A case study of the methods required to revive manufacturing industries.
The story of one of the most innovative companies in the world: the automobile manufacturer that makes some of the best-selling and longest-lasting cars on the road.
Superlatives aside, Honda's record speaks for itself, and International Business Times editor in chief Rothfeder (McIlhenny's Gold: How a Louisiana Family Built the Tabasco Empire, 2007, etc.) highlights the achievements of its founder, Soichiro Honda (1906-1991). In the United States, Honda remains at the pinnacle of the auto industry, with such iconic models as the Civic, Accord and Odyssey; 75 percent of the cars and trucks it manufactured over the last 25 years are still on the road. For skeptics, the author's acknowledgments and the reference section detailing his sources will be helpful. In Rothfeder's telling, Honda is a much different auto manufacturer than others. Unlike Toyota, for example, it is not organized as a top-down pyramid of control. Honda's flat-type organization encourages local inputs. In Marysville, Ohio, technician Shubho Bhattacharya's Intelligent Paint Technology reduced “energy usage in the paint shop by 25 percent” and was rapidly deployed globally to like effect. Unlike General Motors and Ford, Honda also builds its own machinery, and workers cooperate with engineers to configure production lines, as they did in Lincoln, Arkansas. There, the “line's coiled shape” helped reduce its footprint and costs while providing a flexible assembly and quality-control capability. Soichiro Honda's career as an innovator took off in the 1920s, when he patented a design for unbreakable cast-iron auto wheels, and continued through his mastery of the skills required to manufacture piston rings that could improve combustion engine performance. Since then, the company has led the way in engine development. As the founder said, “success can be achieved only through repeated failure and introspection. In fact, success represents one percent of your work, which results only from the ninety-nine percent that is called failure.”
A case study of the methods required to revive manufacturing industries.Pub Date: July 31, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-59184-473-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Portfolio
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
This penetrating interview with dominant financial philosopher and philanthropist Soros (Underwriting Democracy, 1991, etc.) is unfortunately hindered by repetition, obscurity, and occasionally forced contrariness. A book of conversations with a successful investor automatically suggests the Market Wizards collection, the seminal pair of books containing interviews with financiers who fit the title. Like those works, Soros on Soros sinks or swims with the ability of its subject to shed light on the methods that have made him the second most successful money manager in history (after Warren Buffett). The reflective and talkative Soros provides three interviews. The first, conducted by investment strategist and Soros friend Wien, concentrates on the Hungarian immigrant's upbringing and investment style. Hungarian journalist Koenen poses the questions in the second interview, which explores Soros's philanthropic efforts and global political interests. The final interview, again by Wien, delves more deeply into Soros's philosophy as it informs his life outside of investing. Untangling the man's uniquely philosophical approach to market prognostication, the first section is by far the most tantalizing. Since 1969, Soros has managed the Quantum Fund, the superior precursor to today's hedge funds, which, by employing a greater deal of leverage than most funds dare, has grown at a pace that would have turned a $1,000 investment in 1969 into over $2 million today. Soros is perhaps best known for Quantum's attack on the British pound in 1992, a maneuver that netted Quantum shareholders over $2 billion but is viewed with hostility by many who fear the trader's power. The play-by-play of this wrangle and others best grabs the attention of readers not intimidated by concepts such as derivatives and currency speculation. Call it messianic or ballsy, there's a courage to this interviewee that makes for both an educational and entertaining read, though one dampened by the constraints of the question-and- answer format. (First serial to Fortune Magazine; $250,000 ad/promo)
Pub Date: Sept. 19, 1995
ISBN: 0-471-12014-6
Page Count: 321
Publisher: Wiley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Selective albeit generally absorbing recollections from an improbable stormy petrel who held important posts in two Republican administrations. Stans (who turned 87 earlier this year) left his rural Minnesota home as a teenager to take night courses in accounting at Northwestern University. He eventually became the senior partner of a Chicago-based CPA firm, which he turned into a national power, and amassed a considerable fortune. An active Republican, Stans was appointed deputy postmaster general in 1955. He moved on at Eisenhower's invitation to the Bureau of the Budget, where he was the last director to balance the federal government's books. While the Democrats controlled the presidency, the author served as treasurer of Nixon's abortive run for governor of California in 1962, incurred the punitive wrath of the JFK White House, and played a major role in Nixon's successful 1968 presidential campaign. Joining the Cabinet as secretary of commerce, Stans was not only an energetic trade warrior but also an effective apostle of dÇtente and the man in charge of establishing the Office of Minority Business Enterprise (an oft-ignored Nixon initiative). Withal, these and other accomplishments were washed away in the flood tide of Watergate. At no small cost, Stans (who recounted his legal travails in The Terrors of Justice, 1978) was acquitted on state charges of accepting unlawful contributions on behalf of the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP). Under intense pressure from a special prosecutor, however, he pled guilty to five misdemeanors involving financial improprieties unrelated to the cover-up. Although Stans devotes only the last two chapters of his narrative to making a case for his relatively innocent entanglements in the Watergate scandal, the guess here is that this exculpatory material will command a lion's share of such attention as is paid the book. Engrossing reminiscences of a genuinely singular life that seem almost certain to awaken bitter memories of unforgiven trespasses.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1995
ISBN: 1-57488-032-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1995
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