5 comments about Citizen Coors: A Grand Family Saga of Business, Politics, and Beer.

1. Even tho' this is a business book, I found it hard to put down. The author writes in such a way as told hold you spellbound to see what the next gaff the Coors family will make. I found that while Coors made a superb beer, they were clueless to the realities of contemperary marketing, and image building. They were lucky to survive. The book made me want to get an update on the brewers current status! Very enjoyable!!



2. That you can walk into just about any convenience store in America today and find Coors Light on the shelf should be considered one of the great miracles of modern business.

   Founded in 1876 by Prussian immigrant Adolph Coors, the Coors Brewing Company prospered in its early years by focusing its full attention on making consistently great beer. A century later, Coors' business practices made it look as if were hopelessly stuck in the nineteenth century. Led then by the two staunchly conservative grandsons of Adolph (Bill and Joe), Coors did it's best to pretty much piss off everyone who had ever had anything to do with the company. The brothers were determined, at all costs, to run Coors the way they saw fit. This meant getting rid of the unions (through strong-armed
   and often illegal tactics); shunning the concept of marketing (believing that Coors, because of it's strict adherence to quality, sold itself); completely ignoring modern business practices (no accountants, no legal department, no debt); alienating their network of distributors and retailers with idiosyncratic rules for handling Coors products; aggravating customers with nearly impossible-to-open beer cans; and, in the case of Joe Coors, spreading extremely conservative ideological venom wherever he went.

   Joe Coors used profits from the brewery to establish the Heritage Foundation (the right-wing's answer to the Brookings Institution), and through this jackboot organization, pretty much got Ronald Regan elected President in 1980. Joe's politics, along with Coors treatment of its employees, minorities, women, gays, and the unions, led to one of the most successful, and still on going, consumer product boycotts in American history.

   Citizen Coors tells the whole story from the beginning. It reads like a novel. That I have any sympathy for the Coors family, at all, is a testament to the careful writing of the author, Dan Baum. Coors, at times, is presented to the reader as the misunderstood protagonist; with the media, unions, and leftist groups out to destroy Coors for no good reason. And hindsight about the reality of modern marketing almost makes your heart pull for Coors as you read about every marketing misstep they took throughout the 1960's and 70's. By the early 80's, it would have been hard to find a company the size of Coors that was more poorly managed. Coors would more than likely have capitulated had Joe Coors' son, Peter, not learned to stand up to his father and to accept the reality in which Coors found itself in. Peter, though, was plagued with self-doubt about his own abilities as a leader, but to his credit, was smart enough to look outside the Coors cocoon for answers. In the end, the family had to acquiesce it's near-totalitarian control of the company to the slick marketers it had always loathed.

   This is a remarkable book about family, the evolution of American business, and the failures of the labor movement coupled with the rise of conservatism in this country. Dan Baum has done his research. I question how he would be privy to a century's worth of private conversations between Coors' family members (as they did not cooperate very much with the author). But, I'm willing to suspend disbelief in favor of the overall story. If you're into history, politics, and enjoy a good beer now and again, you'll love Citizen Coors.




3. I loved this book. Very neat in learning the family history of the Coors, their role in politics and how all this was reflected in their family brewery business. I would recommend this book to my family and friends.



4. The saga of the Coors family has all the makings of a great movie. It tells a great story that involves: politics (Reagan), labor tensions, sex scandals, suicides and ecology. Ultimately it shows both the triumphs and pitfalls of stubbornly committing to only doing things the way you see fit.
   
   I grew up in Colorado and knew a lot about the company, but still found this informative. Believe it or not, we used to go to the Coors Brewery for school field trips and I had some frends whose father's worked there in the late 70s. The labor discussions brought back memories.
   
   This book is objectively written and reads more like a novel. I find the labor issues very interesting with both the ugly side of both management and union tactics presented. However, it paints a more negative view of organized labor and the lengths they will go when a comapany does not want to 'play ball'.



5. An eye opener to how a bunch of wealthy disfunctional sad people shaped and strengthened the conservative right. Well written, comprehensive, engaging.

No comments about Bearly Believable: My Part in the Paddington Bear Story.

5 comments about The Rise of Silas Lapham (Signet Classics).

1. William Dean Howells's "The Rise of Silas Lapham" is one of the earliest American novels about a businessman, and that qualification alone makes it a literary curiosity, but what is most remarkable about it is what its title character is not, rather than what he is. Silas Lapham is not a ruthless, villainously greedy tycoon who bullies his employees and relishes destroying the careers of his competitors and enemies, but a conscientious, likeable man to whom misfortune happens because of his gullibility and sense of guilt rather than hubris.

   Lapham is a human emblem of the new American industrial economy of the 1870s. A self-made millionaire in the paint business, he is now one of the richest men in Boston and is radiantly proud of the fact that he has earned every dollar. Having grown up poor and undereducated in Vermont, he still speaks in a rustic vernacular and has yet to understand the rationale behind the rules of high society, let alone assimilate them. A simple, practical man with a sense of duty, he even put aside his business to serve in the Civil War, in which he was seriously wounded and achieved the rank of colonel. He can be boastful and garrulous, but he is not arrogant or overbearing.

   Lapham is dearly devoted to his wife Persis, who in turn has supported him through thick and thin, and his two daughters. Penelope, the older girl, is relatively plain but witty and sardonic and, at least in the first half of the novel, never seems to take anything seriously; her sister Irene is the more beautiful but vapid and superficial. Irene falls for Tom Corey, the young man who comes to work for her father as a foreign sales representative, but Tom and Penelope have a mutual attraction that, Penelope fears, could break Irene's heart. This romantic subplot allows Howells to contrast Tom's family, part of the old Boston aristocracy, with the even wealthier but socially crude Laphams with whose daughter Tom's mother has snobbish doubts about his possible union.

   The novel has almost the air of Greek tragedy in that Lapham is a man of stature who has fatal flaws that threaten to destroy him. He is a teetotaller, and when he does take the liberty of trying some wine at a dinner party, he embarrasses himself and his family by talking too much. He abstains from gambling, but, instigated by his former business partner and current gadfly Milton Rogers, he gets into financial trouble when he stakes money on bad property and bad stocks. And, to compensate for a traumatic event in his past, he is charitable almost to a fault to a pretty girl whom he employs as a typist in his office.

   The style of "The Rise of Silas Lapham" is a dramatic realism similar to that found in the novels of Howells's contemporaries Frank Norris and Theodore Dreiser; the structure is straightforward, and the dialogue cuts to the core in laying bare the characters' sentiments and unfolding the plot. It may fall short of being a "great" novel, but for its candid portrayal of a specimen of the nouveau riche, it can be considered a minor monument of nineteenth century American literature.




2. To the page, this book is symmetrical in its structure. It opens with a public confession (to a reporter) and ends with a private one (to a priest). In the exact center comes Lapham's moment of realization when he is drunk at a party. There is more to the structure, but that should be enough to get you going.
   
   A reviewer below calls Lapham a 'mogul with a conscience' which is accurate. The true core of this book is the way Howells carefully built it, though. Considering it comes from an age before modernism, it certainly feels quite modern. Give it a shot.



3. This book blew my mind! I found it absolutely engaging and the character of Silas Lapham was endearing to the point of surprise. This book says a lot about a class conscious America and even more about how "mom and pop" capitalism gets pushed aside to make way for impersonal mega corporations.
   Silas Lapham is a good-hearted, yet rugged individualist who pulled himself up by the bootstraps to make a giant fortune. Once he succeeds however, there is a whole group of people at the top of the ladder ready to push him onto his face, along with his whole "wretched family." No matter what he does to fit in with the "old money" he just can't seem to fit in and the more he works to fit the millionaire mold, the more he compromises his own values.
   What's best though is that we see him and his family through good times as well as through the downward spiral after his business crashes, and while it is sad, we see that they return willingly to what once was without coming out any worse.
   This book made me smile because the characters, especially Silas Lapham, are realistically flawed and human. I recommend this highly.



4. You might be able to take a man of humble beginnings and make him a rich man, but can he ever cross the line into Society? Silas Lapham becomes rich from paint that he sells, but fails totally in his attempt to become an accepted member of the upper class. The book also concerns a misunderstood love interest by one of Lapham's daughters: the young man is actually in love with his other daughter. Lapham's business fails at the end, but he doesn't sacrifice his integrity. Which is why it is only the "rise" of Silas Lapham and not the "rise and fall." This is among Howells's best novels.



5. The merchandise arrived timely and the overall experience was a good one.

1 comments about The Thinkers 50: The World's Most Influential Business Writers and Leaders.

1. If you wanted to be on the leading edge of what is going on in business this book is a must read. I must warn you this is a 3 page overview of what the author has done in their life and what books they read you will not really learn anything from this book. But it is a reference to all major business books all CEO and Managers should read. I have taken this list as my personal reference of books I need to read and I have already read 5 that have changed my life and my company. Use this book as a reference for the others and you will see amazing results.

5 comments about Insisting On the Impossible : The Life of Edwin Land.

1. This book contains the most detailed information I have seen assembled
   in one volume about the life of Dr. Edwin "Din" Land, founder of
   Polaroid Corporation. Although I long have read public accounts of
   Dr. Land's work, this book greatly added to my knowledge.

   For
   those who would like to understand the rise and fall of Polaroid and
   its stock price over several decades from 1937 through 1980, this book
   makes fascinating reading about some of the do's and don't's of
   running a high technology company that depends on developing new
   technologies and an on-going stream of innovative products.

   If you
   want to understand the techniques employed by Dr. Land to make
   scientific breakthroughs, there are many insights here into his method
   of goal-oriented empiricism. Interestingly, it parallels the
   approaches used by Thomas Edison, the most prolific inventor of the
   20th century. Unfortunately, Dr. Land left little in the way of
   writings to draw on other than patent applications and speeches, so
   these insights are limited primarily to recollections by colleagues.
   On the other hand, the empirical approach is often guided by instinct
   based on experience, which is hard to capture. Most scientific
   thinkers dislike empiricism, so those who use this method can expect
   many rebukes . . . as Dr. Land received in his work on the nature of
   color perception.

   Those who want to understand the scientific
   breakthroughs that Polaroid made will probably come away confused
   unless they already have a great knowledge of optics and chemistry
   related to photography. I learned a great deal from the book, but
   would have liked to learn more. I graded the book down one star for
   this weakness.

   If you want a fascinating, new look into the
   emerging arms race with the Soviet Union in the 1950s, there is much
   interesting material here about Dr. Land's role as a national advisor
   on defense surveillance.

   I was a guest at a dinner hosted by
   Dr. Land in the mid 1960s during which he demonstrated his new
   technology of instant color photography...His good humor,
   generous attitude toward his guests, and his sincere desire to
   transform the world, however, left me with a more profound lesson --
   seeing much more potential for what a company can be than I would
   otherwise have had. Dr. Land explained his vision that night in terms
   of releasing the human spirit and encouraging all of us to create and
   appreciate more beauty. Although glimpses of this side of Dr. Land
   come through in the book, they are overshadowed by the overall theme
   of a flawed genius.

   I dislike books that argue for flaws in
   geniuses. That approach serves to make them more human, but not in a
   way that makes us appreciate them or their good points. Geniuses are
   by their nature obsessed by their work, and their personal quirks can
   be quite negative. ... By the standards of 20th century geniuses,
   Dr. Land was a regular guy. In fact, the extent to which he retained
   his humanity is part of his greatness.

   I think an alternative
   explanation to the one in this book of Dr. Land's limitations as a
   leader is entirely possible and appropriate. Whenever he was engaged
   in endeavors where strong leaders were involved as colleagues or
   partners (such as on national defense issues), he was astonishingly
   effective. Whenever he was totally given his head, he sometimes
   strayed into areas where his vision exceeded the true opportunity.
   Clearly, his talent as a technical problem solver vastly exceeded his
   talent as an evaluator of product potential.

   The story of
   Polaroid's rise and fall as depicted here could just as easily be
   rewritten as the story of a board of directors and financiers who did
   not do their job of providing limits. For example, when Polaroid was
   originally taken public in 1937, the investment bankers granted
   Dr. Land a 10 year period of total control through a voting trust.
   Although every company founder would like such control, that's simply
   a bad idea. Management has to be and feel accountable...His authority
   seems to me to have been much greater than that normally granted to a
   CEO in taking a new product forward....Hopefully, a future book will
   look at the fascinating governance challenges and issues related to
   being on the board of a company led by a scientific genius who has
   provided most of the company's historic value added.

   After you
   have finished reading and thinking about the fascinating issues in
   this book, I suggest that you consider what you would like your legacy
   to be. Then, consider what mistakes you will have to avoid in order
   to accomplish that legacy. How can others help you overcome your
   weaknesses to accomplish more?

   Be willing to insist on the
   impossible, when it's the right thing to do. You can do it!




2. This book should be a bestseller - to every journalism school as a case study of "when good journalists become bad authors". It reads like a collected series of author notes strung badly together. This writer should have never ventured past his skill set.

   Page after page of detailed notes about chemical and optical process (more than likely lifted straight out of someone's lab notebooks) without a SINGLE diagram. None, zero, zilch. Can you imagine an entire book on Poloroid without a single explanatory diagram?!

   In a potentially gripping human story there are no insights about the classic American conflict of what happens to an entrepreneur and his company when he misses the next market. No depth of character.

   I forced myself to finish the book. Learned some interesting outlines of Land's life. It could have be covered in a New Yorker article.

   Worthwhile bibliography - most of the insights were from these source materials.




3. Insisting on the Impossible by Victor K. McElheny is a fascinating account of the life of Edwin Land. While this 510 page book may not get the Pulitzer Prize for literature, it is nevertheless an interesting study of a genius who established an empire but was also responsible for much of its financial troubles. This book is often being criticized for its lack of good structure and difficulty in following the story. However, to my knowledge, it is the most complete account, in a single book, of the life and activities of Dr. Edwin Land and his Polaroid Corporation. The book is organized in chapters that at times seem to have little connection to each other. Perhaps this is the result of a 30-year research and notes on the topic taken by its author. Some of the chapters may not appeal, or be understood, by all readers because of their technical background. On the other hand, one can skip certain chapters without missing or diminishing from the rest of the story. For example, the development of the polarizer sheet will fascinate those interested in stereoscopic photography, while the heavy chapters on the chemistry of photography will appeal to anyone who has ever tried to understand how light is captured and converted to an image on film and paper. The chapters on Land's involvement in the highest military and national secrets as an advisor to Eisenhower, give a interesting glimpse on high-tech spying and are relevant today as well.

   Finally, it is a story of a man who changed the world around him and others because of his passion for science and technology. It is quite possible that for Dr. Land, the impossible simply took longer to achieve.




4. Having been an employee of Polaroid for 15 years in the 60s and 70s I found this biography to be spellbinding and full of great details I never was aware of. Without being overly critical the author provides a balance of Land's brilliance and shortcomings set amidst the business world and its demands and pressures. Land was one of those leaders who was able to withstand many of the pressures of Wall St with his strong beliefs and self confidence. A good example for leaders today. He had his faults, most notably a poor selection of the management that suceeded him, leaving the company leaderless and clueless. But for all that, he was an incredible genius, business leader, inventor, project leader, scientist and inspiration to the thousands of Polaroid employees.



5. It's rare to read an involving account of a business leader who managed to keep his dignity and idealism intact whilst being phenomenally successful, but that's exactly what this book is.
   The book not only covers Edwin Land's major technological achievements in thorough detail, but gives one a vivid feel for his visionary and practical genius that is more affirming and motivating than a dozen Robbins and Covey tomes. Land was not only prodigiously creative but also persuasively, passionately articulate with almost a Victorian missionary zeal about everything he did, and Victor McElheny's ability to balance prose and technical detail does his subject justice.
   The organisation of the book into sections concentrating upon aspects of Land's work, rather than a strict historical narrative, does make sense considering the depth with which McElheny covers each topic, whether it's the political maneuverings behind the U2 project, negotiations with Detroit carmakers about polarized headlights, or colour film chemistry. It may not be considered good journalism to do it this way, but then again a "good journalist" would probably have jettisoned much of the detail so crucial to Land's work and concentrated on petty foibles, frustrations and conflicts far more than McElheny has-and McElheny's approach is ultimately more effective.
   Where the book could have been better is in editing and rounding off some of the sections-for example, while there is excellent coverage of Land's involvement with classified intelligence projects under President Eisenhower, there is nothing about his subsequent working relationships with Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, let alone his falling out with Nixon. Likewise there is poor coverage of Polaroid's innovations after the introduction of colour film and before the development of the SX-70 system, such as the introduction of packfilm and the world's first transistor-controlled shutter. Yet McElheny inexplicably finds room for a whole page listing the genealogy of Land's cousins!
   Nonetheless, the criticisms above are strictly of the variety once described by P. J. O'Rourke as "Sharon Stone has ugly toes"-unless you are unhealthily pedantic about such things, the overall package is still well worth checking out.

No comments about Feltrinelli: A Story of Riches, Revolution, and Violent Death.

5 comments about Ted Turner: It Ain't As Easy as It Looks: A Biography.

1. This long, intricately constructed, infinitely documented biography reads like a film script, which is the only appropriate format for a biography of this larger than life subject. Ted Turner has led a life only a Hollywood screenwriter could concoct, but Porter Bibb has packed it all between two covers.



2. Ted Turner's life story would make a better movie than many of the old classics he bought the rights to broadcast on his stations. From allegedly giving a sales pitch in the nude (among other things), to wild speeches in hotel lobbies, winning an incredible number of sailing races, and even his own "Alistair Cooke" style film intros, this guy is full of antics.

   I was impressed by the depth of research Mr. Bibb brought to this book. I wish their was a little more of Ted quoted in the book, but this is an excellent amount of info on the man's life.

   - Julia Wilkinson, author, "My Life at AOL"




3. There is hardly a more colorful person in the history of twentieth century media than Ted Turner. He is mad, visionary, obsessed, gutsy, bi-polar, swash-buckling, touching and very likeable. Ted's CCN inspired me to push ahead with my own small technology company. After touring the early CNN headquarters in Atlanta, I brought back colorful CNN souvenir caps for my staff; and we wore them for a time in our office whenever we brain-stormed. This is a great and detailed account of Ted's adult years from family billboard company executive to AOL Time Warner vice chairman.

   You'll rout for this multi-billionaire after reading the book.




4. This book was an insult to my intelligence. Instead of an objective biography, it comes across as a paid P.R piece written by a Ted Turner sycophant. Don't waste your money on this trash. Too bad there isn't a "zero stars" rating!!!



5. Just some business details and too much sailing and private things.

No comments about Now What Is It That You Do? Willie Paulk and the Art of Economic Development.

No comments about The Life and Economics of David Ricardo.

5 comments about Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, Man of Two Worlds.

1. This book is thin gruel indeed. It is double spaced and large type presumably to make it thicker. Illustrations are of poor printed quality and too small. The author covers little if any new ground and is given to much conjecture with little documentation or footnoting. Particularly thin are the Mormon Batallion and California periods given the ample documentation that exists on these periods. I have read everything serious that is published on Baptiste, and this adds nothing to what is already out there. The fact is, little historical material exists on Baptiste, not even a photograph, although his contemporaries (like Beckwourth) were photographed. I waited longer than normal for the book and finished with it in one sitting disappointed. The most honest and best documented appraisal of Charbonneau's life is the 2001 Journal of Oregon History article, "Sacajawea's Son: by Albert Furtwangler reprinted in 2004 by Oregon Historical Society Press and the 1933 Anne W Hafen biography.



2. I was, at first, excited to see a "new" biography of Charbonneau. However, this is mostly a rehash of available information. I found too many errors in this book to sustain any excitement. Wrong dates and quotations without sources are only a few of the problems. I'll wait for the new book being publised by Arthur Clark and keep my fingers crossed.



3. I'm giving it five stars partly because I thought a couple of the other reviewers were unfair. Not everybody wants the super in-depth study of a subject. I liked the book precisely because it skips the minutia and focuses on the most interesting elements of the story. I also appreciated the author's effort to engage the reader in reasonable supposition about Baptiste's undocumented activities. More on Charbonneau's time in Germany would have been useful, but otherwise I thought this was a stimulating and entertaining read.



4. This informative and pleasurable read about Charbonneau, the much loved baby "Pomp" on the Corps of Discovery, puts a face on the man that went on to become successful throughout the charted but yet un-tamed West, in his own right. I feel as though I know so much more about this person due to Mr. Ritter's excellent research. Above all, as a novice history devotee, I appreciate the flow of the writing as it almost anticipates what your next question may have been about Charbonneau. The heavy handed, over-satiated blanket of scholarly approach would contrast greatly with the pure simplicity of this character, as he is portrayed.



5. A thoroughyly enjoyable and authentic record of a part of our American history. A young man's mark on a part of our history that makes this record a deeply memorable one. History books haven't begun to tell the in-depth, detailed truth about what really happened. Don't miss it!