American Business History

A Very Short Introduction

De: Walter A. Friedman

Narrado por: Steve Menasche

By the early 20th century, it became common to describe the United States as a "business civilization". President Coolidge in 1925 said, "The chief business of the American people is business." More recently, historian Sven Beckert characterized Henry Ford's massive manufactory as the embodiment of America: "While Athens had its Parthenon and Rome its Colosseum, the United States had its River Rouge Factory in Detroit.... " How did business come to assume such power and cultural centrality in America?

This volume explores the variety of business enterprise in the United States and analyzes its presence in the country's economy, its evolution over time, and its meaning in society. It introduces listeners to formative business leaders (including Elbert Gary, Harlow Curtice, and Mary Kay Ash), leading firms (Mellon Bank, National Cash Register, Xerox), and fiction about business people (The Octopus, Babbitt, The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit). It also discusses Alfred Chandler, Joseph Schumpeter, Mira Wilkins, and others who made significant contributions to understanding of America's business history. This VSI pursues its three central themes - the evolution, scale, and culture of American business - in a chronological framework stretching from the American Revolution to today.

©2020 Oxford University Press (P)2020 Tantor

Too light

300 years of history in 100 pages... that's 3 years per page, about 1 year per paragraph. Clearly it's not going to cover much, but this was really, really light. The inclusion of the ads for familiar products (breakfast cereals, soft drinks, etc.) was really over the top, or under the bottom.

This book would be ok for a junior high or high school kid who really knows nothing about American business, or perhaps someone who's been ice fishing in Northern Yukon for 30 years and has no idea what's going on in the Lower 48.

But a college business major, an MBA student, or anyone out there in the "real world" of business who's trying to learn a little bit about what's going on and how it all works will need a lot more detail than this. You could start here, or skip it and just go directly to a much richer source, maybe by industry or by time period, or biographies of a few key individuals who are relevant for you. That will do you more good than reciting breakfast cereal ads in this book.