First published 2022
General Electric stood as America's most celebrated corporation for over a century. Financial journalist William D. Cohan examines how GE became a business legend and why that legend crumbled. The company produced famous leaders and countless products while cultivating a management culture that impressed Wall Street. Cohan conducted rare interviews with key executives, including Jack Welch, who led GE for twenty-two years and transformed it into the world's most valuable company. But Welch's emphasis on shareholder value and acquisitions masked underlying problems. When he passed leadership to Jeffrey Immelt, the new CEO inherited both impossible expectations and hidden vulnerabilities. Cohan traces GE's 125-year rise and fall through the personalities who shaped it. The book reveals how American business mythology can obscure corporate reality and offers lessons about industrial capitalism's promises and perils.
Genres: history, business, politics, non-fiction
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: corporate-rise-and-fall, leadership-transition
Setting: America, Wall Street
Period: 20th-century, 21st-century
793 pages · Kindle Edition · Penguin