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The Company: A Short History of a Revolutionary Idea (Modern Library Chronicles) Hardcover – March 4, 2003

by John Micklethwait (Author), Adrian Wooldridge (Author)

42 customer reviews

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From the acclaimed authors of A Future Perfect comes the untold story of how the company became the world’s most powerful institution.

Like all groundbreaking books, The Company fills a hole we didn’t know existed, revealing that we cannot make sense of the past four hundred years until we place that seemingly humble Victorian innovation, the joint-stock company, in the center of the frame.

With their trademark authority and wit, Economist editors John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge reveal the company to be one of history’s great catalysts, for good and for ill, a mighty engine for sucking in, recombining, and pumping out money, goods, people, and culture to every corner of the globe. What other earthly invention has the power to grow to any size, and to live to any age? What else could have given us both the stock market and the British Empire? The company man, the company town, and company time? Disneyfication and McDonald’sization, to say nothing of Coca-colonialism? Through its many mutations, the company has always incited controversy, and governments have always fought to rein it in. Today, though Marx may spin in his grave and anarchists riot in the streets, the company exercises an unparalleled influence on the globe, and understanding what this creature is and where it comes from has never been a more pressing matter. To the rescue come these acclaimed authors, with a short volume of truly vast range and insight.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Considering the astounding impact companies have had on every corner of civilization, it's amazing that the development of the institution has been largely unexamined. Economist editors Micklethwait and Wooldridge present a compact and timely book that deftly sketches the history of the company. They trace its progress from Assyrian partnership agreements through the 16th- and 17th-century European "charter companies" that opened trade with distant parts of the world, to today's multinationals. The authors' breadth of knowledge is impressive. They infuse their engaging prose with a wide range of cultural, historical and literary references, with quotes from poets to presidents. Micklethwait and Wooldrige point out that the enormous power wielded by the company is nothing new. Companies were behind the slave trade, opium and imperialism, and the British East India Company ruled the subcontinent with its standing army of native troops, outmanning the British army two to one. By comparison, the modern company is a bastion of restraint and morality. In a short, final chapter on the company's future, the authors argue against the fear, in antiglobalization circles, that "a handful of giant companies are engaged in a `silent takeover' of the world." Indeed, trends point toward large organizations breaking into smaller units. Moreover, the authors argue that for all the change companies have engendered over time, their force has been for an aggregate good.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Two Economist staffers explain how the joint-stock company became today's corporate giant.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product details

Series: Modern Library Chronicles (Book 12)
Hardcover: 256 pages
Publisher: Modern Library; Hardcover edition (March 4, 2003)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0679642498
ISBN-13: 978-0679642497
Product Dimensions: 4.9 x 0.8 x 7.5 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
Average Customer Review: 42 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #113,274 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #320 in Books > Business & Money > Biography & History > Economic History
- #363 in Books > Business & Money > Biography & History > Company Profiles
- #978 in Books > Business & Money > Industries

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42 customer reviews

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a reasonably good, but journalistic, over-view

January 10, 2013

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

This book isn't at all bad. It provides a conscience and readable history of corporations (or "companies", as they are, somewhat oddly, called here) from the renaissance to the present. If you want a conscience and highly readable history, this is a good book for you. If you want detail or analysis, this isn't what you want. The book is written by two journalists- writers for The Economist- and it shows. The style is journalistic- it depends heavily on other people's original research, and sites it in such a way that you can't be sure what the original sources said unless you wanted to take the time to look them up. Most people won't want to. This is fine for journalism, and as an example of that, it's a high-quality production. But, if you're looking for scholarship, or something providing significant analysis, this isn't the book for you. (I'll note that in this way this book is different from some of the Modern Library Chronicles books. Some of them are, while being short and accessible, still scholarly.) I'll give an example. The authors note that at one point the function of taking a company public was to provide capital for it, but that later on it came to be the case that this wasn't so- that corporations came to finance themselves on their own profits, or by debt, or other means. They note in passing that stock came to play a rather different role than it was originally intended to play, but don't go into this in any detail. These days, stock is often used as a way to reward management, or to provide a pay-day to early insiders when a company is taken public, but is only rarely a major way to raise capital. This is a big change, perhaps one that ought to lead us to re-think the nature of corporations, and whether they should have the same legal standing and basis as when they were first really developed, in the 19th century. But you'll get no analysis of this in this book, and will likely only catch that it's happened at all if you are paying close attention. This is typical of a journalistic approach, and marks just one of its short-comings. Other examples similar to this are easy to find. (We find that styles of corporations and management change significantly over time, but are offered no real analysis as to why, for example.) So, it's not a completely satisfying book. Still, it's a useful one and enjoyable, so long as its limits are kept clearly in mind.

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Good, but with a huge emphasis on the "SHORT" in "short history."

January 28, 2008

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Simply stated, there's room for a lot more book here. Our fearless authors really have found an important slice of economic and business history that has seemingly been overlooked by most others. And what a rich field it is! The history of the company itself! What exactly is a company? Where did the idea come from? How has it evolved? Where is it going?

Not only does the book tackle fertile and under-covered territory, but it's got the right authors, too. Micklethwait and Wooldridge are editors at The Economist, truly one of the most clear-headed periodicals out there. To be fair to these guys, they answer all of the questions I posed in the first paragraph and they do it in interesting style too. They bring up pertinent facts, interesting viewpoints and penetrating questions.

So why not five stars?

Because it barely scratches the surface of the topic it covers. You find yourself reading one thing after another that you'd like to know a lot more about, but then find yourself moving on to a new topic without having your thirst for knowledge about the last topic even mildly quenched.

Perhaps that's all right. The book claims in its own title to be a short history. It can serve as a quick introduction to a number of different topics that a reader can dig into more deeply if the spirit moves them. Further, maybe this book will serve as the call for other qualified authors and historians to focus some attention on this under-covered area of economics and history.

I hope it does, but this book kept leaving me wanting at least a little more on every topic it touched. Recommended, but be prepared to feel like your being rushed through a tour of a museum that you'd really like to spend some time in.

Hats off to Micklethwait and Wooldridge for making one point clearly: the company is the single greatest engine of wealth (of all kinds) we have in the modern world, and that forgetting that could be tragic.

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