A Ghost's Memoir: The Making of Alfred P. Sloan's My Years with General Motors (The MIT Press)

The project had something useful about it for his state of mind after his wife died. On the occasion of his previous birthday, he had written me a thank-you note for noticing it, saying that at eighty "there is little to look forward to ... but I have much to look backward on. And, in a way, that's consolation."

John J. Raskob was Pierre Du Pont's mentor and guide in matters of finance, as Charles Kettering came to be in technology-both very good in their fields but with flaws that would endanger the survival of General Motors. With great foresight into the future of the automobile business, Raskob wrote down several good reasons for the Du Pont company to

Before considering the subject of particular products it is advisable to outline the controlling purposes that presumably underlie the organization and proposed operations of the Corporation. That is, the whole picture should first be clearly drawn in order that the present particular subject may be considered, not just alone, but in its essential

Mr. Sloan's genius, as far as I could see, was in a complex of corporate arrangements and activities; his skill was in the internal strategies of the automobile industry and in the market: He could hold that industry, so to speak, in the palm of his hand.

Mr. Sloan had moved his office from the old General Motors building in New York to a suite in Rockefeller Center, and he cameto this office from his nearby Fifth Avenue apartment every day. He sat behind his desk and read the current data on automobile production and sales that filled its top right drawer much as an orchestra director would pore ov

The field of cars of the first grade is now practically monopolized by the Ford. At present it is being invaded by Chevrolet. It is not recommended that the General Motors Corporation attempt to build and sell a car of the Ford grade, as the Ford sells at the lowest price within the first grade. Instead it is recommended that the General Motors Cor

Frank Donovan, a lifetime close friend and a lawyer from Detroit. He was known among his friends and clients as a brilliant legal analyst with a nonaggressive temperament. No litigator. When we were both twenty, I remember him saying: "When there's a fight, I pick up my hat and go home." He had a large head, somewhat out of proportion to

Its twenty-eight pages, replete with organization charts, set forth the future design of the corporation now known in the famous corporate aphorism "decentralization with coordinated control."