Money and Power: The History of Business (Hardcover)

~ Howard Means (Author), David Grubin (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...offers essential insight into the forces that drive the West's great economic engine" -- Continental Magazine, June 2001

"...offers essential insight into the forces that drive the West's great economic engine" -- Continental Magazine, June 2001

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

one of the best business books of 2001 -- getAbstract , 15 January 2002

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

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (January 31, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 047140053X
• ISBN-13: 978-0471400530
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,051,722 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Definitive and Representative" Personalities, June 14, 2001

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

Frankly, I did not know what to expect as I began to read this book. (The use of "The" in the subtitle is somewhat misleading.) Having read it, I consider this to be among the most enjoyable as well as most informative books about business I have read in recent years. Referring to a collaboration with David Grubin to produce a CNBC documentary, Means explains that "we followed the money to the personalities -- both definitive and representative -- that have dominated the last thousand years of business, and to some of the most defining and colorful events of the millennium." The personalities are Sir Godric, Cosimo de' Medici, Philip II, those involved with "Tulipmania", James Watt and Matthew Boulton, those involved with the Transcontinental Railway, J. Pierpont Morgan, John D.. Rockefeller, Henry Ford, Robert Woodruff, the key players involved in the merger which created Time Warner, and Bill Gates. Here are brief comments by Means on a few of the individuals and situations which are the focus of his attention throughout this book:

"Born at a time when capital accumulation for the peasantry was nearly unthinkable, [Godric] was nonetheless a model of modern wealth creation: an up-from-the-bootstraps capitalist who transformed the hand fate had dealt him."

"Cosimo helped to create a world that revolved not around God but around a society with man at the center. After five hundred years, power was shifting from the men of the Church to the men of business."

"Gifted with unprecedented mineral wealth, [Philip} had set out to reverse the flow of history rather than look forward and embrace growth, and history has judged him accordingly."

"James Watt is known to us as the father of the Industrial Revolution, and indeed the steam engine he brought to such perfection is the [italics] defining invention of the movement....He needed a partner [Boulton] to transform his genius into a product and to bring the product to a market where fortunes were waiting to be made....The steam engine [developed by Watt and promoted by Boulton] that would power the first locomotive would radically alter transportation across England and throughout Europe. Across the ocean, it would even pull a continent together. But its invention and manufacture would be left to other minds and hands."

"Throughout the last millennium, it was control that created fortunes: control over the oceans or railroads, the highways or the airwaves. At the start of the new millennium, it's still control -- this time over cyberspace, the new wealth machine. Some things never change but here's the difference: This road to riches is open to everyone."

I include these brief excerpts to suggest both the style and thrust of Means's presentation of material. As Grubin correctly points out in the Foreword, "Scientists and politicians, artists and scholars, all contributed to the millennium of change, but the world's businessmen -- its bankers and industrialists, merchants and entrepreneurs -- were a powerful driving force behind the stunning transformation." Means is to be commended for so skillfully guiding his reader through this immensely interesting process. Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to check out Mokyr's The Lever of Riches.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Big Themes of 900 Years of Business in Twelve Stories, March 18, 2001

By	Professor Donald Mitchell "Jesus Makes Me a P... (Boston) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)

Who says that history has to be dull? Money & Power is a lively introductory look at how modern business developed. You could graduate in economics from the finest colleges in North America, and never get this information. Anyone who wants to have a basic understanding of some key elements and tensions in business operations should read this book.

Unlike many books related to television specials, this one has been turned into a book rather than simply being a copy of the television script. Money & Power does not require you to have seen the special to benefit from its very interesting contents.

The book is organized around 12 chapters that each highlight one person or event in business history. The beginning of the chapter provides linkage material to put the information into context and to relate it to what preceded the chapter.

The first problem that business people faced in Christian Europe was that profit-making (especially earning interest on money) was considered sinful. The book takes a look at how that belief evolved through first considering an early peddler-merchant, St. Godric, who eventually gave up his entrepreneurially bookstrapped career to become a hermit, and was eventually sainted. By the Renaissance, the consummate banker Cosima de' Medici was able to handle this differently. Through a large donation he obtained absolution for his sins in operating a business.

The importance of trust is also developed. From the de' Medici's to J.P. Morgan, banking relied on prudent, dependable people whom you could trust. During financial panics in the late 19th century and early 20th century, J.P. Morgan was the lender of last resort who bailed out the markets. After Morgan, the Federal Reserve system was created to fulfill this critical economic role.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, greed can be destructive. The book describes the manias in Holland with tulip bulbs and the parallel bubble in England, as well as the wasteful use of wealth by Phillip II of Spain (he of the ill-fated Spanish Armada).

The role of business person, as separate from inventor, is nicely developed in the story of how James Watt and Matthew Boulton collaborated to commercially exploit the steam engine. That theme is continued in examining Henry Ford's work in creating his own infrastructure and marketplace for the mass-produced auto.

The role of financiers and speculators is nicely developed in a section on the U.S. transcontinental railroad (the 1860s version of the Internet today).

A chapter on Robert Woodruff of Coca-Cola explains the power of modern brands and marketing.

A chapter on Time Warner develops the ways that new combinations of capabilities can allow new developments to occur (think of Time as "conduit" and Warner as "content"). This continued the theme of creating a favorable industry structure that was begun in the chapter on John D. Rockefeller's creation of the Standard Oil trust.

A final chapter on Bill Gates and Microsoft heralds the current age, in which "the road to riches is open to everyone."

Many books that operate at a "simple" level are also simplistic. This is not the case with Money & Power. Great precision is used that provides relevant distinctions that are valuable to those with more knowledge. For example, the book points out that St. Godric was the son of a freeman. This is an important point, because the son of a serf could not legally have wandered off to become a peddler. Very few people were freemen in the late 11th century. His experience is much more understandable for having that information included.

I thought that the 12 examples were especially well chosen to make anyone who reads the book more business literate. If the book could have been expanded to 15 examples, it would have been nice to capture some of the great work in establishing new concepts for corporations that has occurred in the last 30 years.

After you read this book, I also suggest that you think about what the conceptual hurdles are today that limit the effectiveness of businesses to provide for society's needs. How can those limitations be removed in the future in ways that are beneficial to everyone?

Understand the almost universal appeal of money and power, and how it can be made more productive!

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars FASCINATING AND MIND-GRABBING!, March 22, 2001

By	Sandra D. Peters "Seagull Books" (Prince Edward Island, Canada) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

The book presents an inside view of the history of business and its development over the years. From the 12th century monk, St. Godric to Bill Gates and Microsoft, this well-researched book outlines the history of industry, commerce and power. As a counsellor and teacher of business management, I will highly recommend this literary masterpiece to my students. Before we can advance in industry and commerce, it is equally important to understand the roots...where and how it all began. Who wouldn't be captivated by the Rothschilds or Robert Woodruff and Coca-Cola? My only regret is that the book ended all too soon. There are other mega empires that are not mentioned here - maybe there will be a sequel to this book in the future.