined steam engine, no mean feat for an experienced engineer and almost inconceivable for a suit. A useful connective sinew in this history results from following the career of Jim McClellan, a rising N&W exec with a Forrest Gump-like ability to be in the right place at the right time.
   
   But what narrative is complete without a couple of villains? A big black hat goes to Stuart Saunders, that attorney from the charming small town of Bedford in Virginia. Primarily a bean-counter, it was Saunders who rapidly dieselized the N&W in the late Fifties. It was Saunders who fired Al Perlman from Penn Central in 1969. And it was Saunders who first diversified the PRR's money into anything but railroad maintenance in the mid-Sixties, temporary fixes that made the balance sheet look good but disguised the deteriorating home road's profitability. The strategem worked: undiminished dividends and healthy-looking profits released as "Consolidated Statements of Earnings" perpetuated the myth of the invincible Pennsylvania Railroad enough to pacify the shareholders and keep the investigators at bay. No observer figured out that Saunders' pet investments in utilities and real estate were the real cash-generators and that "The Nation's Standard," its revenues slowly sinking, was getting into a situation of chronic deficit.
   
   Saunders' strange and largely hostile relationship at the recently-turned Penn Central with the company's chief finance officer, David Bevan, got the line into some serious fiscal cheating, yet little came of it. When Saunders' investments could no longer pump up the railroad's earnings statements enough to declare a profit, Saunders turned to Bevan with suggestions that Bevan made come true. Thirty years before the event, Penn Central's "creative accounting" eerily anticipated Enron: the threat to fire an independent analyst unless he rosied up pessimistic conclusions. Buying and selling various parts of the physical rail infrastructure with the help of shell corporations and tax dodges, while the real railroad saw none of these changes. Toward the very end, Saunders and Bevan came close to paralleling Lay and Skilling: they booked money onto PC's ledgers--money that had no origin. Nobody but the federal government can introduce additional money into the American economy. To do otherwise--in effect, pose as financiers--was and is very illegal. And except for a conflict-of-interest hearing into the "finance club" Bevan and a few friends set up in 1962, the two executives largely escaped censure or punishment.
   
   This book deserves a wide readership among the general public, along with railroad people and railroad enthusiasts; also people who like a good, well-written and real corporate saga along the lines of BARBARIANS AT THE GATE should like THE MEN WHO LOVED TRAINS. The book (out of Indiana University Press) is a good sturdy product, enlivened with before-and-after route maps in the frontispiece and back of book, respectively. These colorful charts come courtesy of America's largest-circulating Railroad magazine, TRAINS of Waukesha (suburban Milwaukee), Wisconsin. Twenty-seven ninety-five is not an unrealistic retail price but Amazon and others offer online discounts.



2. As a train lover and a man who grew up along Connecticut's shoreline during the waning days of the New Haven (and an uncle who worked on the NY Central) I found this book an amazing archive of the key players in the demise of the "great" roads and the emergence of the "modern" US railroads. The only drawback was the necessity to understand the terms of stocks, shares, corporate finance and other things financial. So some of this book required some homework (and a lot of reading portions two and three times!) But nonetheless, a great historical railroad document.



3. This book is written in a folksy style for railroad buffs who already know the story and want to argue about it. I couldn't read it. All the details were screwy about Perlman's blue eyes and nonsense about every teeny personal detail of meetings that happened 5o years ago. I'd like to know the story but will never with these guys. Maybe they are why the trains run so slowly in Vermont.



4. Not all the names in the book "loved trains".
   Too much of the book centered around on man; Jim McClellan (who apparently was a friend of the author), that I never heard of before, even after reading 'The Wreck of the Penn Central' and 'No Way to Run a Railroad' (two other must reads).
   It filled in many loose ends from those books since this was written fairly recently.
   It's too bad there was a lack of names mentioned in the last chapter where the blame can be placed regarding the current CSX situation that has been going on for the past 3+ years. Actually, it started in 1999. Conrail should of stayed Conrail.



5. Penn Central. To this day, the name of this corporation sends shudders through the world of finance. When it went bankrupt in June of 1970, it was the largest bankruptcy in United States history, and it held that title for the next thirty-one years. (It took the collapse of Enron in 2001 to supplant it). In The Men Who Loved Trains, journalist Rush loving tells the story of how Penn Central came into being, but even more importantly how a few men picked up the pieces afterward and pulled the railroad industry out of a tailspin that might have proved fatal.
   
   Loving's work is essentially a journalistic book, rather than a scholarly one. It is written in a prose style and has an eminently readable pacing. Yet don't take this for being lightweight; that the author can weave such an unwieldy mess into a fast and cohesive narrative is a testament to his abilities as a writer. In ways, the book follows in the tradition of works such as Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff.
   
   The story line follows the chronology of the demise of Penn Central, the struggle to pick up the pieces, and the creation, life, and eventual parting out of PC's successor, Conrail. Throughout the work we meet various key individuals; from the fiery Alfred Perlman to former CSX Transportation executive (and future Treasury Secretary) John Snow. Along the way, we come back again and again to John McClellan, tracking his career from entry level PC staffer through to planner for the Department of Transportation and eventually strategic advisory for Norfolk Southern. His career serves as a foil for the events of Conrail's life and death, humanizing a story of corporate battle and macro economics.
   
   And what a story it is! Following the collapse of PC, many pundits were predicting doom for the entire railroad industry. The more optimistic felt that the Northeast lived behind a wall in which railroad transportation simply would never pencil out. Although a government takeover of PC would help keep the trains running, many in the private sector feared it as a dangerous first step towards nationalization. In the end, a select few fought an uphill battle for the creation first of passenger carrier Amtrak, and then of the freight railroad what would come to be known as Conrail.
   
   Like Amtrak, Conrail has a belabored existence for much of its life. It inherited a property that was severely overextended and under-maintained. Only great gobs of public money could solve Conrail's problems, and even then there was no real guarantee it would turn the company around. Throughout its existence, philosophical and political opponents watched and salivated as they waited for the company to trip and fall.
   
   As Loving tells, however, Conrail endured, returning to black ink, and eventually becoming a publicly traded, private sector corporation. Loving tells, too, of the irony that was the end of Conrail; the company became the subject of a bidding war between NS and CSXT, and was finally split between them in 1997, redrawing the Northeastern railroad map along lines that were eerily similar to what Al Perlman had wanted before he was forced into agreeing with the PC merger.
   
   The book attempts to carry the story without bias, in the best journalistic fashion, and most of the time succeeds in doing so. There is, however, a distinct bias in favor of McClellan's employer, NS, and the between-the-lines feeling is that Loving and McClellan are friends. Still, Loving remains remarkable professional, remaining gentlemanly even when dealing with McClellan's arch-rival Snow.
   
   Conrail was arguably the nation's most controversial modern railroad project. The Men Who Loved Trains tells an important tale of railroading, corporate intrigue, and a thousand might-have-beens that make it one of the hallmark railroad history books about the late 20th century, of importance not just to scholars of Northeastern and Midwestern railroad history, but to anyone with an interest in railroads, the politics of transportation, or public policy.