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Against the Gods
Aiming Higher
Ashes to Ashes
Beyond Certainty
Beyond Reengineering
Bloomberg by Bloomberg
Broken Promises...at IBM
The Car That Could (GM's Impact)
Citizen Perot
The Contrarian Manager
Co-opetition
Death of Competition
The Digital Economy
Disruption
The Education of a Speculator
The First $20 Million is Always the Hardest
Informed Consent
The Last Stand
Leading Change
The Living Company
The Making of a Blockbuster
The Mexican Shock...
Mirage: (Washington budget wars)
New and Improved: The Story of Mass Marketing in America
Net Gain
The One Best Way
Ovitz: The Story of Hollywood's Most Controversial Power Broker
The Princessa: Machiavelli for Women
Real Change Leaders
The Reengineering Revolution--A Handbook
Serpent on the Rock
Secrets of the Street
A Simpler Way
Success is a Choice...
Trail Fever
Walter Wriston, Citibank, and ...
Webonomics: Nine Essential Principles
Why Things Bite Back...
Against the Gods
What book could include a cast of characters ranging from poet Omar Khayyam to nurse Florence Nightingale, from Vietnam-era Defense Dept. analyst Daniel Ellsberg to Leonardo da Vinci? It's Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk by Peter L. Bernstein. Bernstein contends that the attempt to master risk is what divides the modern world from ancient times: It's a key component ofeverything from insurance to the stock market to engineering, science, and medicine.
Many early attempts at risk reduction were a result of an interest in gambling. Thus, the first serious work to lay out the statistical principles of probability was inspired by 16th century physician Girolamo Cardano's compulsive attraction to table games and dice-playing. By the mid-20th century, risk management had progressed to the level where game theorists were designing elaborate mathematical models to describe how humans attempt to maximize rewards and minimize risks.
"An enchanting blend of history and investment advice," Against the Gods "sets up an ambitious premise and then delivers on it," observed BUSINESS WEEK reviewer Peter Coy.
Here for your examination is Chapter 4 of Against the Gods.
Title: Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk
Author: Peter L. Bernstein
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Inc.
Price: $27.95
Copyright: 1996 by Peter L. Bernstein
ISBN: 0-471-12104-5
Reprinted by permission of John Wiley & Sons. Available from bookstores everywhere.
Aiming Higher
Do-gooders belong in the churches, not in the boardrooms, right? Not according to "Aiming Higher: 25 Stories of How Companies Prosper by Combining Sound Management and Social Vision." The book profiles companies, CEOs, managers, and employees -- from Vermont National Bank to the Haas family of Levi Strauss & Co. -- who view social challenges not as burdens but as opportunities.
Author David Bollier is a longtime collaborator of television writer/producer Norman Lear, the creator of the Business Enterprise Trust, which each year honors socially responsible companies.
Here for your examination is Chapter 19 of Aiming Higher, which describes General Electric Co.'s "share to gain" program -- an attempt at building corporate loyalty while reconstructing community projects in several cities.
Title: Aiming Higher: 25 Stories of How Companies Prosper by Combining SoundManagement and Social Vision
Author: David Bollier
Publisher: AMACOM
Price: $24.95
Copyright: 1996 the Business Enterprise Trust
ISBN: 0-8144-0319-0
Available from bookstores everywhere. All rights reserved. Reprinted by arrangement with AMACOM, a division of American Management Assn.
Ashes to Ashes
Ashes to Ashes: America's Hundred-Year Cigarette War, the Public Health, and the Unabashed Triumph of Philip Morris by Richard Kluger is a sweeping history of American tobacco. Offering a detailed accounting of every phase in the industry's development, Kluger's thorough research and well-organized writing make this book the definitive--and very fair--history of the most controversial industry of our time. Its enormous scope (807 pages) implicitly makes the case that, as in previous crises, the industry could well survive its current problems unscathed.
Presented here is the Foreword to Ashes to Ashes.
Title: Ashes to Ashes: America's Hundred-Year Cigarette War, the Public Health, and the Unabashed Triumph of Philip Morris
Author: Richard Kluger
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Price: $35
Copyright: 1996 by Richard Kluger
ISBN: 0-394-57076-6
Available from bookstores everywhere, or directly from Random House at 1-800-793-BOOK.
Beyond Certainty
Beyond Certainty by noted management thinker Charles Handy includes 35 essays on topics ranging from "What They Don't Teach You at Business School" to "The Gun Laws of Galapagos." All but four of the essays have never before been published in the United States.
Handy is the author of numerous books on organizations, management, and the future, including The Age of Unreason (1991)--one of Business Week's 10 Best Business Books of the year--and The Age of Paradox (1994), which John Byrne called "a joy to read" in his Business Week review.
Handy, who lives in London, has been an oil executive, an economist, a BBC commentator, and a professor at the London Business School. The New Standard wrote recently that he is "one of those rare types who genuinely struggles to reconcile the ideals of his Christian humanism with the dirty, practical stuff with which businessmen and women have to deal."
Presented here is Chapter 2 of Beyond Certainty, "The Coming Work Culture."
Title: Beyond Certainty: The Changing Worlds of Organizations
Author: Charles Handy
Publisher: Harvard Business School Press
Publication Date: February 15, 1996
Price: $19.95
Copyright: 1996 by Charles Handy
ISBN: 0-87584-671-8
Available in bookstores or be calling 800-988-0886 (617-496-1449 outside the United States).
Reprinted by arrangement with Harvard Business School Press.
Beyond Reengineering: How the Process-Centered Organization Is Changing Our Work and Our Lives
Had enough of narrow jobs, rigid hierarchies, and too much supervision? Take heart: Michael Hammer, author of The Reengineering Revolution and co-author of Reengineering the Corporation, argues in his new book, Beyond Reengineering, that today's "process-centered organization" is bringing an end to those things. Instead, he says, we are increasingly living in a world of professionals and coaches, process owners and results-based pay, boundaryless organizations, and institutionalized capacity for change.
What does this mean for you? For a partial answer, download and read Chapter 1 of Beyond Reengineering.
Title: Beyond Reengineering: How the Process-Centered Organization Is Changing Our Work and Our Lives
Author: Michael Hammer
Publisher: HarperBusiness
Price: $25
Copyright: 1996 by Michael Hammer
ISBN: 0-88730-729-9
Available from bookstores everywhere, or by calling 1-800-236-7323.
All rights reserved. Reprinted by arrangement with HarperBusiness, a division of HarperCollins.
Biotech Century
Rifkin argues that the computer revolution is merely a prelude to a far more significant change taking place in the global economy: a great historic transition to the Age of Biotechnology. The information and life sciences are fusing into a single powerful technological and economic force that is laying the foundation for the Biotech Century. Already transnational corporations are creating giant life-science complexes from which to fashion a bio-industrial world.
But with every step, the nagging question will haunt us: 'At what cost?' The new genetic commerce raises more troubling questions than any other economic revolution in history. For example: Will the artificial creation of cloned, chimeric, and transgenic animals mean the end of nature and the substitution of a 'bio-industrial' world? What are the risks we take in attempting to design more 'perfect' human beings? Rifkin explores these and many other criitical issues.
Click on the link above to read Chapter 1 of The Biotech Century.
See also Joan Hamilton's review of The Biotech Century.
Title: The Biotech Century: Harnessing the Gene and Remaking the World
Author: Jeremy Rifkin
Publisher: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam
Price: $24.95
Copyright: 1998 by Jeremy Rifkin
ISBN: 0-87477-909-X
Available from bookstores everywhere.
All rights reserved. Reprinted by arrangement with Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.
Bloomberg by Bloomberg
Without question, Michael Bloomberg is a phenomenon--and he knows it. He was the first to package a vast amount of raw financial data, analysis of that data, and financial news, and make it all available on a computer terminal. That became the basis of what is today a $1 billion information-and-media empire.
How did he do it? Well, you may have to read between the lines, but some hints await the careful reader in Bloomberg by Bloomberg, the media mogul's memoir. There are anecdotes about being fired at Salomon Brothers, where he'd been head of information technology. Stories about taking on entrenched competitors Reuters and Dow Jones & Co. And no shortage of advertisements for Michael Bloomberg.
Curious? Check out Chapter 1 of Bloomberg by Bloomberg
Title: Bloomberg by Bloomberg
Author: Michael Bloomberg, with Matthew Winkler
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Price: $24.95
Copyright: 1997 by Michael Bloomberg
ISBN: 0-471-15545-4
Reprinted by permission of John Wiley & Sons Inc. All rights reserved. Available at bookstores everywhere.
Broken Promises...at IBM
Broken Promises: An Unconventional View of What Went Wrong at IBM by D. Quinn Mills and G. Bruce Friesen examines the crisis that hit Big Blue in the early 1990s. IBM then suffered its first-ever operating loss and eliminated nearly 200,000 jobs. Contrary to popular wisdom, Mills, a Harvard Business School professor, and Friesen, a manager at Andersen Consulting, say the problem was not a lag in technology. Rather, they suggest, IBM suffered because it disregarded its customers and misled its employees. Their book includes numerous interviews with IBM executives and surveys of its customers.
Presented here are the Prologue and Chapter One of Broken Promises.
Title: Broken Promises: An Unconventional View of What Went Wrong at IBM
Authors: D. Quinn Mills and G. Bruce Friesen
Publisher: Harvard Business School Press
Publication Date: June 3, 1996
Price: $22.95
224 Pages
Copyright: 1996 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
ISBN: 0-87584-654-8
Published by permission of Harvard Business School Press.
Available at bookstores or by calling 1-800-988-0886 (617-496-1449 outside the U.S.)
BW Guide to Mutual Funds/8th Ed.
So how have your mutual funds performed over the past five years? Has the Brand X Growth & Income Fund not kept pace with the Dow? Or, do you mean to say, you don't know?
The Business Week Guide to Mutual Funds offers valuable background on the world of mutual funds--the various styles of investing, the essentials of buying and selling, and how to build an investment portfolio. It also helps you monitor your funds' performance. Finally, there's a scoreboard of mutual funds that profiles the best-performing funds, providing ratings and giving data on fees, returns, and 10-year trends.
For a taste of the guide, download Chapter 3.
Title: The Business Week Guide to Mutual Funds
Author: Jeffrey M. Laderman
Publisher: McGraw-Hill
Price: $14.95
Copyright: 1998 by the McGraw-Hill Cos. Inc.
ISBN: 0-07-038200-X
Excerpted by permission of the McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. Available at bookstores everywhere.
Available from bookstores everywhere, or by calling 1-800-2MCGRAW.
The Car That Could (GM's Impact)
Who would spend $300 million on a experimental project -- all the while paying a horde of lobbyists to say that it can't be done?
The answer is General Motors, and the project was its prototype electric car, the Impact. Now, as the first mass-produced electric cars are set to hit the showrooms, Vanity Fair contributing editor Michael Shnayerson has produced a book on that project, The Car That Could: The Inside Story of GM's Revolutionary Electric Vehicle. It's an account that Business Week reviewer David Woodruff called "masterful...richly spiced with tales of clashing egos, GM's brush with financial disaster, and its ensuing boardroom coup."
Here for your examination is Chapter 2 of The Car That Could
Title: The Car That Could: The Inside Story of GM's Revolutionary Electric Vehicle
Author: Michael Shnayerson
Publisher: Random House
Price: $25
Copyright: 1996 by Michael Shnayerson
ISBN: 0-679-42105-X
Available from bookstores everywhere, or directly from Random House at 1-800-793-BOOK.
All rights reserved. Reprinted by arrangement with Random House Inc.
Citizen Perot
He's the towering midget of U.S. politics, a pioneer in data processing, a billionaire, and one of the few private citizens with his own foreign policy. Who? Ross Perot, a Presidential candidate again in 1996, with the ability to play a pivotal role in the upcoming election.
In Citizen Perot, author Gerald L. Posner captures the contradictions of Perot: hero, spoiler, idealist, tyrant. Business Week reviewer Richard S. Dunham called Citizen Perot "a crisply written book that flows effortlessly from anecdote to anecdote while never straying far from its central focus on Perot's complex character." Posner is also author of Case Closed, an examination of JFK assassination theories.
Here for your examination is Chapter 5 of Citizen Perot.
Title: Citizen Perot: His Life & Times
Author: Gerald Posner
Publisher: Random House
Price: $25
Copyright: 1996 by Gerald L. Posner
ISBN: 0-679-44731-8
Available from bookstores everywhere, or directly from Random House at 1-800-793-BOOK.
All rights reserved. Reprinted by arrangement with Random House Inc.
The Contrarian Manager
He co-founded the upstart Wall Street firm Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, then helped make it into an international investment-banking power. Later, he became CEO of Equitable, a floundering mutual insurance company which he turned into an asset-management giant. The key? Unconventional thinking, says Jenrette, who now tells his story in The Contrarian Manager.
Here, the author offers managers advice on how to develop a contrarian business strategy, make cost cuts without destroying morale, and put together a top management team. "Our final corporate objective," he adds, "was to have fun." Want to know more? Check out chapter one of The Contrarian Manager.
Title: The Contrarian Manager
Author: Richard H. Jenrette
Publisher: McGraw-Hill
Price: $20
Copyright: 1997 by Richard H. Jenrette
ISBN: 0-07-032935-4
Excerpted by permission of the McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. Available at bookstores everywhere.
Co-opetition
Business is war, right? Wrong, say Adam Brandenburger of Harvard business school and Barry Nalebuff of the Yale school of management. And in their new book, Co-opetition, the duo says that thinking that way can lead you to outsmart yourself.
Instead, it makes sense to think of business as both war and peace--and to understand that "there is a duality in every relationship--the simultaneous elements of cooperation and competition." Sometimes, a competitor may be a "complementor," particularly when together you can expand the size of the market. At times, a supplier or a complementor (what French's mustard is to Oscar Meyer franks) can become a competitor. Everything depends on the situation--and how you can understand and shape it to your advantage.
To illustrate this way of thinking, the authors offer a number of exercises in game theory, which they also call "the science of strategy." They also examine each of the five elements of a game--the players, added values ("what each player brings to the game"), rules, tactics, and the boundaries or scope of games.
Got it? Well, for a bit more explanation download Chapter 3 of Co-opetition, "Game Theory."
Title: Co-opetition
Author: Adam M. Brandenburger and Barry J. Nalebuff
Publisher: Currency/Doubleday
Price: $24.95
Copyright: 1996 by Adam M. Brandenburger and Barry J. Nalebuff
ISBN: 0-385-47949-2
Available at bookstores everywhere.
Used by permission of Doubleday, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. For online information about other Bantam Doubleday Dell Currency books and authors, visit the Internet Web Site at www.bdd.com/currency.
Death of Competition
The Death of Competition by James F. Moore, a management consultant at GeoPartners Research Inc. in Cambridge, Mass., deals with the hidden patterns in the contemporary corporate landscape. Using metaphors drawn from the field of ecology, Moore examines the cooperative/competitive relationships of such companies as Apple, Intel, Microsoft, and IBM. And he looks at how companies coexist and coevolve within "business ecosystems," much as organisms do in nature. Observed Business Week reviewer Ira Sager: "The Death of Competition will become essential reading for managers who want to put today's business climate into a larger, albeit ecological, context."
Presented here is chapter two of The Death of Competition.
Title: The Death of Competition: Leadership & Strategy in the Age of Business Ecosystems
Author: James F. Moore
Publisher: HarperBusiness
Price: $25
Copyright: 1996 by James F. Moore
ISBN: 0-88730-809-0
Available from bookstores everywhere, or by calling 1-800-236-7323.
All rights reserved. Reprinted by arrangement with HarperBusiness, a division of HarperCollins.
The Digital Economy
The Digital Economy: Promise and Peril in the Age of Networked Intelligence
In The Digital Economy, author Don Tapscott argues that businesses must build fundamentally new strategies if they are to compete on the Information Highway. "When information becomes digital and networked, walls fall and no business is safe," he says. On the other hand, companies that understand the Net will blossom.
Tapscott hails such companies as Federal Express, Wal-Mart, and Levi Strauss as models of internet expertise. And he weaves into one tome the business, social, and educational implications of electronic networks.
Presented here is Chapter 2 of The Digital Economy.
Title: The Digital Economy: Promise and Peril in the Age of Networked Intelligence
Author: Don Tapscott
Publisher: McGraw-Hill
Price: $24.95
Copyright: 1996 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
ISBN: 0-07-062200-0
Available from bookstores everywhere or by calling 1-800-352-3566.
All Rights Reserved. Reprinted by arrangement with McGraw-Hill books, a division of The McGraw-Hill Companies.
Disruption
You've heard of "creative destruction," the Schumpeterian notion that the economy heals itself through the business cycle. Now comes creative "disruption," author Jean-Marie Dru's notion that advertisers must "challenge conventional wisdom and push back limits," and thereby "create new visions that will enable their businesses to grow." It's all described in Dru's new book Disruption: Overturning Conventions and Shaking Up the Marketplace.
Disruption is loaded with examples of its advertising approach. Dru, founder and chairman of global ad agency BDDP Group, observes that every so often a new product emerges that revolutionizes the market, as did the Polaroid camera and the Sony Walkman. But much more often, companies must look to advertising to bring about a new phase in a brand's life, to help consumers look at a product "with fresh eyes." Thus, convention held that Duracell batteries could not be beat--until that Energizer bunny, who kept "going and going and going," came along to shake up popular perceptions. Convention held that American cars couldn't compete with Japanese cars, except on price. Then came Saturn, the product and the ad campaign, to challenge this accepted wisdom.
Want to understand the idea better? Here for downloading is Chapter 6, "Vision," from Disruption.
Title: Disruption: Overturning Conventions and Shaking Up the Marketplace
Author: Jean-Marie Dru
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Inc.
Price: $29.95
Copyright: 1996 by Jean-Marie Dru
ISBN: 0-471-16565-4
Reprinted by permission of John Wiley & Sons. Available from bookstores everywhere.
The Education of a Speculator
Just how do monkeys fit into commodities trading, you ask--not to mention Mozart? Well, Victor Niederhoffer has an idea that they do. And having won a 32% average annual return since 1982, Niederhoffer must know what he's talking about.
Education of a Speculator is Niederhoffer's 444-page, wide-ranging memoir-cum-mindbender. The author has lots to say about such topics as "spexuality," or the link between speculation and sex. To find out more, check out Chapter 1 of The Education of a Speculator.
Title: The Education of a Speculator
Author: Victor Niederhoffer
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Price: $29.95
Copyright: 1997 by Victor Niederhoffer
ISBN: 0-471-13747-2
Reprinted by permission of John Wiley & Sons Inc. All rights reserved. Available at bookstores everywhere.
The First $20 Million Is Always the Hardest: A Silicon Valley Novel
Andy Caspar wants to be an "ironman." No, not like Bruce Jenner -- like the handful of engineers whose technological breakthroughs have earned them a place in history. But as Andy strives to win such recognition, he finds himself caught up in the power struggles of older, "wiser" men. There's Lloyd Acheson, head of Omega Logic, which needs a next-generation computer chip to keep its stock price high. Hank Menzinger, a research lab honcho who needs Omega Logic's cash support. And master chip designer Francis Benoit, who got burned by Omega once before -- and vows not to let it happen again.
It's all described in The First $20 Million is Always the Hardest, the latest novel by Po Bronson, whose bond-market novel Bombardiers was hailed by Business Week as "perhaps the most entertaining depiction of greed and dishonesty on Wall Street ever to see print."
Curious? Then download Chapter 6, "Too Small for Radar," presented here, and check it out.
Title: The First $20 Million is Always the Hardest: A Silicon Valley Novel
Author: Po Bronson
Publisher: Random House
Price: $23
Copyright: 1997 by Po Bronson
ISBN: 0-679-45699-6
Reprinted by permission of Random House Inc. Available from bookstores everywhere.
I'd Like the World to Buy a Coke
In 1954, Roberto C. Goizueta answered a help-wanted advertisement for a chemical engineer in a Havana newspaper and went to work for Coca-Cola Co. Twenty-six years later, the Cuban-born executive triumphed in a bruising battle for Coke's top job. Named president in May of 1980 and elected chairman and chief executive 10 weeks later, Goizueta had overcome long odds and bested worthy rivals to command one of the world's great enterprises.
But Goizueta could hardly afford to rest on his laurels. The company he headed was mired in a hodgepodge of unrelated ventures, from shrimp farming to winemaking. Its crucial bottler system was badly decayed, with important markets left in the hands of weak operators. There was no strategic vision, and creativity was stifled by a blind adherence to tradition and a refusal to take risks. Worst of all, Coke's stock had fallen by half, and the company was barely turning a profit.
Presented here is Chapter 3 of I'd Like the World To Buy a Coke
Chapter 3 from I'd Like the World To Buy a Coke: The Life and Leadership of Roberto Goizueta by David Greising, BUSINESS WEEK's Atlanta bureau chief. Copyright1998 by David Greising. Reprinted by permission of the publisher John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Informed Consent
John Byrne's "Informed Consent: A Story of Personal Tragedy and Corporate Betrayal...Inside the Silicone Breast Implant Crisis" tells the wrenching story of John and Colleen Swanson. John was a Dow Corning Corp. executive who shaped that company's vaunted ethics program; Colleen, his wife, had Dow Corning breast implants--but became more and more convinced that they were destroying her health and that the company had failed to inform women of the risks. In time, like over 8,000 other women, she would bring suit against the company--and John would come to believe that Dow Corning had acted unethically. Byrne's account asks: What happens when a moral choice separates you from your company's official position and from your colleagues in a close-knit organization?
Presented here is Chapter 1 of Informed Consent.
Title: Informed Consent: A Story of Personal Tragedy and Corporate Betrayal...Inside the Silicone Breast Implant Crisis
Author: John A. Byrne
Publisher: The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
Price: $22
Copyright: 1996 by John A. Byrne
ISBN: 0-07-009625-2
All rights reserved. Presented by arrangement with The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Available in bookstores or by calling 1-800-2MCGRAW.
The Invention that Changed the World
Adapted from the author's Web site:
Robert Buderi's book is written mainly in lay terms for those interested in science, military technology or World War II--or for anyone who likes narrative histories that concentrate on key people and events rather than technical details. It is part of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation's Technology History Series, and was published by Simon and Schuster in October 1996. A paperback edition was released in March, 1998. For more about the events, battles, or discoveries described in the book, visit Robert Buderi's Web site at http://world.std.com/~radarwar. Buderi's E-mail address is: radarwar@world.std.com.
This is the largely untold story of the colorful band of brilliant scientists who created the microwave radar systems that not only helped win World War II but set off a veritable explosion of scientific achievements and technological advances that have transformed our daily lives. Developed in a top-secret rush at the Radiation Lab on the campus of MIT, microwave radars eventually helped destroy Japanese warships in the Pacific, brought down Nazi buzz bombs over England, and enabled Allied bombers to "see" through cloud cover over Germany and Japan. Although the atomic bomb ended World War II, in many ways radar won it.
After conveying the drama and excitement of the race to develop radar, Buderi then follows the postwar careers of the radar scientists. Among their many achievements, radar veterans were instrumental in creating the field of radio astronomy and discovering nuclear magnetic resonance, the transistor and the maser, breakthroughs that led to Nobel prizes.
Title: The Invention that Changed the World: How a small group of radar pioneers won the Second World War and launched a technological revolution
Author: Robert Buderi
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Price:$30
Copyright: 1996 by Robert Buderi
Paperback edition: Touchstone, 1998
Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster. All rights reserved. Available at bookstores everywhere.
Japan: A Reinterpretation
Japan is in the process of re-creating itself, says Patrick Smith, the former International Herald Tribune Tokyo bureau chief. In particular, he says, the Japanese are now seeking to alter the very thing Americans believe distinguishes them: the relationship between the individual and society.
Too often, the author says, Westerners have viewed Japan from a position of cultural arrogance, seeing it alternately as a soon-to-be democratic state or as an anti-Communist ally, but failing to understand its true nature. Now a new Japanese national identity is taking shape--but will Americans understand it any better?
"Smith has a discerning eye for the conflicted nature of ordinary Japanese," found Business Week reviewer Brian Bremner. Curious? Then check out Chapter 1 of Japan: A Reinterpretation.
Title: Japan: A Reinterpretation
Author: Patrick Smith
Publisher: Pantheon
Price: $27.50
Copyright: 1997 by Patrick Smith
ISBN: 0-069-42231-5
Reprinted by permission of Random House Inc. All rights reserved. Available at bookstores everywhere.
The Last Stand
In The Last Stand: The War Between Wall Street and Main Street over California's Ancient Redwoods, author David Harris describes the takeover of Pacific Lumber Co. by investor Charles Hurwitz--and the ensuing fight over some of the oldest trees on the continent. As Business Week reviewer Eric Schine reported, "financed with more than $800 million in junk bonds, the Pacific Lumber deal only worked if Hurwitz serviced the debt by doubling, then tripling, the rate of lumbering." In the frenzy to cut trees, the investor first managed to overturn a well-run family business, then to arouse the rage of militant environmentalists, who ultimately blocked his plan.
Featuring a Who's Who of 1980s Wall Street operators, including Ivan Boesky, Michael Milken, and Fred Carr, The Last Stand provides a nostalgia trip through the wild days of junk-bond dealmaking. "Moving seamlessly from the action on the high-yield trading desks in New York and Beverly Hills to small-town gossip sessions at the local Scotia [Calif.] diner to meetings of the disheveled Earth First! protestors, Harris weaves a tapestry of mounting intrigue and inpending danger," wrote BUSINESS WEEK's Schine.
Presented here is Chapter 3 of The Last Stand.
Title: The Last Stand: The War Between Wall Street and Main Street over California's Ancient Redwoods
Author: David Harris
Publisher: Times Books
Price: $25
Copyright: 1995 by David Harris
ISBN: 0-8129-2577-7
Available from your local bookstore or by calling 1-800-733-3000.
Reprinted by arrangement with Times Books, a division of Random House Inc.
Leading Change
Contrary to the old saw, change is not constant, says John Kotter; instead, argues the Harvard business school professor, "it is growing by leaps and bounds -- in every market, every industry, every business around the world." How can executives keep on top of such a volatile world?With programs that manage change, Kotter says. In Leading Change, he offers an action plan in which he urges companies to abandon the "managerial mindset" for a new leadership perspective.
John P. Kotter is the Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership at Harvard business school and a frequent speaker at top management meetings around the world. He is the author of seven best-selling business books and the content expert for Realizing Change, an interactive CD-ROM by Harvard Business School Publishing.
Here for your examination is Chapter 1, "Transforming Organizations: Why Firms Fail," of Leading Change.
Title: Leading Change
Author: John P. Kotter
Publisher: Harvard Business School Press
Price: $24.95
Copyright: 1996 by John P. Kotter
ISBN: 0-87584-747-1
Reprinted by permission of Harvard Business School Press. Excerpt from Leading Change by John P. Kotter. Copyright 996 by John P. Kotter; all rights reserved.
Available from bookstores everywhere, or directly from Harvard Business School Press at 1-800-988-0886 or 1-617-496-1449 outside the U.S.
The Living Company
Some companies are here this a.m., gone this afternoon. Others, such as the 700-year-old Stora company of Sweden, have discovered the secret of long life. But just what is it? That's what Arie de Geus, a 38-year veteran of Royal Dutch Shell and now a visiting fellow at the London Business School, set out to discover.
In his book The Living Company, de Geus draws a distinction between "living companies," which he says exist to perpetuate themselves as ongoing communities, and "economic companies," those that exist solely to produce wealth for a small number of individuals. The author describes the four essential traits of the long-lived outfits, which he offers as lessons to all who wish to overcome the withering fire of corporate competition.
Title: The Living Company: Habits for Survival in a
Turbulent Business Environment
Author: Arie de Geus
Publisher: Harvard Business School
Price: $24.95
Copyright: 1997 by Longview Publishing Ltd.
ISBN: 0-87584-782-X
Reprinted by permission of Harvard Business School Press. All rights reserved. Available in bookstores everywhere.
The Making of a Blockbuster
Gail DeGeorge's "The Making of a Blockbuster: How Wayne Huizenga Built a Sports and Entertainment Empire from Trash, Grit, and Videotape" is a profile of the restless Florida executive by Business Week's Miami bureau chief.
After creating the largest trash handler in the world, Waste Management Inc., earning a pile of money, and retiring at age 46, Huizenga built an eclectic new empire, providing Floridians with bottled water, portable toilets, lawn care, and pest control. Then he purchased video-rental chain Blockbuster Corp., which he built into a 3,700-store entertainment conglomerate. Before long, he also owned three professional sports teams and Miami's Joe Robbie Stadium. DeGeorge describes his rise and rise--along with numerous crises, including a Securities & Exchange Commission probe of Waste Management and the Blockbuster-Viacom merger that prompted Huizenga to step down as chairman.
Presented here is chapter 5, "Video Venture: Taking Charge of Blockbuster," on Huizenga's early days at the video dealer.
Title: The Making of a Blockbuster: How Wayne Huizenga Built a Sports and Entertainment Empire from Trash, Grit, and Videotape
Author: Gail DeGeorge
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Inc.
Price: $24.95
Copyright: 1995 by Gail DeGeorge
ISBN: 0-471-12269-6
Reproduced by permission of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Publishers. To order call 1-800-225-5945 or visit your local bookseller.
The Mexican Shock
Jorge C. Castaneda's "The Mexican Shock: Its Meaning for the U.S." examines how ever-closer ties between the two countries, wrought in part by the North American Free Trade Agreement, will influence their economic and political development.
What NAFTA achieved for the U.S., the author says, was one of its "oldest and most persistent aspirations--Mexico's full incorporation into the American economic sphere and the subsequent political and international alignment of Mexico with Washington." But unforseen costs to the U.S. are rapidly mounting--a fact that will likely bring new strains in U.S.-Mexico relations. And there will be continuing strains within Mexico, as free-market reforms have failed to spread the wealth through society.
Castaneda is a professor at Mexico's National Autonomous University and a columnist for the Los Angeles Times. Presented here is Chapter 11, "Democracy and Inequality in Latin America: A Tension of the Times."
Title: The Mexican Shock: Its Meaning for the U.S.
Author: Jorge G. Castaneda
Publisher: The New Press
Price: $23
Copyright: 1995 by Jorge G. Castaneda
ISBN: 1-56584-311-8
All rights reserved. Presented by arrangement with The New Press. Available in major bookstores or direct from W.W. Norton at 1-800-233-4830.
The Ministry: How Japan's Most Powerful Institution Endangers World Markets
In his review of the book, BW's Robert Neff writes: "Conventional wisdom says that the long-mighty Ministry of Finance, the center of bureaucratic power in Japan's economy, is on its knees. Scandals, mismanagement, prosecutorial raids, public reprobation, and demands for reform certainly have it in a more defensive mode than ever. But absorb the lessons of The Ministry, and you'll grasp why the MOF is far from down for the count. At worst, it is bruised and a bit muddled.
"Using a dazzling mix of statistics, case studies, juicy anecdotes, and analysis, Peter Hartcher, an editor with The Australian Financial Review, mounts a compelling case for the ministry's longevity and preeminence. At the same time, he brilliantly limns the creation and deliberate bursting of Japan's asset bubble and the fallout for the financial industry, manufacturing sector, and bureaucracy. Reading this account is key to understanding the recent past and future of Japan's political economy."
Presented here are the introduction and first chapter, complete with footnotes.
Title: The Ministry: How Japan's Most Powerful Institution Endangers World Markets
Author: Peter Hartcher
Publisher: Harvard Business School Press
Price: $24.95
Copyright: 1998 by Peter Hartcher
ISBN: 0-87584-785-4
Reprinted by permission of Harvard Business School Press
All rights reserved. Available in major bookstores.
Mirage: (Washington budget wars)
Think federal budget wrangling is dull? Not in the hands of George Hager and Eric Pianin, authors of Mirage: Why Neither Democrats Nor Republicans Can Balance the Budget, End the Deficit And Satisfy the Public. Hager, a Congressional Quarterly budget reporter, and Pianin, a Washington Post congressional correspondent, "clearly are masters of the arcane budget process, but they have managed to create an account that is readily accessible to a mass audience," says Business Week reviewer Rick Dunham. At its core is "a cast of richly developed characters," from Ronald Reagan to Bob Dole.
To find out more, check out the excerpts from chapters of Mirage.
Title: Mirage: Why Neither Democrats Nor Republicans Can Balance the Budget, End the Deficit And Satisfy the Public
Author: George Hager and Eric Pianin
Publisher: Times Books
Price: $25
Copyright: 1997 by George Hager and Eric Pianin
ISBN: 0-8129-2452-5
Reprinted by permission of Random House Inc.
All rights reserved. Available at bookstores everywhere.
New and Improved: The Story of Mass Marketing in America
New and Improved: The Story of Mass Marketing in America is a fascinating history of the past hundred years of marketing. Concentrating on the wars between Coke and Pepsi, GM and Ford, A&P and its rivals, and Sears and Montgomery Ward, Tedlow's own new and improved edition -- the book was first published in 1990 -- can be read for its valuable marketing lessons ("inventory is the price a business pays for lack of information") or just as a fascinating window on days gone by.
Presented here is Chapter 2 of New and Improved (Coke vs. Pepsi), with an introduction written by the author specifically for Business Week Online.
Title: New and Improved: The Story of Mass Marketing in America
Author: Richard S. Tedlow
Publisher: Harvard Business School Press
Price: $17.95 (paper)
Copyright: 1996 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
ISBN: 0-87584-672-6
Reprinted by permission of Harvard Business School Press. Available at bookstores or by calling 1-800-988-0886 (617-496-1449 outside the U.S.).
Net Gain
To compete in the online economy, you must establish a new approach to product development, marketing, customer service, and distribution, say John Hagel III and Arthur G. Armstrong. In their book, Net Gain: Expanding Markets Through Virtual Communities, the duo describes how the rise of virtual communities in online networks has set in motion a shift in power from vendors of goods and services to the customers who buy them. Companies that understand this change and invest in it by organizing virtual communities will build unprecedented customer loyalty.
Want to know more? Check out Chapter 1 of Net Gain.
Title: Net Gain: Expanding Markets Through Virtual Communities
Authors: John Hagel III and Arthur G. Armstrong
Publisher: Harvard Business School Press
Price: $24.95
Copyright: 1997 by McKinsey & Company Inc.
ISBN: 0-87584-759-5
Reprinted by permission of Harvard Business School Press. All rights reserved. Available at bookstores everywhere.
The One Best Way
He abandoned plans to go to Harvard--opting to work as an apprentice in a machine shop instead. There, he rose through the ranks and began the time-and-motion studies that would make him famous. And he forged a philosophy--Scientific Management.
Frederick Winslow Taylor was a driven man who broke every job into its parts, sliced and trimmed them, and remolded what was left. He was, according to management guru Peter Drucker, one of the makers of the world as we know it.
Was he a slave driver--or a liberator who got higher wages for workers by applying scientific methods to work? A tool of management--or a dangerous radical who upset factory equilibrium? To find out more, check out chapter TK of The One Best Way.
Title: The One Best Way: Frederick Winslow Taylor and the Enigma of Efficiency
Author: Robert Kanigel
Publisher: Viking
Price: $34.95
Copyright: 1997 by Robert Kanigel
ISBN: 0-670-86402-1
Excerpted by permission of Penguin Books U.S.A. Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. Available at bookstores everywhere.
Ovitz
As a Creative Artists Agency talent agent and dealmaker, he was one of the most powerful men in Hollywood. Then, he became president of Walt Disney Co.--for 14 ill-fated months. "It was a stupid idea that I could come in and change this culture," he said as he made his way to the exit...with a severance package worth $125 million in hand.
Now, journalist Robert Slater has produced a behind-the-scenes account, appropriately titled Ovitz. Slater interviewed 150 box-office biggies, ranging from Tom Cruise to Paul Newman, in order to describe and evaluate Ovitz' career and legacy.
Curious? To find out more, download chapter from Ovitz.
Title: Ovitz
Author: Robert Slater
Publisher: McGraw-Hill
Price: $22.95
Copyright: 1997 by the McGraw-Hill Companies Inc.
ISBN: 0-07-058103-7
Excerpted by permission of the McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. Available at bookstores everywhere.
The Princessa: Machiavelli for Women
The Princessa isn't for everyone. Some readers will find it silly, others, too arch. Defensive males may discover evidence of a feminist conspiracy. But, says author Harriet Rubin, women need assistance in turning points of tension into opportunities for advantage. The Princessa's lessons may help them turn enemies into allies and fear into power--whether their obstacles are co-workers, clients, lovers or parents.
Rubin draws lessons from the lives of great female heroines, past and present. For more instruction, download chapter.
Title: The Princessa: Machiavelli for Women
Author: Harriet Rubin
Publisher: Currency/Doubleday
Price: $22
Copyright: 1997 by Harriet Rubin
ISBN: 0-385-475-373
Excerpted by permission of Currency, an imprint of Doubleday, a division of the Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. Available at bookstores everywhere.
Prosperity: The Coming Twenty-Year Boom and What It Means to You
From the review by BW's Kathleen Madigan: "In recent years, warnings of the U.S. middle class's imminent death have come thick and fast. Such books as The End of Affluence, by Jeffrey Madrick, and The Judas Economy, by Business Week Chief Economist William Wolman and Anne Colamosca, have described a host of economic predators moving in for the kill. But now comes an account offering a new ending: Not only does the middle class escape but it gets a fat raise, too.
"Wall Street Journal reporters Bob Davis and David Wessel assert in Prosperity that three forces--technology, globalization, and education--will, instead of hurting Americans, help them stay on top of the world and curb the widening domestic income gap. As a result of developments in these areas, say the authors, America's middle class will, within the next 20 years, gain better jobs and improve its standard of living. Much of Prosperity's analysis of technological developments and globalization is not new, although here the spin is positive. But the authors' take on education is fresh and heartening. And all in all, though the book suffers from overreporting, it offers a persuasive case that we're not going to economic hell in a handbasket."
Title: Prosperity: The Coming Twenty-Year Boom and What It Means to You
Author: Bob Davis and David Wessel
Publisher: Random House
Price:$27.50
Copyright: 1998 by Bob Davis and David Wessel
ISBN: 0-8129-2819-9
Excerpted by permission of Time Business, a division of Random House. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. Available at bookstores everywhere.
Real Change Leaders
When a team at consultants McKinsey & Co. set out to discover why some companies were more innovative and prone to growth than others, they concluded that "the make-or-break factor is not top management but a new breed in the middle." In Real Change Leaders: How You Can Create Growth and High Performance at Your Company, McKinsey authors Jon R. Katzenbach and the RCL Team report that these "change leaders" are the middle managers and professionals who apply a combination of tough performance standards with a fresh sense of how to motivate workers. Among the companies surveyed: General Electric Motors, Compaq, and oil refiner UNOCAL.
Presented here is an excerpt from Chapter 2, "Working Vision: You Find It in Their Hearts and Minds."
Title: Real Change Leaders: How You Can Create Growth and High Performance at Your Company
Author: Jon R. Katzenbach and the RCL Team
Publisher: Times Business
Price: $27.50
Copyright: 1995 by McKinsey & Company, Inc., United States
ISBN: 0-8129-2626-9
Available from your local bookstore or by calling 1-800-733-3000.
Reprinted by arrangement with Times Books, a division of Random House Inc.
The Reengineering Revolution--A Handbook
"The Reengineering Revolution--A Handbook," written by Michael Hammer and Steven A. Stanton, is a pragmatic, how-to guide for those seeking to implement the most important management concept in years: The book offers advice and guidelines for how to reengineer organizations.
Here's Chapter 8, "The Hardest Part of Reengineering." In it, Hammer and Stanton describe their ideas for overcoming resistance toreengineering within companies.
Title: The Reengineering Revolution--A Handbook
Authors: Michael Hammer and Steven A. Stanton
Publisher:HarperBusiness, a division of HarperCollins
Price: $15
Copyright 1995 by Hammer and Co.
ISBN0-88730-736-1
Available from bookstores everywhere, or by calling 1-800-236-7323
All Rights Reserved. Reprinted by arrangement with HarperBusiness, a division of HarperCollins.
Serpent on the Rock
Serpent on the Rock, by New York Times reporter Kurt Eichenwald, describes how Prudential-Bache Securities sold $8 billion in limited partnerships between 1980 and 1990--investments that proved to be worth far less than the prices they fetched, resulting in hundreds of millions in losses to investors. Writes Eichenwald: "People in every state and around the world awoke to realize that they had been victims of the most destructive fraud ever perpetrated on investors by Wall Street."
Title: Serpent on the Rock
Author: Kurt Eichenwald
Publisher: HarperBusiness
Price: $27.50
Copyright: 1995 by Kurt Eichenwald
ISBN: 0-88730-720-5
Available from bookstores everywhere, or by calling 1-800-236-7323.
All Rights Reserved. Reprinted by arrangement with HarperBusiness, a division of HarperCollins.
Secrets of the Street
When insider trading last hit the headlines, it was the late 1980s, and the resulting scandals sent Mike Milken, Ivan Boesky, and other hotshot financiers to jail. Does that mean that Wall Street is now a fair game? Hardly, says Gene G. Marcial, BUSINESS WEEK's "Inside Wall Street" columnist.
In the preface to Secrets of the Street: The Dark Side of Making Money, Marcial writes that ``it's still business as usual for Wall Street insiders. Unethical and sometimes illegal insider trading abounds. It happens daily, hourly, every minute of every day, and sometimes on Sunday too.''
Here's a chapter from the book.
Title:Secrets of the Street: The Dark Side of Making Money
Author: Gene G. Marcial
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Inc.
Price:$20
Copyright: 1995 by Gene G. Marcial
ISBN:0-07-040255-8
Available from bookstores everywhere, or by calling 1-800-2MCGRAW
A Simpler Way
"How could we organize human endeavor if we developed different understandings of how life organizes itself?" This is the fundamental question posed in A Simpler Way by Margaret J. Wheatley and Myron Kellner-Rogers. The authors say we should abandon our image of the universe as hostile and in need of ordering -- accepting instead the diversity, play, and "wild self-expression" of nature's own inventions. Combining prose, poetry, and photographic images, A Simpler Way offers executives a meditation on organization-building for a new millennium.
Here for your examination are two chapters, "Play" and "Organizing as Play,"fromA Simpler Way.
Title: A Simpler Way
Author: Margaret J. Wheatley and Myron Kellner-Rogers
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
Price: $27.95
Copyright: 1996 by Margaret J. Wheatley and Myron Kellner-Rogers
ISBN: 1-881052-95-8
Available from bookstores everywhere or directly from Berrett-Koehler at 415-288-0260.
All rights reserved. Reprinted by arrangement with Berrett-Koehler Publishers.
Success Is a Choice
What do motivators do? They help others to dream, says University of Kentucky basketball coach Rick Pitino. And in his book, Success is a Choice, Pitino helps readers to find self-esteem and begin to dream. Key to his method is the strategy of overachievement--by aiming higher and working harder than ever before, you can reach a level of success greater than you'd ever imagined, he says.
O.K., so the Kentucky Wildcats didn't achieve all their goals this season. But Pitino must know something--he's led Kentucky and Providence College to the final four, and the New York Knicks to the NBA playoffs.
For a fast-break glimpse of Pitino's ten-step method, download Chapter 1 of Success is a Choice.
Title: Success is a Choice: Ten Steps to Overachieving
in Business and Life
Author: Rick Pitino
Publisher: Broadway Books
Price: $25
Copyright: 1997 by Rick Pitino
ISBN: 0-553-06668-4
Reprinted by permission of Broadway Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved. Available at bookstores everywhere.
Trail Fever
And the winner is--Morry Taylor? Well, at least the Midwestern tiremaker was a winner in Michael Lewis' eyes: That's why the author followed the unlikely GOP Presidential candidate around during the 1996 campaign. Taylor's bellicose efforts, along with those of the other Presidential candidates, are described in high style in Lewis' Trail Fever: Spin Doctors, Rented Strangers, Thumb Wrestlers, Toe Suckers, Grizzly Bears, and Other Creatures on the Road to the White House.
As the title indicates, Lewis is a disciple of the irreverent, Hunter Thompson school of gonzo political reporting. He cares little about the issues of the campaign--what really counts, he believes, is the insanity of life on the campaign trail.
For a glimpse of that life, download chapterof Trail Fever.
Title: Trail Fever
Author: Michael Lewis
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Price: $25
Copyright: 1997 by Michael Lewis
ISBN: 0-679-44660-5
Excerpted by permission of Random House Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. Available at bookstores everywhere.
Walter Wriston, Citibank, and the Rise and Fall of American Financial Supremacy
Wriston: Walter Wriston, Citibank, and the Rise and Fall of American Financial Supremacy by Philip L. Zweig recounts the life of one of the most important bankers of modern times. Through such innovations as negotiable certificates of deposits, Eurodollars, and syndicated loans, the Citibank CEO revolutionized the industry. He became, in the words of BUSINESS WEEK Corporate Finance Editor Zweig, "the world's most influential banker." But this brilliant visionary was also a lackluster manager who allowed Citibank to become hobbled by political rivalries, bureaucratic miasma--and ultimately by a huge foray into Latin American lending.
Presented here for downloading is the final chapter and epilogue of Wriston.
Title: Wriston: Walter Wriston, Citibank, and the Rise and Fall of American Financial Supremacy
Author: Philip L. Zweig
Publisher: Crown
Price: $40
Copyright: 1995 by Philip L. Zweig
ISBN: 0-517-58423-9
Reprinted by permission of Crown Publishers Inc. Available from bookstores everywhere or by calling 1-800-793-BOOK.
We Can't Eat Prestige: the Women Who Organized Harvard
We Can't Eat Prestige: the Women Who Organized Harvard tells the story of a 15-year struggle to form a union from the staff employees--office and lab workers--at Harvard University. Encouraged by the women's movement of the early 1970s, the group of women (and a few men) persisted in their fight, even, says Hoerr, when faced by patronizing and sexist attitudes of university administrators and leaders of their own national unions. This human drama was played out between lab assistant Kris Rondeau and powerful educators such as Harvard President Derek Bok -- from National Labor Relations Board hearings to Harvard Yard to the Streets of Cambridge.
Hoerr, who gives the point of view of both Harvard administrators and labor organizers, is aided by unusual access to the union's meetings, leaders, and files, helping him examine the unique culture of a female-led union from the inside.
Presented here for downloading is the first chapter of We Can't Eat Prestige.
Title: We Can't Eat Prestige: the Women Who Organized Harvard
Author: John Hoerr
Publisher: Temple University Press
Copyright: 1997 by John Hoerr
ISBN: 1-56639-535-6
Reprinted by permission of Temple University Press. Available from bookstores everywhere.
Webonomics: Nine Essential Principles for Growing Your Business on the World Wide Web
Tempted to put up a Web page and see who salutes? First, you should consider carefully what you're doing, says Evan I. Schwartz, author of Webonomics: Nine Essential Principles for Growing Your Business on the World Wide Web -- because it's not as simple as it looks. Schwartz refers to numerous case studies of such corporations as IBM, Volvo, Playboy Enterprises, and Wells Fargo Bank to demonstrate the tremendous possibilities for success -- and failure.
Some products, says the author, are better suited to being sold on the Web than others. New patterns of consumer behavior are emerging. And it's becoming ever harder to capture one commodity: the attention of busy Web browsers.
For a glimpse of Schwartz's wisdom, download the Introduction to Webonomics.
Title: Webonomics: Nine Essential Principles for Growing Your Business on the World Wide Web
Author: Evan I. Schwartz
Publisher: Broadway Books
Price: $25
Copyright: 1997 by Evan I. Schwartz
ISBN: 0-553-06172-0
Reprinted by permission of Broadway Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group Inc. Available from bookstores everywhere.
Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences
Edward Tenner's Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences is a readable epic of human folly. The "unsinkable" Titanic sank, the author tells us, because its captain and crew felt so safe that they steamed through iceberg-strewn waters at high speed. Computers were supposed to end physical drudgery--but instead have produced a rash of overuse injuries such as carpal tunnel syndrome. ddt was promoted as effective against bugs and harmless to people; but its widespread application proved lethal to birds, toxic to humans--and ultimately ineffective against insects, which only grew tougher and more resilient.
Such examples of things biting back are cited as "revenge effects" by Tenner, a former executive editor at Princeton University Press. The boomerang results occur because we seek too often to subdue nature rather than live with it. But the author goes beyond listing the excesses of technology. Rather than raging against the machine, he favors using technology wisely and conservatively. "Reducing revenge effects," he says, "demands substituting brains for stuff."
Presented here is chapter 5 from Why Things Bite Back.
Title: Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences
Author: Edward Tenner
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf Inc.
Price: $26
Copyright: 1996 by Edward Tenner
ISBN: 0-679-42563-2
Available from bookstores everywhere or directly from Random House at 1-800-793-BOOK.
All rights reserved. Reprinted by arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf
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