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

General Motors chairman Alfred P. Sloan was the ultimate organization man: he rose to the top of the auto industry after pioneers like Henry Ford built it, and then he transformed it with innovative management practices that today are studied and copied by business executives everywhere. In Sloan Rules, University of New Mexico historian David Farber describes how Sloan led his company to "economic greatness" between the 1920s and '40s, particularly by developing "a loose economic model in which highly rationalized corporate productivity combined with relentless marketing creates a mass consumer society that, in turn, produces the greatest good for the greatest number of people." Surprisingly little is known about Sloan's personal life--he was an intensely private man--but in this biography Farber provides a good overview of what made Sloan such an outstanding businessman. He also recounts Sloan's contentious relationship with Franklin Delano Roosevelt: "To Sloan, the New Deal was a raw deal." (At one point, the chairman even described the New Dealers as "ancient Asiatic despots.") Farber clearly wishes his subject had concerned himself more with social justice, but he also points out that Sloan's energy and creativity made it possible for a subsequent GM chairman to say, with some if not complete credibility, that what's good for GM is good for America. --John J. Miller