| Book Review | Indiana Magazine of History, 100.3

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| Book Review | Indiana Magazine of History, 100.3 | The History Cooperative

Reviews

Sloan Rules Alfred P. Sloan and the Triumph of General Motors

By David Farber

(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Illustrations, notes, index. $27.50.)

Making and Selling Cars Innovation and Change in the U.S. Automotive Industry

By James M. Rubenstein

(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. Pp. ix, 401. Illustrations, figures, tables, maps, notes, bibliography, index. $45.00.)

In Sloan Rules David Farber has written an informative, balanced, and highly readable account of the life and impact of one of the most important figures in American business. Other historians and commentators, notably Alfred D. Chandler and Peter F. Drucker, have outlined Sloan's role in creating the vertically integrated corporation, but they focused on Sloan as efficient, rational, and objective—in short, the consummate businessman. Although Farber covers some aspects of this story, his contribution here is to sketch out Sloan's life and business career before General Motors, and then to examine the ways that Sloan put his influence and considerable financial resources behind an agenda Farber calls "corporate conservatism." This included strenuously opposing not only government safety standards for automobiles, but also most aspects of the New Deal (as did many other business leaders of the day, to be sure). Throughout his long career as the head of General Motors, Sloan put corporate well-being before all other concerns. At the same time, however, Farber points out that Sloan also created the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Farber has produced an account that contributes to our understanding of the larger issue of the influence of private money, trade associations, and corporate public relations upon governmental policies and effectiveness.

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