Billy, Alfred, and General Motors: The Story of Two Unique Men, a Legendary Company, and a Remarkable Time in American History | 
 enlarge | Author: William Pelfrey
Publisher: AMACOM
Category: Book
List Price: $27.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  8 reviews
Sales Rank: 152587
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6 x 1.3
ISBN: 0814408699
Dewey Decimal Number: 338.762920973
EAN: 9780814408698
ASIN: 0814408699
Publication Date: March 27, 2006
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Condition: New, unread, unused and in perfect condition with no missing or damaged pages, may have a remainder mark.
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Book Description
One industry has had more impact on life in America than any other before or since. Here is the story of two men and one company at the start of it all. You couldn't find two more different men. Billy Durant was the consummate salesman, a brilliant wheeler-dealer with grand plans, unflappable energy, and a fondness for the high life. Alfred Sloan was the intellectual, an expert in business strategy and management, master of all things organizational. Together, this odd couple built perhaps the most successful enterprise in U.S. history, General Motors, and with it an industry that has come to define modern life throughout the world. Their story is full of timeless lessons, cautionary tales, and inspiration for business leaders and history buffs alike. Billy, Alfred, and General Motors is the tale not just of the two extraordinary men of its title but also of the formative decades of twentieth-century America, through two world wars and sea changes in business, industry, politics, and culture. The book includes vivid, warts-and-all portraits of the legends of the golden age of the automobile, from "Crazy" Henry Ford, Ransom Olds, and Charles Nash to the brilliant but uncredited David Dunbar Buick and Cadillac founder Henry Leland. The impact of Durant and Sloan on their contemporaries and their industry is matched only by the powerful legacy of their improbable and incredible partnership. Characters, events, and context--all are brought skillfully and passionately to life in this meticulously researched and supremely readable book. "This book is particularly timely, with the auto industry in a period of extreme turbulence that features a restructuring of General Motors, as well as other icons of times gone by. In a sense, we may be reliving in the 21st century the auto drama of the 20th century portrayed so well by Bill Pelfrey. The author's outstanding writing and research skills are evident throughout and make this one of the most important and fascinating books I've read in a very long time." -- David E. Cole, Chairman of the Center for Automotive Research "Every person who is interested in the building of the American automobile industry must read this book. Bill Pelfrey has done a great job researching the early years of Billy Durant and Alfred Sloan and the very different roles they played in the history of General Motors." -- Jack Smith, retired Chairman and CEO, General Motors Corporation "Anyone interested in the current story of General Motors should read this engrossing description of the beginnings and early growth of this largest of all America's businesses. Billy, Alfred, and the General is an important work on the history of the automobile industry." -- John G. Smale, retired Chairman and CEO, Procter and Gamble Company; former Chairman, General Motors Corporation "The challenges faced by Durant, Sloan, and others in the automotive industry 100 years ago are as relevant as ever today: managing through varying leadership styles; ensuring the ability to adapt to a changing business environment; maintaining cash flow during downturns. This book highlights both their successes and failures, and it should be read by managers everywhere." -- Ira M. Millstein, Senior Partner, Weil, Gotshal and Manges; Visiting Professor in Competitive Enterprise and Strategy, Yale School of Management; Special Adviser to the World Bank on Corporate Governance "To understand where General Motors is going, you must first understand where it has been. The who and why of it all is beautifully described, anecdote by anecdote, by Pelfrey in this fascinating read. Magnificently researched." -- Gerald C. Meyers, Professor of Management, University of Michigan (Ross) Business School; former Chairman and CEO, American Motors Corporation
Book Description
"You couldn’t find two more different men. Billy Durant was the consummate salesman, a brilliant wheeler-dealer with grand plans, unflappable energy, and a fondness for the high life. Alfred Sloan was the intellectual, an expert in business strategy and management, master of all things organizational. Together, this odd couple built perhaps the most successful enterprise in U.S. history, General Motors, and with it an industry that has come to define modern life throughout the world. Their story is full of timeless lessons, cautionary tales, and inspiration for business leaders and history buffs alike. Billy, Alfred, and General Motors is the tale not just of the two extraordinary men of its title but also of the formative decades of twentieth-century America, through two world wars and sea changes in business, industry, politics, and culture. The book includes vivid, warts-and-all portraits of the legends of the golden age of the automobile, from “Crazy” Henry Ford, Ransom Olds, and Charles Nash to the brilliant but uncredited David Dunbar Buick and Cadillac founder Henry Leland. The impact of Durant and Sloan on their contemporaries and their industry is matched only by the powerful legacy of their improbable and incredible partnership. Characters, events, and context -- all are brought skillfully and passionately to life in this meticulously researched and supremely readable book."
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| Customer Reviews: Read 3 more reviews...
 Billy Durant and General Motors. May 12, 2007
This is a pretty good book, and gives basic knowledge about how GM was formed. This is one of the few books on the market that you can talk about when someone is purchasing a car, and the history of the company is different than I had expected. The book focused most of the attention on Billy Durant, instead of Alfred Sloan, which in turn made the title more interesting. It is a good story about how one mans drive can change the world as we know it, and it can also ruin him. I would recommend this book to a friend or relitive. But it gets a bit hard to hang in there for the last chapter or so (at least I thought so).
 Billy, Alfred and General Motors February 26, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Billy Durant, what a man, not only a visionary with amazing ablities, but one who believe in the worth of the common man.
Where would Nash, Chevrolet, the Dodges , Chrysler , the Leland's, the DuPont's and yes Sloan, who was disloyal and stabbed him in the back without Billy Durant?
This book proves the established fact of business, that bankers, both direct and investment, stock sellers and so call money people can't built anything for all their money.
A great book on American business.
JRP
Lively look at the dueling leaders who launched GM November 23, 2006
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
In this book you'll find eccentrics, misfits and geniuses who made and lost fortunes, founded and lost companies, gained brief fame and were eventually forgotten by just about everyone except automotive industry historians. Although the book purports to focus on Billy Durant, Alfred Sloan and General Motors, its scope is actually much wider, since the evolution of the automobile industry exemplifies the evolution of U.S. industries in general. We recommend this lively, readable saga to history buffs and managers. It is a highly instructive take on the parallels between boom and bust in the car industry of the 1910s and in the high-tech industry of the 1990s.
The Right Men, The Right Place, The Right Time July 11, 2006
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
In a week when the Nissan-Renault partnership has made a suggestion of parterning with or buying out or merging with General Motors, this book makes a timely read.
Here is the story of the men who founded the company, Sloan and Durant. They were big dreamers, held a vision of the future, and seemed to have a basic understanding of where their company and the automobile industry was going.
I don't know who's in charge at GM now, but it appears that they aren't managing the company to the standard that such an icon of business should be held. Quite likely they are financial people, very knowledgable in making the company profitable this quarter (that's 'this quarter' a few years ago), but ignoring things like fuel efficiency to keep building SUVs (great profits for 'this quarter').
In their day Durant and Sloan managed through a whole series of problems. It's interesting to think about how they might have handled today's problems. The book presents a view of a time when perhaps management could make changes, when the company, the union, and the economy was different.
 Horribly edited, if at all June 30, 2006
6 out of 13 found this review helpful
Are the other reviewers here reading the same book I am, or are they friends of the author? The poor quality of this book is too glaring to avoid. An honest reader has to wonder if it is self-published. (OK, AMACOM appears not to be a vanity press, but a Scribners it ain't.)
Pelfrey is sometimes good at narrative, but after doing his cut-and-paste work, did he bother to read the finished product? We are ceaselessly flailed with redundant information. How many times do we need to know that Alfred Sloan's memoir was ghostwritten by a committee of 20? How many times do we need to know of Billy Durant's mother's Mayflower connection? How many times do we need to be told that Durant was a strong supporter of Prohibition and the Eighteenth Amendment? How many times do we need it driven home that Billy Durant was mercurial and that Alfred Sloan was stolid? How many times do we need reminding that General Motors became the greatest enterprise in corporate history? All of this is repeated as if for the first time. And all of this in the first 30 pages!
Is this just sloppy or non-existent editing, or is it padding? For no apparent reason, where we would expect a series of sentences heading paragraphs, we are given a bulleted list. Since when does a book that "reads like a novel" have bulleted lists?
I keep hoping that the repetition will taper off, that I'll no longer be subjected to gratuitously sensationalistic passages like, "Raised by a socialite divorcee in an era when single mothers were scorned," or awkward transitions like "...Durant was high on the list of Flint's most elegible bachelors. He married Clara Pitt...." I hope the story of Durant's first job, in his family's lumberyard, which Pelfrey (or rather the source he quotes) begins in intimate detail, will be rescued from the oblivion to which it's assigned a paragraph later. But I won't hold my breath.
I suggest that, instead of heeding the misleading reviews here, you catch the author's talk on BookTv. It tells you everything the book does, but mercifully only once.
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