Robert Sobel è stato un professore di storia americano e un distinto autore di storie aziendali. Nonostante i suoi prolifici scritti in questo campo, è più rinomato per il suo unico romanzo, "For Want of a Nail", una storia alternativa degli Stati Uniti. Quest'opera approfondisce avvincenti scenari "e se", offrendo ai lettori un'affascinante esplorazione del potenziale sviluppo della nazione. La distintiva voce narrativa di Sobel e la sua profonda conoscenza storica lo rendono un narratore memorabile.
Traces the beginning of IBM from its beginnings as the National Cash Register under Thomas Watson, Sr., showing how it forged ahead of all others and defined the electronic world.
This revealing book, which describes the struggles for leadership and AMEX's return from near-disaster to a position of respect, is a must for anyone who has ever done any stock trading.
Robert Sobel portrays this giant conglomerate "as an organizing principle and a force more than anything else," but one lacking cohesion.
The Penn Central debacle has much to teach investors, businessmen, and financiers about giant corporations caught in economic recessions or industries suffering a slow decline.
This fascinating book shows how the New York securities market, with its promise of great wealth and its equally devastating disappointments, is a vital link in the history of American economic growth.
Focusing on the dynamic world of post-World War II American capitalism, the narrative explores the rise and decline of conglomerates, highlighting the innovative yet ruthless entrepreneurs who drove this movement. It details the origins and expansion of these multiform companies, revealing how they leveraged a booming stock market to amass wealth through strategic acquisitions. The book profiles key figures like Royal Little and Harold Geneen, offering an in-depth look at their ambitious careers and the factors that led to the eventual downfall of the conglomerate era.
The story of the perpetrators of some of the most dizzing and daring financial machinations.
A well-researched, informative book in which Robert Sobel, the noted financial historian, explores the lives and careers of nine representative innovators in business during the last 200 years, men frequently overlooked by contemporary social and political historians: Francis Cabot Lowell, John Wanamaker, Cyrus McCormick, James Hill, James Duke, Theodore Vail, Marcus Loew, Donald Douglas, and Royal Little. Each one was selected to illustrate a different aspect of American business tradition. All share the ability to grasp opportunity and to oppose conventional wisdom when necessary, both of which contributed to the fabric of modern corporate life. In the aggregate they created new organizational traditions that were imitated throughout the Western world. Book jacket.
A recreation of the periods of great risk and speculation in American history, this original and fascinating book explores the giant Vandalia land venture that involved George Washington in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, the disastrous canal-building schemes that enticed investors during the 1880s, the giant steel company consolidations that were formed at the turn of the century, the ill-facted Florida land boom of the 1920s, and the recent conglomerate craze. Robert Sobel traces the vicissitudes of investor sentiment at each succeeding folly. The Money Manias is an anatomy of American speculation that provides an interesting perspective on the American risk-taking and entrepreneurial character.
Analyzes the practices of the outdoor securities market of lower Manhattan from the late 18th century to 1921 and shows the impact of government investigation and legislation on Wall Street.