The Business of America: Tales from the Marketplace--American Enterprise from the Settling Fo New England to the Breakup of At&T [ペーパーバック]

Ten years' worth of writing, these forty-seven essays capture illumuniating anecdotes about economic history, captured in the stories of people, ideas and moments in time. Booms and depressions, clever inventions and failed plans, tough competitors and grandoise government schemes all receive their due.

There is the story of King Cotton and how the gin made it profitable. Gordon reports on the California Gold Rush, the first television syndication (that's how Desi Arnaz earns a cover picture on an economic history book), war economies, the decision to build the World Trade towers (an eerie story to read today), steamboat races, railroad competition and more, each in pithy, five-page synopses of major historic studies or records. Brief as they are, there is not always a full story, but the histories leave the read impressed and engaged.

Gordon highlights well-known phrases, e.g., "The business of America is business," "The public be damned!" and explains how they came about (and the myths around same). Before we spoke of people "going postal", Gordon writes about the now-lapsed term, "postalization", another idea entirely.

In "The American Game" he shows how baseball is unique in that it was a business and not just a sport from its early years. A strange business, yes, where today "semiserfdom" of ballplayers has produced average annual salaries of $2.38 million and an industry prone to "work stoppages" and seemingly on the brink of disaster.

The better stories are of the visionaries who made and managed business in America, including the man who spent his personal fortune to make milk safe to drink for millions and the unsung heroes who saved businesses from failure. This is a good education for those who don't understand or who doubt the power of free markets, an idea whose time has come, or simply the American dream as it has been lived.

We love stories. Since the time human beings crawled out of caves, stories have been the way that we pack lots of information into a digestible package. John Steele Gordon is a great storyteller, and this book is full of great business stories.

If your idea of the business book is the macroeconomics text that you slogged through when you were in college, the Business of America will come as a pleasant surprise. You'll find yourself engaged with the material and learning a lot about the history of American business and how business is done that you simply wouldn't get any other way.

Gordon writes the "The Business of America" column for American Heritage Magazine, and the stories that he tells there are the stories he tells here. He has divided the books into several sections. There are stories of the early days of the American dream that focus on the first years of Europeans on this continent up through about the Civil War. Other sections are divided into topical areas, such as Farming and Food, Manufacturing and Mining, Transportation, Banking, the Business of War, Business and Government, Retailing and Real Estate, and the Telegraph, Telephone, and Television. The final section is called After Hours.

Each of these sections includes several stories. There wasn't a single one of them where I didn't underline something or put an exclamation point in the margin, or write a note to myself. These stories are insightful, because Gordon understands the basics of how business works and the oddities of the human condition.

There are several stories that deal with how technology, in this case the cotton gin and the sewing machine and the steam engine, transformed whole industries. Gordon backs up his stories with facts.

For example, in the section called, "King Cotton," Gordon tells us: "Only five hundred thousand pounds of cotton were spun into thread - all by hand - in 1765. Twenty years later, sixteen million pounds were spun, by machine, and the price of cotton cloth had dropped from the caviar range to the mere smoked salmon bracket.

That illustrated the effect of the power loom on the spinning of cotton, but later in the same chapter, Gordon comes up with another statistic and description to describe how Eli Whitney's cotton gin transformed the cotton industry still further. "Whitney's machine could be built in an hour or so by any competent carpenter and worked by a single laborer, increasing his productivity fully fifty times. In a stroke, Whitney had reduced the labor cost of ginning from the dominant component in the cost of cotton cloth to a mere triviality. And the cost of cotton cloth dropped, as a result, from the smoked salmon range to the fish and chips bracket."

That's how of Gordon works and writes. He includes the stories and the statistics and the conclusions in a wonderful mix that delights, entertains, and informs.

If you are a businessperson, this book is for you because you will learn about how others before you have faced some of the same challenges that you face. You'll learn about how the economic wheel tends to revolve and good times follow bad, and times of great change follow times of stagnation. You'll be a better and more effective businessperson after reading this book.

This book is also for you if you think business is boring. Those of us who are in business know that it's endlessly fascinating and filled with things to learn, as well as with opportunities for profit. But the media as a whole tend to reduce business to the stock market and ignore the true human drama of what goes on. They miss some of the best stories, because they start from the assumption that the most interesting things in the world have to do with almost anything but business.

That's a point that Gordon makes at some length in the chapter called, "No Respect." It opens with this line, "If Rodney Dangerfield weren't a comedian, he would probably be an executive. Executives don't get any respect, either."

From there, Gordon goes on to point out that many famous inventors were not the people responsible for the changes in society brought about by their inventions. Alexander Graham Bell, invented the telephone, and has a giant entry in the Encyclopedia Britannica. But it washis father-in-law, Gardiner Greene Hubbart, who put together the system that became A T & T; and, not only made a lot of money for himself and Bell, but also changed the shape of the country.

In that example and dozens of others throughout this book, Gordon shows us the romance that goes with the business of America.

As my review of The Great Game indicates, I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and enjoyed reading this book every bit as much. Gordon combines the skills of an disciplined historian with those of a consummate storyteller. In this volume, he provides "tales from the marketplace -- American enterprise from the settling of New England to the breakup of AT&T." The scope and depth of coverage provide the reader with a unique perspective on subjects which range from "The Early Days of the American Dream" until "The Telegraph, Telephone and Television."

In the last of ten Parts, "After Hours,"Gordon shifts his attention to:

"The American Game" in which he explains that, "Like all great team sports (except basketball, baseball arose spontaneously from the human race's collective genius for play. Its ultimate origins lie in a game called rounders, played by village boys in England since time immemorial. Variations of rounders were known in both England and America by many other names, and one called baseball is even mentioned by Jane Austen in Northanger Abbey, written about 1798."

Also to "Saint [Nathan] Straus" who, along with other members of his family, did so much to improve the quality of life in America. "In the course of his crusade [to provide pasteurized milk to as many children as possible], Straus established at his own expense 297 milk stations in 36 cities. Over the course of 25 years, 24 million glasses and bottles of safe milk were dispenses. The national death rate for children fell from 125.1 per 1,000 in 1891 to 15.8 per 1,000 in 1925, mostly thanks to pasteurization. Altogether it is estimated that the efforts of Nathan Straus directly saved the lives of 445,8000 children."

And to "The Philanthropist" (Peter Cooper). Having accumulated vast wealth, Cooper reached "the third stage of his life, the phase devoted to good works. He had always served on endless boards established to improve the quality of life in New York City. Now he resolved to do something more concrete. He established the Cooper Union in 1857 `for the advancement of science and art.' The building itself was interesting, being the first `fireproof' building erected in the country (using cast-iron beams manufactured, of course, by Peter Cooper). In 1860, Abraham Lincoln gave his `House Divided' speech there."

There are hundreds of other brief excerpts from which I could also have selected a few to indicate how interesting, indeed compelling historical information can be when presented by one so gifted as Gordon. He has a keen eye for the especially meaningful detail, the defining moment, and the transcendent situation. Those who are interested in learning more about the subjects covered are provided with a comprehensive Bibliography. This is an immensely entertaining as well as informative book. Were a higher rating available, I would give it to this book as well as to Gordon's The Great Game.