Andy Grove: The Life and Times of an American (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "On September 28, 2003, Andy Grove appeared before a large audience in Chicago gathered to raise money for America's Holocaust Museum..." (more)
Key Phrases: orchestrated brilliance, floating point flaw, new computer industry, Andy Grove, United States, Silicon Valley (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this highly readable but deliberately paced biography, Harvard professor and historian Tedlow (Giants of Enterprise) makes a case for Andy Grove (b. 1936) taking a place alongside Benjamin Franklin as a quintessential American businessman and citizen. Indeed, Grove rose from being a penniless Hungarian refugee to an engineer hired as Intel's third employee, eventually heading the corporation—"one of the most profitable companies in all of business history." Tedlow builds the book around a year-by-year, blow-by-blow account of Intel's ups and downs, punctuated by Grove's contemporaneous musings, drawn from his private notebooks. Following the company over the rocky patches in its trajectory from semiconductors to microprocessors, Tedlow situates Intel among its industry partners and competitors. Sometimes, there's too much context: the author conveys a good deal about Hungary's modern political history and scrutinizes every available scrap of information about his subject's childhood. There are also 20 pages on the 1994 Pentium "floating point flaw" debacle and 15 pages on Grove's battle with prostate cancer. But as a biography of Intel as well as a primer on Grove's writings and management philosophy, the book is truly illuminating. In offering a closeup portrait of this prickly but gifted executive, Tedlow helps us understand why Grove's tenure as Intel's CEO "was so spectacularly successful." (Nov.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Tedlow, a business historian and academic, presents the story of Andy Grove, a penniless Hungarian immigrant who became an icon of twentieth-century corporate America. Grove joined Intel in 1968 at its founding, and while he was CEO from 1987 to 1998, "market capitalization increased from $4.3 billion to $197.6 billion, a compound annual growth rate of 42% and a total increase of almost 4,500%." Grove led the company with Intel's 386 microprocessor, which became the industry standard. Tedlow describes Grove, Time magazine's 1997 man of the year, as an extraordinary manager, author, and significant player in the fights against prostate cancer and Parkinson's disease. With unique access to Grove and Intel's internal resources and documents, Tedlow claims objectivity, telling the truth as he sees it in this laudatory narrative, although he also confirms his close ties to the subject. In comparing Grove to Benjamin Franklin (among other notables), Tedlow tells us that the two share the traits of "care and skill at image management." Mary Whaley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 576 pages
• Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover; 1ST edition (November 2, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1591841399
• ISBN-13: 978-1591841395
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.5 x 1.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #628,587 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars András István Gróf, American, November 28, 2006

By	Robert Morris (Dallas, Texas) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

While reading and then reviewing most of Richard Tedlow's previous books, I was soon convinced that he is a cultural anthropologist as well as a business historian. With consummate skill, he creates a richly textured context within which he analyzes various corporate executives such as Andrew Carnegie, George Eastman, Henry Ford, Robert Noyce, both Thomas J. Watson, Sr. and Jr., Charles Revson, and Sam Walton. His talents are comparable with those of Joseph J. Ellis and David McCullough. As he explains in the introduction to this book, he interviewed dozens of people about the life and times of Andy Grove, asking each "What would make this book a page-turner for you?" Here are three responses:

"I want to know how he thinks."
"I want to know how all these decisions really did get made."
"I want to know all the stuff that he won't tell you about."

Tedlow provides answers to these and other questions as he rigorously examines "the life and times of an American" who was born András István Gróf in Hungary (in 1936), to a middle-class Jewish family. In 1956, during the Hungarian Revolution, he left his home and family under the cover of night, immigrating to the United States, and arriving in New York in 1957. He then earned a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from the City College of New York and then, after settling in California, he received his Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley in 1963. After working at Fairchild Semiconductor, Grove accepted Gordon Moore's invitation to become the third employee at a start-up, Intel Corporation (Integrated Electronics), of which he eventually became president in 1979, its CEO in 1987, and its chairman and CEO in 1997. He relinquished his CEO title in May 1998 and remained chairman of the board until November 2004. Of special interest to me is Tedlow's explanation of why, given Grove's background, he considers him to be an exemplary American. His reasons are convincing and best revealed within the book's lively narrative.

Others have their own reasons for thinking so highly of this book. Here are three of mine. First, Tedlow immediately establishes and then sustains a personal, almost conversational relationship with his reader. In effect, he says "This is what I have learned about Andy Grove, both from him and from those who know him best." The reader tags along with Tedlow who serves as a knowledgeable and enthusiastic guide during an extensive "tour" of Grove's life and times.

I also appreciate the skill with which Tedlow consistently maintains a balance between providing an abundance of biographical and historical details, and, keeping the narrative moving along in a timely manner. Years ago, I read Grove's Swimming Across and then Only the Paranoid Survive. While reading each book, I wished that I could learn more about the background to his countless adventures in Europe and then in the United States. I was especially interested in knowing much more about those with whom Grof and then Grove had the closest associations over the years. Tedlow provides all of this information with the skills of a master raconteur.

My third reason is admittedly a selfish one: I wanted to learn as much as possible from Grove's life and times to help me to gain a better understanding of myself and of my own struggles and relationships in life. Although I certainly never faced the dangers he did, nor will ever achieve what he has, I did (and do) see certain similarities between us other than being born in the same year. For example, his joie de vivre. As Tedlow explains, "He has an insatiable appetite for life's challenges. The old saying - he lives the life he loves and loves the life he lives - applies to Andy Grove more than to most of us." Tedlow brings Grove to life as a man who, in Whitman's words, "is large...contains multitudes."Tracing Grove's life journey (until now) has helped me to understand certain aspects of my own.

Tedlow offers a substantial value-added bonus to his discussion of Grove: a rigorous and sometimes riveting examination of the dynamic, sometimes volatile business world during each "inflection point" in Grove's association with Intel. In some respects, Grove's career is emblematic of the most significant developments in global business which occurred from 1968 when he participated in the founding of Intel until 2005 when he stepped down as its chairman.

Tedlow acknowledges that, despite all that has been written about Grove and despite what Grove himself has shared, notably in his book Swimming Across in which he explains how András István Gróf, Hungarian, became Andrew Stephen Grove, American, he remains somewhat of a mystery. For example, why did he never return to Hungary? "I'm not entirely sure why. Maybe I don't want to remind myself of the events I wrote about. Maybe I want memories to stay memories. Or maybe the reason is simpler than that: My life started over in the United States. I have set roots here. Whatever roots I had in Hungary were cut off when I left and have since withered and died."

Grove's "life and times" are indeed emblematic of almost 40 years of American business history but, in my opinion, they have even greater significance when we take into full account what this nation has meant to millions of others who - like young Gróf -- also had a dream of a much better life, pursued it with courage and determination while overcoming all manner of obstacles, and eventually prospered. He and they remind all of us who were born in the United States that the "American Dream" can become a reality.

Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to read Grove's Swimming Across and Only the Paranoid Survive as well as Tedlow's earlier books, notably Giants of Enterprise and The Watson Dynasty.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Most Revealing Dissection of Andy Grove and the Silicon Valley Phenomenon, November 16, 2006

By	Ed Uyeshima (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

In Mukul Pandya and Robbie Shell's profile of the top 25 business leaders today, "Lasting Leadership", they cite one above all others, Intel's CEO Andy Grove. The one chapter on Grove (appropriately entitled "Best of the Best") certainly whet my appetite for Harvard Business School professor and historian Richard Tedlow's full-fledged biography, which turns out to be not only a thoughtful profile of Grove but also a fascinating historical overview of the technology industry. How these two aspects intertwine provides the most provocative parts of the book, in particular, how Grove's visionary acumen anticipated the growing demand for instant information and how the personal computer was to become a mandatory household and office item.

Nonetheless, the more personal story behind Grove will interest many readers since his background reflects a remarkable transformation under the most adverse of circumstances. Born a Jew in 1936 Nazi-occupied Hungary when anti-Semitic laws were being fully enforced, Grove managed to survive not only the Nazi regime but the post-WWII Communist takeover. During the bloody Hungarian Revolution, he left his family and escaped to the U.S. when he was twenty. Penniless, he worked his way to a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Berkeley in 1963. He worked his way up from Fairchild Semiconductors, where they introduced the first integrated circuit, to become the fourth employee of Intel and begin an impressive upward climb.

This is where Tedlow provides sharp insight into Grove's clever navigation though Intel's management structure under co-founders Gordon Moore and Bob Noyce, and more importantly, how Grove became an acknowledged leader in Silicon Valley for his groundbreaking thinking. The author vividly shows how Grove transformed the company in 1986 from a memory device company to one focused on microprocessors in response to the cannibalization of the memory market by the then-threatening Japanese. Intriguingly, Tedlow ties the fears imbedded in Grove's persecution-filled childhood in Hungary to the fears he used as a motivating force to move ahead of the competition at Intel. It became clear that Grove knew a sense of certainty and constancy would be tantamount to suicide when it came to making the company thrive, and as Tedlow meticulously chronicles, his management team often felt the heat of his tension-driven style.

There is no challenging the results of Grove's approach as Intel became the world's largest semiconductor company during his tenure. However, what I like most is how Tedlow dissects Grove's public failures as an essential part of his profile. The most egregious moment came in 1994 when Grove publicly denounced critics who found flaws in Intel's new Pentium processor. His stubbornness to acknowledge the problem showed him to be nakedly unaware of the evolution of Intel into a branded consumer product company, how quickly the Internet was disseminating information, and how customers were elevating their expectations in getting that information without fail. Nonetheless, strategic mistakes are all part of Grove's makeup as he rolls the dice with the high-stakes entrepreneurial fervor necessary to thrive in a global economy now being gobbled up by China and others. Tedlow makes Grove's unbendable spirit palpable in these pages.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars From adversity to triumph, November 6, 2006

By	R. T. Rood (Maryland) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Born in 1936 to Jewish parents in Hungary, Andy Grove began life with the deck heavily stacked against his very survival. First, the Nazis, then the Communists - and then, in 1956, escape to what was, for him, the unimaginable freedom of America. Shakespeare tells us that "There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune." Andy Grove was undoubtedly in the right place at the right time, but it was his own brilliant, incisive mind coupled with tremendous drive and ambition that propelled him to the summit of achievement at Intel. Richard Tedlow tells this fascinating story with verve and wit. In some ways, it is the archetypal tale of the self-made American, but Tedlow never lets us forget that it is also the story of the triumph one amazing man.