Book Description
In this eloquent first-person account of a family drama that changed the face of American business, the man who transformed IBM into the world's largest computer company reflects on his lifelong partnership with his father--and how their management style and shared dedication to excellence united to create a unique corporate culture that became the blueprint for the entire technology boom.
In the course of sixty years Thomas J. Watson Sr. and his son, Thomas J. Watson Jr., together built the international colossus that is IBM. This is their story: a riveting and revealing account of two men who loved each other--and fought each other--with a terrible fierceness.
But along with the story of a father and son, this is IBM's story too. It chronicles the management insights that shaped its course and its unique corporate culture, the style that made Thomas Watson Sr. one of America's most charismatic bosses, and the daring decisions by Thomas Watson Jr. that transformed IBM into the world's largest computing company. One of the greatest business-success stories of all time,
Father, Son & Co. is a moving lesson for fathers who dream for their children, as well as a testament to American ingenuity and values, told in a disarmingly frank and eloquent voice.
Promising to remain an important business reference as we move into the next century, FATHER, SON & CO. takes a look at the management insight that helped to shape IBM's course and unique corporate culture. It looks at Watson, Sr., one of America's most charismatic bosses, and Watson, Jr., who spurred IBM into the computer age.
Ten years after its original publication, FATHER, SON & CO. remains a uniquely honest book. Watson's willingness to write about the loving but ferociously combative relationship he had with his father and the turbulent battles behind some of IBM's most far-reaching decisions gives readers rare insights into the realities of leadership. -->
Customer Reviews:
A warm tale behind a cold company.......2005-09-06
Indeed a truly heart-warming, rivetting story. One of the best - possibly the best - bios that I have ever read. This is a story about IBM, the big blue corporate monolith. Yet in its core, this is really the story of a Son, a father and the relationship between them. Once into the pages of the book, you will soon realise that IBM is just a necessary but incidental backdrop to a father-son relationship..It's a book that talks of a strict yet loving father, and a son working his way up to gain his father's approval and affection. A very humane tale, devoid of any overt management jargon or mantra that seems to be the norm in most bios by business leaders, it is a surprise that nobody has thought of making a movie out of this story.
Touching. Warmly recommend to everyone.
Where Destiny Takes You.......2005-06-22
This is not a story that I had really expected to enjoy; I found this book in a hostel in Europe, and with nothing in English to read I gladly snapped it up. Father, Son & Co wound up being a very interesting and enjoyable book, and even though it is more than 15 years old now, it still gives tremendous insights into the rise of IBM and the evolution of the computer. Within two generations of the Watson family, business advanced from the Robber Barons of the 19th century to the big corporations of the 20th, and during this same period the computer advanced from punch-card machines into the electronic machines we use today. It is hard to look at a PC and see a direct connection to horse-and-buggy days, but that is the story Thomas Watson and Peter Petre tell.
A huge swath of American history is encompassed within this book; major events are witnessed and lived out by Watson and his family. But Watson also shows how family relationships have changed over the last hundred years by comparing his relationship with his father and siblings to those of his own children. Those older among us empathize with Watson completely-we took for granted, even thrived, within familial relationships that probably would not be tolerated today. But Watson also shows how primogeniture aids the affluent whether the offspring are gifted or not. To his credit, Watson admits this and does not set himself up as any more special than anyone else. He (and curiously his father as well) is rare in American business: he is a liberal and believes he owes something to his country. Would that this sentiment was felt more widely in the higher levels of business, government, and society.
Readable portrait of an IT empire.......2003-01-13
It is always interesting to read what sons have to write about their fathers. Thomas J. Watson Jr.'s book is no exception to this rule. Although in many ways the book is a business biography, the relationship between the two men creeps in between the lines (almost more than you could imagine that the author had intended it to). Watson Jr. was clearly influenced by his iconic father, both for better and for worse. The book is a lot about how that influence (and the escape from that influence) shaped the company that is IBM today.
Obviously the company has gone through many changes since this book has written-- Gerstner, downsizing, eBusiness, Business Consulting Services, etc. But still, it is remarkable how much of the culture is recognizable back to the very earliest days.
I have a special interest in the subject matter, so it is hard for me to say how fascinating someone without an IBM attachment would find the book. If you do have that special interest in IBM history, however, it is an interesting book and well executed.
A somewhat interesting and fairly candid account of IBM.......2002-11-18
Although not exactly riveting, this book does provide an interesting and readable history of IBM from the view of Thomas Watson Jr. who took over control of IBM after his father, Thomas Watson Sr.. Although much has happened to IBM since then (the job cuts, the internet boom, etc.), this is a fascinating glimpse at the evolution of big blue and the culture it once had.
The Watsons did not start IBM but they did oversee its growth into "Big Blue". Some of the anecdotes are quite memorable, the strict sales "uniform" (including sock suspenders), the refining and gentrifiying of the sales staff & executives, Thomas Sr. teaching his son to clean-up the bathroom on the train, the high-flyer told to forgo his tenant problems by Watson Sr.. It seems all tycoons and corporations have some skeletons in their cupboards and IBM is no exception. According to the book, Thomas Sr. and other senior executives at IBM started a business buying up old IBM equipment so prevent a second-hand market developing that would eat into IBM's market. It almost landed the Thomas Sr. and his colleagues in prison. Watson Sr. spent a great deal of time developing himself and his people to become refined, gentlemen with values and priorities. In these sad days of scum CEOs & executives, duplicitous companies, corrupt accountants & lawyers and valueless company "books" (Enron, WorldComm, Tyco, Merrill-Lynch, Arthur-Anderson, Martha Stewart,...) the incident may seem like grist to the mill but at that time it must have been a huge blow to the man and the company. A decent book if you have an interest in IBM or the history of the computer business.
better than a novel.......2002-01-09
This book tells one of the most fascinating, indeed rivetting, stories that I have ever read. It is about the building of one of the great American businesses of the 20C, but also much much more: it is about the conflict of an extraordinarily hard-driving father and his talented though psychologically burdened and rebellious son. From the beginning, they were at eachothers' throats and never relented in their conflict, even when it became evident that the son's genius surpassed that of his father to build an empire that can only be compared to the accomplishments of the first two Caesars, Julius and Augustus. The book also covers a good deal of American business history from the great depression to the beginning of the stagnation of the 1970s and early 1980s. Thus, it can be read on numerous levels.
There are so many insights in it that it will bear re-reading for a long time to come. Watson Jr. was acutely aware of the cost of success and was brutally honest about his own failings as a manager and family man. I find myself remembering scenes in that book, running them in my mind as examples from which to learn.
Warmly recommended.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent guideline.......2000-01-05
This book is an excellent guideline if you're having trouble working with your father or son in the family business... Entertaining...
Average customer rating:
- pretty pictures...false facts
- Wrestling Maddness: A Ringside Look At Wrestling Superstars
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Wrestling Madness: A Ringside Look at Wrestling Superstars
Matt Hunter
Manufacturer: Smithmark Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0765117401 |
Book Description
This spectacular volume, written by a select group of writers from Pro Wrestling Illustrated magazine and illustrated with photographs from the magazine's archives, spotlights the exciting world of professional wrestling, one of today's most popular sports. This colorful book contains thrilling stories and interesting facts about all of the major wrestling federations as well as fans' favorite wrestlers, from Bill Goldberg and Hollywood Hogan to Steve Austin. Included is a history of the sport, followed by detailed profiles of today's wrestlers. With an authoritative text and vibrant, action-filled photographs, this unique book is destined to become a classic.
Features stars like Bill Goldberg, Hollywood Hogan and Steve Austin Endorsed by Pro Wrestling Illustrated, the undisputed leader among independent wrestling magazines Written by Pro Wrestling Illustrated's writers; illustrated with photography from the magazine's extensive archives A must-have for serious fans and collectors of wrestling memorabilia.
Customer Reviews:
pretty pictures...false facts.......2000-04-13
All I had to see was that wrestler bio's had incorrect information. DDP's birthdate among others, PWI does a great job usually...could this really be their project...or just their photos? Photo's are excellent, but you can find those in WCW or WWF Magazine.
Wrestling Maddness: A Ringside Look At Wrestling Superstars.......2000-03-25
This is a good book. It covers alot of basic background information of the top names in the sport. The only own-fall is that it covers so amy of the same wrestlers that many hardcore wresling fans already know alot of info about. I would like to see info on different wrestlers, but this is a good book besides that. A mustt for anyone who wants tpo know how the top names broke into the sport.
Average customer rating:
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Movie Christs and Antichrists
Peter Malone
Manufacturer: Crossroad Pub Co
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
General
| Movies
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History & Criticism
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ASIN: 0824510038 |
Average customer rating:
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Movie Christs and Antichrists
Manufacturer: Parish Ministry Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 0949807567 |
Amazon.com
In this thought-provoking collection of essays, editor Thomas Frank and other contributors to the contrarian journal the Baffler examine the unprecedented ascendancy of business as the dominating force in American life. If the closest historical parallel is with the Gilded Age and its all-powerful robber barons, Frank and his ilk clearly see themselves as the muckrakers out to expose the absurdities and abuses of big business. Today, however, advertising has come to permeate every aspect of our society, and corporations are in the business of manufacturing culture--what Frank calls the "Culture Trust." These essays analyze the ways in which this Culture Trust has co-opted the power of dissent by appropriating the language and symbolism of nonconformist youth culture, from hippie slang to grunge fashion; in other words, when the media markets rebellion, it becomes just another consumer choice. As evidence, the essayists explore the image of consumer as rebel pioneered by publications such as Details and Wired, as well as the preeminence of "revolutionary" business gurus such as Tom Peters. The result is a highly original book, a satirical and savage indictment of '90s consumerist culture.
Book Description
From the pages of The Baffler, the most vital and perceptive new magazine of the nineties, sharp, satirical broadsides against the Culture Trust. In the "old" Gilded Age, the barons of business accumulated vast wealth and influence from their railroads, steel mills, and banks. But today it is culture that stands at the heart of the American enterprise, mass entertainment the economic dynamo that brings the public into the consuming fold and consolidates the power of business over the American mind. For a decade The Baffler has been the invigorating voice of dissent against these developments, in the grand tradition of the muckrakers and The American Mercury. This collection gathers the best of its writing to explore such peculiar developments as the birth of the rebel hero as consumer in the pages of Wired and Details; the ever-accelerating race to market youth culture; the rise of new business gurus like Tom Peters and the fad for Hobbesian corporate "reengineering"; and the encroachment of advertising and commercial enterprise into every last nook and cranny of American life. With its liberating attitude and cant-free intelligence, this book is a powerful polemic against the designs of the culture business on us all.
Customer Reviews:
The Day Cultural Studies Changed.......2006-06-13
I'm not sure if The Baffler is still being published regularly and, if not, too bad because it was a small magazine that regularly published thoughtful and provocative essays of the old school (and I mean this in the best possible sense): they focused on the people and conditions of cultural production rather than consumption. Anyone who went to college in the 1990s knows the story of innovative consumers of pop music/soap operas/action thrillers and how they "negotiated" and "reappropriated" these products, but Fank and Co. turn there lenses elsewhere, to the producers mostly, and that what makes the Baffler so refreshing.
A bunch of white guys sitting around talking.......2004-12-11
I actually agree with most of the analysis of culture, media, and business that Frank and his frat boys turn out but it doesn't change a thing as long as they are replicating the power structures they rail against by creating an in-club of overwhelmingly male hepcats.
Some interesting insights.......2004-08-31
A collection of some of the best writing from the magazine known for its scathing critiques of modern business and media practices. A good read, although at times I felt like they just hated everything. Still, some interesting looks into how rebellion and "alternative", among other things, have been co-opted by the mainstream and thus stripped of meaning.
enough already.........2003-01-10
Here we go again. The media giants are evil. They have consolidated to the point where a handful now own all the major information venues. They hijack culture in order to sell more schlock. They have turned rebellion into a marketable commodity.
A&R men are sleazy and just out to make a buck.
Corporate America is sick and sucking the life out of us. Publishers do this or that just to sell more books. Etc.
It goes on and on. The essays are really all over the place. A few are interesting and informative, but most are just more of the same negativity we are now accustumed to. Perhaps the essays werent so trite in the mid 90s when they were written, but Ive personally had enough. Not sure if there was one positive, remotely uplifting thing in any of the essays. Understandably, that isnt what the book is about, but I just found it often slanted and overkill. For ex, one full essay is devoted to how Wired magazine is dedicated only to selling its sponsors goods and fueling desire for constant consumption. The author seems to have overlooked that the magazine also discusses exciting scientific breakthroughs and offers articles from some of todays most well respected thinkers.
Insiteful and funny.......2002-07-20
This collection of essays provides a gutsy, incisive, and energetic critique of American consumer culture that surpasses and even ridicules the limp, flaccid, self-referential verbiage that academics try to pass off as a "radical", and "critical" examination of culture and power. "Commodify Your Dissent" is a series of critical essays, or "salvos" as the authors prefer to call them, that were printed in The Baffler during the 90's largely in response to the hypocrisy, and gluttony of the America's expanding techno-consumer culture. Using lucid, forthright language, direct examples, and actual critical thinking (not the mental self-gratification generated by tenured radicals) the authors demonstrate how corporate America has commercialized the concept of revolution and employed it along marketing and production guidelines that are-guess what-conformist and conservative. In the 90's culture, as these essays so aptly demonstrate, "free thinking, revolution" and "breaking the rules" really amounted to a double-speak ideology centered around buying more gadgets and helping companies to make more money, a process that was reinforced in words and letters by such "radical" cultural critics as Camille Paglia.
This book is bound to anger a lot of readers because, it's gutsy, direct, and ruthless in its battering of the misused tropes and recycled clichés that enable legions of consumers, workers, and managers to feel like they're breaking the rules when in fact they are merely conforming to and reinforcing them. I know it's a hard fact to face, but buying a recycled pair of bell-bottoms is not an act of rebellion.
Average customer rating:
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GURPS Supporting Cast: A Collection of Characters for Any Campaign
Nigel D. Findley , and
Fraser Cain
Manufacturer: STEVE JACKSON GAMES
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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Findley, Nigel D.
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ASIN: 1556342675 |
Book Description
The Guide for Penny Stock Investing is a book dedicated to the experienced and novice investor who wants to invest in penny stocks. The book offers the investment and trading strategies used by the author and other experienced penny stock traders. The book uncovers the rules that investors and traders need to learn before they can hope to capitalize on the opportunities offered by penny stocks. And since the book is written as a practical educational manual you will have the opportunity to learn concrete investment and trading strategies. You will be given real life examples explaining and supporting the various strategies in this useful book. You will read about stocks that delivered returns of over 1000% in less than a year. You will be given forward-looking strategies to help you find stocks with the potential to increase upwards of 500% in a given period.
Penny stock investing by nature has the potential to produce outstanding returns for those who take the time to study and practice. This book contains all the information you will need to succeed in one of the most challenging and rewarding fields in the investment arena.
Customer Reviews:
VERY BAD BOOK.......2006-09-28
Wow...this was a BAD one! First of all, the book is out of date. The markets have completely changed since this book was written. Second, the grammar and spelling are TERRIBLE! There is no way that an editor even looked at this book. Ever heard of a spell-checker? Apparently, this is par for the course for Mr. Lowy. Read the reviews for his other books and you will find the same thing with each one. Poor grammar. Poor spelling. Nothing original. Save your money.
Great For The New Investor.......2006-09-19
I learned something from EVERY chapter. This is a MUST book for the new investor. It all makese sense here! I didn't care about the spelling. You know what the author is trying to say.
review from NJ.......2006-08-29
This book is worth ten useless books that I have at home. Mr. Lowy thinks outside of the box and yes it is not a grammar book. People are critical but exactly what have they done with thier lives that make them so great. My gammar is horrible. Tell me, how many English teachers are rich.
Scam Reviews. Poor Grammar. Bad Read........2006-06-29
Did you ever notice that nearly every good review for this book comes from a "person" who has only reviewed this one particular book? On top of that, nearly all of the positive reviews sound exactly the same. They all seem fake! They must be because this book stinks! Very poor grammar. How did this guy graduate school with such poor penmanship?
Backs theory with real examples.......2005-11-04
Provides penny stock investment theories that are backed with real examples. Author seems to be a penny stock trader who relates his theories by showing how and where he applied them.
Books:
- Fire Into Ice: Charles Fipke & the Great Diamond Hunt
- Footnotes : What You Stand For Is More Important Than What You Stand In
- GOD AND MAN AT YALE THE SUPERSTITIONS OF "ACADEMIC FREEDOM"
- Golden Boy: The Harold Simmons Story
- Gustavo Cisneros un Empresario Global : Prologo De Carlos Fuentes / Gustavo Cisneros, World Business Man
- Hayek's Challenge: An Intellectual Biography of F.A. Hayek
- Her Majesty: 50 Regal Years
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- In Sam We Trust: The Untold Story of Sam Walton and Wal-Mart, the World's Most Powerful Retailer
- Isabel of Burgundy: The Duchess Who Played Politics in the Age of Joan of Arc
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