| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 106.4

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 106.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Robert Kanigel. The One Best Way: Frederick Winslow Taylor and the Enigma of Efficiency. New York: Viking. 1997. Pp. xi, 675. $34.95.

What might be "the one best way" to help Americans understand the life of Frederick Winslow Taylor? Accomplished biographer Robert Kanigel efficiently introduces readers to the originator of scientific management in an account that skillfully blends technical detail with a broad historical context. 1

"Taylor's name is not as familiar today as in 1912," Kanigel contends, precisely because his creation, scientific management, "so permeates the soil of modern life we no longer realize it's there . . . Taylor bequeathed a clockwork world of tasks timed to the hundredth of a minute, of standardized factories, machines, women, and men. He helped instill in us the fierce, unholy obsession with time, order, productivity, and efficiency that marks our age" (p. 7). In an age when supervisors monitor computer keystrokes of telephone service agents, when business gurus tout "total quality management," it is tempting to see Taylorism everywhere. Kanigel seeks to demonstrate where the philosophy of scientific management came from and how Taylor made it so compelling. . . .

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