Overview
The first complete look at one of America's legendary businessleaders
This groundbreaking biography by Kevin Maney, acclaimedtechnology columnist for USA Today, offers fresh insight and newinformation on one of the twentieth century's greatest businessfigures. Over the course of forty-two years, Thomas J. Watson tooka failing business called The Computer-Tabulating-Recording Companyand transformed it into IBM, the world's first and most famoushigh-tech company. The Maverick and His Machine is the first modernbiography of this business titan. Maney secured exclusive access tohundreds of boxes of Watson's long-forgotten papers, and he hasproduced the only complete picture of Watson the man and Watson thelegendary business leader. These uncovered documents reveal newinformation about how Watson bet the company in the 1920s ontabulating machines-the forerunners to computers-and how hedaringly beat the Great Depression of the 1930s. The documents alsolead to new insights concerning the controversy that has followedWatson: his suppos ed coll usion with Adolf Hitler's Naziregime.
Maney paints a vivid portrait of Watson, uncovers hismotivations, and offers needed context on his mammoth role in thecourse of modern business history. Jim Collins, author of thebestsellers Good to Great and Built to Last, writes in the Forewordto Maney's book: "Leaders like Watson are like forces ofnature-almost terrifying in their release of energy andunpredictable volatility, but underneath they still adhere tocertain patterns and principles. The patterns and principles mightbe hard to see amidst the melee, but they are there nonetheless. Ittakes a gifted person of insight to highlight those patterns, andthat is exactly what Kevin Maney does in this book."
The Maverick and His Machine also includesnever-before-published photos of Watson from IBM's archives,showing Watson in greater detail than any book ever has before.Essential reading for every businessperson, tech junkie, and IBMfollower, the book is also full of the kind of personal detail andreconstructed events that make it a page-turning story for generalreaders. The Maverick and the Machine is poised to be one of themost important business biographies in years.
Kevin Maney is a nationally syndicated, award-winning technologycolumnist at USA Today, where he has been since 1985. He is a coverstory writer whose story about IBM's bet-the-company move gainedhim national recognition. He was voted best technology columnist bythe business journalism publication TJFR. Marketing Computersmagazine has four times named him one of the most influentialtechnology columnists. He is the author of Wiley's MEGAMEDIASHAKEOUT: The Inside Story of the Leaders and the Losers in theExploding Communications Industry, which was a Business WeekBestseller.
Residence: Clifton, VA.
"Watson was clearly a genius with a thousand helpers, yet hemanaged to build an institution that could transcend thegenius."
-from the Foreword by Jim Collins
"Like all great biographers, Kevin Maney gives us an engagingstory. . .his fascinating and definitive book about IBM's founderis replete with amazing revelations and character lessons thatresonate today."
-Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Harvard Business School, bestselling authorof Evolve! and When Giants Learn to Dance
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