Tells the story of how America’s biggest companies began, operated, and prospered post-World War I This book takes the vantage point of people working within companies as they responded to constant change created by consumers and technology. It focuses on the entrepreneur, the firm, and the industry, by showing—from the inside—how businesses operated after 1920, while offering a good deal of Modern American social and cultural history. The case studies and contextual chapters provide an in-depth understanding of the evolution of American management over nearly 100 years. American Business Since 1920: How It Worked presents historical struggles with decision making and the trend towards relative decentralization through stories of extraordinarily capable entrepreneurs and the organizations they led. It covers: Henry Ford and his competitor Alfred Sloan at General Motors during the 1920s; Neil McElroy at Procter & Gamble in the 1930s; Ferdinand Eberstadt at the government’s Controlled Materials Plan during World War II; David Sarnoff at RCA in the 1950s and 1960s; and Ray Kroc and his McDonald’s franchises in the late twentieth century and early twenty-first; and more. It also delves into such modern success stories as Amazon.com, eBay, and Google. Provides deep analysis of some of the most successful companies of the 20th century Contains topical chapters covering titans of the 2000s Part of Wiley-Blackwell’s highly praised American History Series American Business Since 1920: How It Worked is designed for use in both basic and advanced courses in American history, at the undergraduate and graduate levels.

A Faustian Foreign Policy from Woodrow Wilson to George W. Bush critiques U.S. foreign policy during this period by showing how moralistic diplomacy has increasingly assumed Faustian overtones, especially during the Cold War and following September 11. The ideological components of American diplomacy, originating in the late 18th and 19th centuries, evolved through the 20th century as U.S. economic and political power steadily increased. Seeing myth making as essential in any country's founding and a common determinant of its foreign policy, Professor Joan Hoff reveals how the basic belief in its exceptionalism has driven America's past and present attempts to remake the world in its own image. She expands her original concept of 'independent internationalism' as the modus operandi of U.S. diplomacy to reveal the many unethical Faustian deals the United States entered into since 1920 to obtain its current global supremacy.

In the aftermath of the 1910 Mexican Revolution, Mexican and U.S. political leaders, business executives, and ordinary citizens shaped modern Mexico by making industrial capitalism the key to upward mobility into the middle class, material prosperity, and

The role of large-scale business enterprise—big business and its managers—during the formative years of modern capitalism (from the 1850s until the 1920s) is delineated in this pathmarking book. Alfred Chandler, Jr., the distinguished business historian, sets forth the reasons for the dominance of big business in American transportation, communications, and the central sectors of production and distribution.

A study of the impact of corporate middle-level managers and white collar workers on American society and culture. An extended essay on social change based on case studies of a wide range of participants in the emerging corporate culture of the early 1900s. Zunz is in the history department at the U. of Virginia. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

In the growing and dynamic economy of nineteenth-century America, businesses sold vast quantities of goods to one another, mostly on credit. This book explains how business people solved the problem of whom to trust--how they determined who was deserving of credit, and for how much. Rowena Olegario traces the way resistance, mutual suspicion, skepticism, and legal challenges were overcome in the relentless quest to make information on business borrowers more accurate and available.

Documents the first sixty years of Ford Motor Company's international expansion, tracing its global business expansion across six continents.