A Ghost's Memoir
A Ghost's Memoir: The Making of Alfred P. Sloan's My Years with General Motors John McDonald, Dan Seligman,
Publisher: The MIT Press
ISBN: 0262632853
DDC: 338
Edition: Paperback; 2003-10-01
Summary:
Published in 1964, My Years with General Motors was an immediate
best-seller and today is considered one of the few classic books on
management. The book is the ghostwritten memoir of Alfred P. Sloan,
Jr. (1875-1966), whose business and management strategies enabled
General Motors to overtake Ford as the dominant American automobile
manufacturer in the 1920s and 1930s. What has been largely unknown
until now is that My Years with General Motors was almost not
published. Although it was written with the permission of General
Motors -- and slated for publication in October 1959 -- at the last
minute General Motors tried to suppress the book out of fears that
some of the material in it could become evidence in an antitrust
action against the company. This book, by John McDonald, Sloan's
ghostwriter, tells the behind-the-scenes story of the book's writing,
its attempted suppression, and the lawsuit that eventually led to its
publication. McDonald's narrative is partly the David-and-Goliath
story of a lone journalist taking on the world's then-largest
corporation and partly a study of strategy in its own right.
McDonald's struggle to publish the book led him to navigate a
complicated course among the competing interests of General Motors,
Fortune magazine (his employer), and Time, Inc. (Fortune's owner). In
many ways this "book about the book" parallels the Sloan book as a
tale of successful, brilliantly planned strategy.
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