San Antonio College Library

Traces the rise of monopolies from the railroad era to today's computer empires. The history of monopolies has been dominated by strong and charismatic personalities--this work tells the stories behind the individuals--from John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie to Harold Geneen and Bill Gates--who forged these empires with genius, luck, and an often ruthless disregard for fair competition. He also analyzes the viewpoints of their equally colorful...

In the early 20th century, business elites, trade associations, wealthy powerbrokers, and media allies set out to build a new American orthodoxy: down with "big government" and up with unfettered markets. With startling archival evidence, Oreskes and Conway document campaigns to rewrite textbooks, combat unions, and defend child labor. They detail the ploys that turned hardline economists Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman into household names;...

"Over the course of the twentieth century the popular perception of America's giant corporations has undergone an astonishing change. Condemned as dangerous leviathans in the century's first decades, by 1945 major corporations had become respected, even revered, institutions. Roland Marchand's book tells how large companies such as AT & T and U.S. Steel created their own "souls" in order to reassure consumers and politicians that their size and influence...

Here William Roy conducts a historical inquiry into the rise of the large publicly traded American corporation. Departing from the received wisdom, which sees the big, vertically integrated corporation as the result of technological development and market growth that required greater efficiency in larger scale firms, Roy focuses on political, social, and institutional processes governed by the dynamics of power. The author shows how the corporation...