The Reckoning

This New York Times -bestselling history is "an immense, and immensely readable, saga of the American and Japanese auto industries" ( Boston Globe ). After generations of creating high-quality automotive products, American industrialists began losing ground to the Japanese auto industry in the decades after World War II. Pulitzer Prize-winner David Halberstam, with his signature precision and absorbing narrative style, traces this power shift by delving into the boardrooms and onto the factory floors of the America's Ford Motor Company and Japan's Nissan. Different in every way--from their reactions to labor problems to their philosophies and leadership styles--the two companies stand as singular testaments to the challenges brought by the rise of the global economy. From the author of The Fifties and The Coldest Winter, and filled with intriguing vignettes about Henry Ford, Lee Iacocca, and other visionary industrial leaders, The Reckoning remains a powerful and enlightening story about manufacturing in the modern age, and how America fell woefully behind. "An impressive achievement . . . A wide-ranging and revealing account of the sources of the Japanese success and the causes of the American failure . . . Halberstam deals brilliantly with the human cost of the defeat." -- New York Times Book Review "Wonderful . . . unique and valuable . . . A cautionary tale that makes us understand why we weep for America at the same time that we buy Japanese." -- Chicago Tribune This ebook features an extended biography of David Halberstam.