American Enterprise

American Enterprise PDF

Author: Andy Serwer

Publisher: Smithsonian Institution

Published: 2015-05-26

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1588344975

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What does it mean to be an American? What are American ideas and values? American Enterprise, the companion book to a major exhibition at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, aims to answer these questions about the American experience through an exploration of its economic and commercial history. It argues that by looking at the intersection of capitalism and democracy, we can see where we as a nation have come from and where we might be going in the future. Richly illustrated with images of objects from the museum’s collections, American Enterprise includes a 1794 dollar coin, Alexander Graham Bell’s 1876 telephone, a brass cash register from Marshall Fields, Sam Walton’s cap, and many other goods and services that have shaped American culture. Historical and contemporary advertisements are also featured, emphasizing the evolution of the relationship between producers and consumers over time. Interspersed in the historical narrative are essays from today’s industry leaders—including Sheila Bair, Adam Davidson, Bill Ford, Sally Greenberg, Fisk Johnson, Hank Paulson, Richard Trumka, and Pat Woertz—that pose provocative questions about the state of contemporary American business and society. American Enterprise is a multi-faceted survey of the nation’s business heritage and corresponding social effects that is fundamental to an understanding of the lives of the American people, the history of the United States, and the nation’s role in global affairs.

Free Enterprise

Free Enterprise PDF

Author: Lawrence B. Glickman

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2019-08-20

Total Pages: 355

ISBN-13: 0300238258

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An incisive look at the intellectual and cultural history of free enterprise and its influence on American politics Throughout the twentieth century, "free enterprise" has been a contested keyword in American politics, and the cornerstone of a conservative philosophy that seeks to limit government involvement into economic matters. Lawrence B. Glickman shows how the idea first gained traction in American discourse and was championed by opponents of the New Deal. Those politicians, believing free enterprise to be a fundamental American value, held it up as an antidote to a liberalism that they maintained would lead toward totalitarian statism. Tracing the use of the concept of free enterprise, Glickman shows how it has both constrained and transformed political dialogue. He presents a fascinating look into the complex history, and marketing, of an idea that forms the linchpin of the contemporary opposition to government regulation, taxation, and programs such as Medicare.

Masters of Enterprise

Masters of Enterprise PDF

Author: H.W. Brands

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2012-12-04

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 1476726930

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From the early years of fur trading to today's Silicon Valley empires, America has proved to be an extraordinarily fertile land for the creation of enormous fortunes. Each generation has produced one or two phenomenally successful leaders, often in new industries that caught contemporaries by surprise, and each of these new fortunes reconfirmed the power of fanatically single-minded visionaries. John Jacob Astor and Cornelius Vanderbilt were the first American moguls; John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and J. P. Morgan were kingpins of the Gilded Age; David Sarnoff, Walt Disney, Ray Kroc, and Sam Walton were masters of mass culture. Today Oprah Winfrey, Andy Grove, and Bill Gates are giants of the Information Age. America has again and again been the land of dizzying mountains of wealth. Here, in a wittily told and deeply insightful history, is a complete set of portraits of America's greatest generators of wealth. Only such a collective study allows us to appreciate what makes the great entrepreneurs really tick. As H. W. Brands shows, these men and women are driven, they are focused, they deeply identify with the businesses they create, and they possess the charisma necessary to persuade other talented people to join them. They do it partly for the money, but mostly for the thrill of creation. The stories told here -- including how Nike got its start as a business-school project for Phil Knight; how Robert Woodruff almost refused to take control of Coca-Cola to spite his father; how Thomas Watson saved himself from prison by rescuing Dayton, Ohio, from a flood; how Jay Gould nearly cornered the gold market; how H. L. Hunt went from gambling at cards to gambling with oil leases -- make for a narrative that is always lively and revealing and often astonishing. An observer in 1850, studying John Jacob Astor, would not have predicted the rise of Henry Ford and the auto industry. Nor would a student of Ford in 1950 have anticipated the takeoff of direct marketing that made Mary Kay Ash a trusted guide for millions of American women. Full of surprising insights, written with H. W. Brands's trademark flair, the stories in Masters of Enterprise are must reading for all students of American business history.

American Enterprise in Japan

American Enterprise in Japan PDF

Author: Tomoko Hamada

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 1991-08-06

Total Pages: 310

ISBN-13: 1438405596

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This book describes how American and Japanese management ideologies meet, collide, and contend in the process of competitive cooperation during a joint venture in Japan. In a detailed case study, Hamada describes the very real problems when Japanese and American managers run a business operation, and analyzes them from a comparative, relativistic, and historical perspective. The author presents a novel and effective way of viewing organizational dynamics, seeing the 'unfinished' cultural process between different sub-groups who create and recreate the symbolic meanings of corporate phenomena. Her succinct analysis of Japanese and American behavioral modes makes both practical and theoretical contributions to the field of international management. Highlighting the interdependence between corporate culture and broader societal culture, Hamada looks closely at interactions between American and Japanese businessmen, analyzes their cultural differences, and proposes that these differences can be viewed not just as a source of continuing conflict but of dynamic cooperation.

Balanchine and Kirstein's American Enterprise

Balanchine and Kirstein's American Enterprise PDF

Author: James Steichen

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018-10-04

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 0190607432

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In 1933 choreographer George Balanchine and impresario Lincoln Kirstein embarked on an elusive quest to found a ballet company and school in the United States. Though their efforts would eventually result in the creation of the New York City Ballet and the School of American Ballet, the first decade of their collaborative efforts was anything but assured. Tracing the tangled histories of two of the most important figures in twentieth-century dance, Balanchine and Kirstein's American Enterprise offers a fresh perspective on a pivotal period in cultural history. Deeply researched using sources only made available in recent years, the book challenges the mythologies surrounding the early years of the Balanchine-Kirstein enterprise. It also reveals the full extent of Kirstein's essential role and offers reconstructive analysis of lost works, as well as new and surprising details regarding some of Balanchine's most iconic ballets, including Serenade, Apollo, and Concerto Barocco. This history involved artists including Richard Rodgers, Martha Graham, George Gershwin, Katherine Dunham, Vera Zorina, and Igor Stravinsky, as well as dozens of lesser known players whose contributions have yet to be fully acknowledged. Capturing the full sweep of Balanchine and Kirstein's collaborative work across multiple genres and institutions, this book reveals their partnership in all of its exciting and ungainly complexity, showing how the 1930s Balanchine was not the artist that he would eventually become, and how the same was true of the institutions that he and Kirstein jointly created.

How to Educate an American

How to Educate an American PDF

Author: Michael J. Petrilli

Publisher: Templeton Foundation Press

Published: 2020-02-24

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 1599475707

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In the years after A Nation at Risk, conservatives’ ideas to reform America’s lagging education system gained much traction. Key items like school choice and rigorous academic standards drew bipartisan support and were put into practice across the country. Today, these gains are in retreat, ceding ground to progressive nostrums that do little to boost the skills and knowledge of young people. Far from being discouraged, however, conservatives should seize the moment to refresh their vision of quality K–12 education for today’s America. These essays by 20 leading conservative thinkers do just that. Students, according to this vision, should complete high school with a thorough understanding of the country’s history, including gratitude for its sacrifices, respect for its achievements, and awareness of its shortcomings. They should also learn to be trustworthy stewards of a democratic republic, capable of exercising virtue and civic responsibility. Beyond helping to form their character, schools ought to ready their pupils for careers that are productive, rewarding, and dignified. Excellent technical-training opportunities will await those not headed to a traditional college. Regardless of the paths and schools that they select, all students must come to understand that they can succeed in America if they are industrious, creative, and responsible. Anchored in tradition yet looking towards tomorrow, How to Educate an American should be read by anyone concerned with teaching future generations to preserve the country’s heritage, embody its universal ethic, and pursue its founding ideals.

Enterprise and American Law, 1836-1937

Enterprise and American Law, 1836-1937 PDF

Author: Herbert Hovenkamp

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2009-06-01

Total Pages: 470

ISBN-13: 9780674038837

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In this integration of law and economic ideas, Herbert Hovenkamp charts the evolution of the legal framework that regulated American business enterprise from the time of Andrew Jackson through the first New Deal. He reveals the interdependent relationship between economic theory and law that existed in these decades of headlong growth and examines how this relationship shaped both the modern business corporation and substantive due process. Classical economic theory--the cluster of ideas about free markets--became the guiding model for the structure and function of both private and public law. Hovenkamp explores the relationship of classical economic ideas to law in six broad areas related to enterprise in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He traces the development of the early business corporation and maps the rise of regulated industry from the first charterbased utilities to the railroads. He argues that free market political economy provided the intellectual background for constitutional theory and helped define the limits of state and federal regulation of business behavior. The book also illustrates the unique American perspective on political economy reflected in the famous doctrine of substantive due process. Finally, Hovenkamp demonstrates the influence of economic theory on labor law and gives us a reexamination of the antitrust movement, the most explicit intersection of law and economics before the New Deal. Legal, economic, and intellectual historians and political scientists will welcome these trenchant insights on an influential period in American constitutional and corporate history.

Owen D. Young and American Enterprise

Owen D. Young and American Enterprise PDF

Author: Josephine Young Case

Publisher: David R. Godine Publisher

Published: 1982

Total Pages: 1004

ISBN-13: 9780879233600

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A large-scale biography of a major figure in American enterprise, the man who built General Electric and founded the Radio Corporation of America. Owen D. Young belonged to a unique American generation: the last to know a country where the majority made their living from the land and the first to feel the full impact of modernization. Born on an upstate New York farm, educated at St. Lawrence, a small college nearby, and armed with a Boston University law degree, Young made a large difference in that transforming change. His early career was with the new and sprawling utilities, and brought him to the attention of the General Electric Company. Joining it in 1913 as vice president and general counsel, and becoming chairman in 1922, with Gerard Swope as president, he soon transformed, with Swope's impressive aid, a large national enterprise into a dominant international one. They were a singularly effective team, enterprising at home and abroad, and notably progressive in labor relations. Always the entrepreneur, Young saw the possibilities of the 'wireless' and so set up the Radio Corporation of America. This is a life of a titan of business, built on the classical pattern of American success.

Enterprise

Enterprise PDF

Author: Barrett Tillman

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2013-02-12

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 1439190887

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The award-winning author of Whirlwind presents the story of World War II's most decorated warship as drawn from oral histories, the author's interviews with last surviving veterans and historical accounts of its most significant military achievements. 35,000 first printing.