Synopses & Reviews
From merchant ships to microchips, industry has been defined by the powerful business leaders who have caused seismic shifts in the growth of commerce. These visionaries introduced themselves, their products, and their ideas at just the right moments in time, unwittingly bringing about the defining change of the last millennium-the transfer of money and power from Church and crown to the new secular empire of business.
The companion book to the acclaimed CNBC documentary created by Emmy award-winning producer and director David Grubin, Money and Power takes readers on a gripping journey to the birthplaces of business-from the feudal estates of medieval Europe to the teeming streets of ancient Venice to the serene campuses of Silicon Valley. Written by top-notch journalist, editor, and novelist Howard Means, this sweeping narrative tells a dramatic tale of how pathbreaking moguls and their dynasties paved the way to wealth and prosperity and shaped the modern world.
Tracing the origins of trade, banking, industry, commerce, and power from East to West, this inspiring book transports the reader to the bustling centers of business across time. Inside are revealing, motivational profiles of such legendary figures as:
* St. Godric, the twelfth-century monk whose fierce ambition helped him break free of his confines and create his own wealth-until his faith led him along a different path
* Robert Woodruff, who took advantage of a shrinking globe and a second world war to create the first global brand-Coca-Cola
* James Watt and Matthew Boulton, who launched the rotary steam engine just as industry was bursting forth with new energy demands
* Henry Ford, who not only built automobiles but also the market demand for them-making him richer than even the Carnegies and the Rockefellers
* Bill Gates, whose entrepreneurial instincts and technological brilliance earned him the fame and fortune that embodied the Information Age
Following the march of industry from the oceans and the railroads to the highways and cyberspace, Money and Power is a testament to the drive and innovativeness of these economic pioneers-and to the resulting remarkable global connections that have finally opened the road to riches to all.
Review
"Means threads together historical events as he illustrates past innovations and emerging patterns. The results are quite intriguing--unless you were already well aware of the similarities between the tulip craze that took control of the Dutch market in the early 17th century and the current tech-stock debacle."—eCompany Now, April 2001
Synopsis
Where there's greed and ambition you'll find . . .
Money & Power
From the pivotal spice trade routes to the streets where merchants sold their wares . . .from the royal court of Spain where a faulty economic plan led to ruin to early American industrial capitals and assembly lines . . . from the fever pitch of Wall Street to the groundbreaking moments in television and motion picture history.
CNBC's acclaimed documentary Money and Power deftly traces the movement of trade, banking, industry, and commerce from East to West, from ancient times to modern. Now this companion book provides an expansive global view of the moguls and dynasties that have defined business in the last millennium. Featuring a Foreword by the documentary's award-winning creator, David Grubin, Money and Power offers important lessons that are of timeless value-and inspiration for the next generation of groundbreakers and visionaries of business.
"You may think a twelfth-century monk has nothing in common with Bill Gates. In Money and Power Howard Means shows you how they relate, providing a highly readable and fascinating overview of a dozen of the most charismatic business personalities the world has known."-Janet Gleeson, author of Millionaire: The Philanderer, Gambler, and Duelist Who Invented Modern Finance
Synopsis
The dramatic story of greed, money, power, and the moguls and dynasties that have shaped businessFrom merchant ships to microchips, industry has been defined by the powerful business leaders who have caused seismic shifts in the growth of commerce. The companion book to the acclaimed CNBC documentary, Money and Power takes readers on a gripping journey following the movement of power from east to west-from the feudal estates of medieval Europe to the halls of modern finance, from the teeming streets of ancient Venice to the serene campuses of Silicon Valley-to tell the story of how business shaped the modern world, and how the goals of a few ambitious people paved the way to the wealth and prosperity shared by so much of the world's population today.
A dramatic narrative focusing on the groundbreakers throughout history-from St. Godric, the twelfth-century monk reviled for his love of money to Bill Gates, the contemporary embodiment of money and power-traces the roots of banking, industry, commerce, and power. Fever-pitch moments in the book center around pivotal figures such as Cosimo de Medici, Philip II, the Rothschilds, J. P. Morgan, the Rockefellers, Henry Ford and others. The authors also extract important lessons about the strategies and tactics used to build these business empires.
Synopsis
A dramatic narrative focusing on the groundbreakers throughout history-from St. Godric, the twelfth-century monk reviled for his love of money to Bill Gates, the contemporary embodiment of money and power-traces the roots of banking, industry, commerce, and power. Fever-pitch moments in the book center around pivotal figures such as Cosimo de Medici, Philip II, the Rothschilds, J. P. Morgan, the Rockefellers, Henry Ford and others. The authors also extract important lessons about the strategies and tactics used to build these business empires.
Synopsis
HOWARD MEANS is a Senior Editor at Washingtonian magazine and the author/coauthor of several books, including The 500 Year Delta, The Visionary's Handbook, Colin Powell: A Biography, and the novel C.S.A. He has won two William Allen White medals for writing, and his books have been published in over ten countries and appeared on business bestseller lists.
DAVID GRUBIN is a producer, director, writer, and cinematographer who has won eight Emmy awards and three prizes from the Writer's Guild. He has produced over 100 films on subjects ranging from art and history to poetry and science, including the renowned five-part PBS series "Healing and the Mind with Bill Moyers" and the documentaries "LBJ," "FDR," "Truman," "TR: The Story of Theodore Roosevelt," and "Napoleon." Grubin is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and has been a Montgomery Fellow at Dartmouth College.
About the Author
Many of us take for granted that each day we can go out and buy pretty much anything we want, stop at Starbucks for coffee and go home to buy more stuff online--if we have the cash, that is.
How we got to this point--the world of business so seamlessly woven into our everyday lives--is the story of Howard Means' engrossing, fast-paced Money Power: The History of Business.
The book began life as a TV documentary on CNBC, produced by David Grubin and narrated by the late Jason Robards. Means was working from the show's cript, but he added new material, and his book stands easily on its own as a separate work of scholarship.
Trying to tell the history of business in 274 pages (or 2 hours of TV time) is quite the challenge, and Money Power is bound to start some arguments by what it leaves out. For instance, you'll find nothing on famed English economist Adam Smith (1723-1790), known primarily for The Wealth of Nations. IBM turns up as a bit player in the chapter on Bill Gates and cyberspace.
Retail dynasties such as Sears and Wal-Mart also are absent. The book (and TV show) went for people and personalities rather than institutions. One early example of entrepreneurship: the English seagoing trader Godric, born circa 1065, later to become St. Godric. We don't often think of businessmen as saints, and indeed, Godric didn't achieve sainthood for what he did as a trader. Sainthood came for his selfless life after he gave away his money and lived as a hermit, writing poetry and befriending wild animals.
This book has plenty of people who practiced questionable ethics.
Gates is portrayed as ruthless, but his philanthropy and desire to eventually give away most of his fortune are duly noted.
The story of Time Warner (leading up to the recent merger with AOL), is partially presented as a blend of class (Henry Luce, founder of Time Inc.) and crass (the Warner brothers). Yet, Means contends one company needed the other to thrive in the ruthless media competition of the late 20th century, just as that behemoth needed to bulk up even more by merging with AOL at the dawn of the 21st.
Another pair who needed each other was James Watt and Matthew Boulton. Watt's steam engine may have been revolutionary, but he would have gone nowhere fast without the entrepreneurial, numbers-oriented Boulton.
Watt had already failed on his own, and his previous partner, Scottish iron manufacturer John Roebuck, went bankrupt. The happy union of Watt and Boulton helped usher in the Industrial Age, just as Luce's publications (Time, Life and Fortune) did for the Information Age early in the 20th century. In the book (and the documentary), one subject flows into another to get us where we are now, with our economy ever more dependent on computers and the Internet.
Means brings his subjects to life, whether they are names plucked out of history or modern times, such as super salesman Robert Woodruff, who turned sugar and water into gold by marketing Coca-Cola all over the globe, making us desire a product that we could just as easily live without.
Woodruff's tale demonstrates that life in this country is full of second chances. A marketing whiz but an indifferent student, he lasted but one semester at Emory University in his hometown of Atlanta. When he died at the age of 95 in 1985 (spared by a month of knowing about the New Coke formula-change fiasco), he had donated $200 million to the school.
Money Power makes the case that life today, without great business people, would make us poorer in pocket and spirit.--USA TODAY, May 21, 2001
Table of Contents
Foreword by David Grubin.
Introduction.
St. Godric: God and Profit.
Cosimo de' Medici: Putting Money to Work.
Philip II: Wealth without Wisdom.
Tulipmania: Sharing the Greed.
James Watt and Matthew Boulton: Turning Evolution into Revolution.
The Transcontinental Railroad: Rouges and Visionaries.
J. Pierpont Morgan: The American Colossus.
John D. Rockefeller: Organizing the Octopus.
Henry Ford: Building Cars and the Markets for Them.
Robert Woodruff: The Brand's the Thing.
Time Warner: Turning Opposite Cultures to Common Advantage.
Bill Gates and Cyberspace: The Dematerialized Future.
Acknowledgments.
Source Notes.
Photo Credits.
Index.