front cover of Inventing the Electronic Century
Inventing the Electronic Century
The Epic Story of the Consumer Electronics and Computer Industries, With a New Preface
Alfred D. Chandler Jr.
Harvard University Press, 2005
Consumer electronics and computers redefined life and work in the twentieth century. In Inventing the Electronic Century, Pulitzer Prize–winning business historian Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., traces their origins and worldwide development. From electronics prime mover RCA in the 1920s to Sony and Matsushita’s dramatic rise in the 1970s; from IBM’s dominance in computer technology in the 1950s to Microsoft’s stunning example of the creation of competitive advantage, this masterful analysis is essential reading for every manager and student of technology.
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The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt
Harvard University Press

The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt constitute a major contribution to the field of American history and literature. At the same time, they present an autobiography of matchless candor and vitality. They are at once a mine of information for the historian, a case study in astute and vigorous political leadership, and a delight to the general reader. All the letters needed to reveal Roosevelt's thought and action in his public and private life are included, with appropriate editorial comment; and each is printed in its entirety.

With the addition of this final installment, about 6,000 letters will have been published out of the 100,000 which Theodore Roosevelt wrote between 1868 (when he was 10) and the day of his death in January, 1919. During the last ten years of his life Roosevelt plunged into the African jungle; he visited Kaiser Wilhelm II; he led the Progressive Movement, and as a Bull Moose was defeated in 1912—permitting Woodrow Wilson to defeat William Howard Taft for the Presidency. Then, explorer once again, he escaped with his life from the wilds of Brazil, campaigned for United States' participation in World War One, and died peacefully as his cousin was on the threshold of a dynamic career.

Theodore Roosevelt's letters are a treasury of information about the issues, the people, and the temper of his period. Here are available documents which tell of his thought and action in all the major and many of the minor undertakings of his public and private life. Each letter is printed in its entirety. Both in content and presentation, The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt constitute a contribution to the field of American history and literature whose value can hardly be exaggerated. At the same time they present an autobiography of matchless candor and vitality.

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The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt
Harvard University Press

The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt constitute a major contribution to the field of American history and literature. At the same time, they present an autobiography of matchless candor and vitality. They are at once a mine of information for the historian, a case study in astute and vigorous political leadership, and a delight to the general reader. All the letters needed to reveal Roosevelt's thought and action in his public and private life are included, with appropriate editorial comment; and each is printed in its entirety.

With the addition of this final installment, about 6,000 letters will have been published out of the 100,000 which Theodore Roosevelt wrote between 1868 (when he was 10) and the day of his death in January, 1919. During the last ten years of his life Roosevelt plunged into the African jungle; he visited Kaiser Wilhelm II; he led the Progressive Movement, and as a Bull Moose was defeated in 1912—permitting Woodrow Wilson to defeat William Howard Taft for the Presidency. Then, explorer once again, he escaped with his life from the wilds of Brazil, campaigned for United States' participation in World War One, and died peacefully as his cousin was on the threshold of a dynamic career.

Theodore Roosevelt's letters are a treasury of information about the issues, the people, and the temper of his period. Here are available documents which tell of his thought and action in all the major and many of the minor undertakings of his public and private life. Each letter is printed in its entirety. Both in content and presentation, The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt constitute a contribution to the field of American history and literature whose value can hardly be exaggerated. At the same time they present an autobiography of matchless candor and vitality.

[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt
Harvard University Press

The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt constitute a major contribution to the field of American history and literature. At the same time, they present an autobiography of matchless candor and vitality. They are at once a mine of information for the historian, a case study in astute and vigorous political leadership, and a delight to the general reader. All the letters needed to reveal Roosevelt's thought and action in his public and private life are included, with appropriate editorial comment; and each is printed in its entirety.

In the letters of 1905–1909, Roosevelt’s “big stick” carries increasing weight at home and abroad. These are the years of the fleet’s cruise around the world, of trust-busting and railroad regulation and currency control, and the building of the Panama Canal. They include the Panic of 1907, “Nature Faking,” conservation, the choice of a successor, and the bitter conflict between President and Congress in the closing days of the administration.

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logo for Harvard University Press
The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt
Harvard University Press

The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt constitute a major contribution to the field of American history and literature. At the same time, they present an autobiography of matchless candor and vitality. They are at once a mine of information for the historian, a case study in astute and vigorous political leadership, and a delight to the general reader. All the letters needed to reveal Roosevelt's thought and action in his public and private life are included, with appropriate editorial comment; and each is printed in its entirety.

In the letters of 1905–1909, Roosevelt’s “big stick” carries increasing weight at home and abroad. These are the years of the fleet’s cruise around the world, of trust-busting and railroad regulation and currency control, and the building of the Panama Canal. They include the Panic of 1907, “Nature Faking,” conservation, the choice of a successor, and the bitter conflict between President and Congress in the closing days of the administration.

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Managerial Hierarchies
Comparative Perspectives on the Rise of the Modern Industrial Enterprise
Alfred D. Chandler Jr.
Harvard University Press, 1980

The concept of the “visible hand” in big business enterprise, so persuasively and brilliantly argued in Alfred D. Chandler, Jr.’s prize-winning The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business, is tested and extended in this book. These essays show that the growth and complexity of managerial hierarchies (“visible hands”) in large business firms are central to the organization of modern industrial activity. Leading American and European historians retrace and compare the historical evolution of the contemporary giant managerial hierarchies in the United States, Britain, Germany, and France.

The first group of essays—by Chandler, Leslie Hannah, Jürgen Kocka, and Maurice Lévy-Leboyer—explores the rise of modern industrial enterprise in the West. They suggest the mechanisms and causes of the shift from the invisible hand of market coordination to the visible hand of managerial hierarchies, and attempt to pinpoint cultural and economic reasons for the persistence of transitional forms of organization in Europe. Other essays—by Morton Keller and Oliver E. Williamson—describe the legal and regulatory responses to the rise of big business and the implications of the history of the managerial revolution for students of economic development and industrial organization. The final essay, by Herman Daems, provides an overall analysis of the reasons managerial hierarchies replaced market mechanisms and agreements among firms as devices for coordination and the allocation of resources in advanced market economies.

This fresh study of the managerial revolution presents recent theoretical reflections in institutional economics and industrial organization in the light of new historical findings.

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front cover of Scale and Scope
Scale and Scope
The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism
Alfred D. Chandler Jr.
Harvard University Press, 1990

Scale and Scope is Alfred Chandler’s first major work since his Pulitzer Prize–winning The Visible Hand. Representing ten years of research into the history of the managerial business system, this book concentrates on patterns of growth and competitiveness in the United States, Germany, and Great Britain, tracing the evolution of large firms into multinational giants and orienting the late twentieth century’s most important developments.

This edition includes the entire hardcover edition with the exception of the Appendix Tables.

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front cover of Shaping the Industrial Century
Shaping the Industrial Century
The Remarkable Story of the Evolution of the Modern Chemical and Pharmaceutical Industries
Alfred D. Chandler Jr.
Harvard University Press, 2009

The dean of business historians continues his masterful chronicle of the transforming revolutions of the twentieth century begun in Inventing the Electronic Century.

Alfred Chandler argues that only with consistent attention to research and development and an emphasis on long-term corporate strategies could firms remain successful over time. He details these processes for nearly every major chemical and pharmaceutical firm, demonstrating why some companies forged ahead while others failed.

By the end of World War II, the chemical and pharmaceutical industries were transformed by the commercializing of new learning, the petrochemical and the antibiotic revolutions. But by the 1970s, chemical science was no longer providing the new learning necessary to commercialize more products, although new directions flourished in the pharmaceutical industries. In the 1980s, major drug companies, including Eli Lilly, Merck, and Schering Plough, commercialized the first biotechnology products, and as the twenty-first century began, the infrastructure of this biotechnology revolution was comparable to that of the second industrial revolution just before World War I and the information revolution of the 1960s. Shaping the Industrial Century is a major contribution to our understanding of the most dynamic industries of the modern era.

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front cover of The Visible Hand
The Visible Hand
The Managerial Revolution in American Business
Alfred D. Chandler Jr.
Harvard University Press, 1977

The role of large-scale business enterprise—big business and its managers—during the formative years of modern capitalism (from the 1850s until the 1920s) is delineated in this pathmarking book. Alfred Chandler, Jr., the distinguished business historian, sets forth the reasons for the dominance of big business in American transportation, communications, and the central sectors of production and distribution.

The managerial revolution, presented here with force and conviction, is the story of how the visible hand of management replaced what Adam Smith called the “invisible hand” of market forces. Chandler shows that the fundamental shift toward managers running large enterprises exerted a far greater influence in determining size and concentration in American industry than other factors so often cited as critical: the quality of entrepreneurship, the availability of capital, or public policy.

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