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The greatest capitalist who ever lived : Tom Watson Jr. and the epic story of how IBM created the digital age / Ralph Watson McElvenny and Marc Wortman.
Lippincott Library HD9696.2.U64 I2555 2023
By Request
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- McElvenny, Ralph Watson, author.
- Wortman, Marc (Marc Josef), author.
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Watson, Thomas J., 1914-1993.
- Watson, Thomas J.
- International Business Machines Corporation--History.
- International Business Machines Corporation.
- Businessmen--United States--Biography.
- Businessmen.
- Capitalists and financiers--United States--Biography.
- Capitalists and financiers.
- United States.
- Genre:
- Biographies
- Biographies.
- History
- Physical Description:
- viii, 567 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (black and white), portraits ; 24 cm
- Edition:
- First edition.
- Place of Publication:
- New York, NY : PublicAffairs, 2023.
- Summary:
- "Thomas Watson Jr. drove IBM to undertake the biggest gamble in business history with a revolution no other company of the age could dare--the creation in the 1960s of the IBM System/360, the world's first fully integrated and compatible mainframe computer that laid the foundation for the information technology future. Its success made IBM the most valuable company in America. Fortune magazine touted him as "the greatest capitalist who ever lived." Time named him one of the "One Hundred People of the Century." Behind closed doors, Watson was a multifaceted, complicated man. As a young man, he was a failed student and playboy, an unlikely candidate for corporate titan. He pulled his life together as a courageous World War II pilot and took over IBM after his father's death. He suffered from anxiety and depression so overwhelming that he spent days prostrate and locked in a bathroom at home while IBM faced crisis after crisis. And he carried out a family-shattering battle over the future of IBM with his brother Dick, who expected to follow him as CEO. But despite his many demons, he laid the foundation for what eventually became the global information technology industry, which dominates today's world. His story, and the industry he created, is equal to, if not more important than that of Rockefeller and Standard Oil, Vanderbilt and the railroads, and Morgan in finance"-- Provided by publisher.
- Contents:
- Introduction: the greatest capitalist
- The cash
- THINK
- Terrible Tommy
- Flight
- World peace through world trade
- The straight path
- Master of the air
- Mission to Moscow
- Dividing the Kingdom
- The electronic age
- Clink. Clank. THINK
- The passage of power
- Founding IBM anew
- Riding the runaway horse
- Good design is good business
- Learning to compute
- IBM's d-day
- Alarm bells
- Alone
- Getting out of the ditch
- Succession
- On the high seas and beyond
- A capitalist for disarmament
- Back to the USSR
- Epilogue: the great divide
- Coda
- Acknowledgments
- Notes
- Index.
- Notes:
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 503-546) and index.
- ISBN:
- 9781541768529
- 1541768523
- OCLC:
- 1370003728
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