Recommending Books for Purchase (Bulletin 6 - January 2018) - Choice Review: Commerce

This is the definitive economic and business history of American freight railroads in the 20th century, with guidance for the current century. Gallamore (Michigan State Univ.) and Meyer (Harvard Univ.), leading transportation economists, tell the story of the long decline and almost miraculous recent rebirth of the once largest industry in America. They trace how the industry finally freed itself from congressional regulation after battling for most of the 20th century, but not before massive bankruptcies, reorganization, widespread losses of service and deferred maintenance plagued freight railroads. Deregulation, culminating in the Staggers Act of 1980, resulted in substantial cost savings, dramatic productivity improvements, lower rates to shippers, and earnings sufficient to finally promote reinvestment. The authors cover the economics of railroad rate and merger regulation particularly well, along with the evolution of what are currently the four largest profitable private freight rail systems in the US. Though the book is primarily about freight railroads, there are also two excellent chapters on Amtrak. A long chapter on the advancing technology for American railroads is another remarkable addition to a book primarily driven by economic policy. The superb index and 60 pages of footnotes compound the fact: there is no comparable book.

Hubbard (Colby College) and Paarsch (Univ. of Central Florida) have created a concise overview of auctions for the MIT Press "Essential Knowledge" series. The information is wide-ranging, useful, and very interesting. For instance: “the Roman Empire was once sold at auction.” The framing as auctions of such processes as the order of links in Google makes them more salient for readers than they would otherwise be. The Internet-based world uses auctions to sell insights from Facebook profiles or browsing histories to online businesses interested in garnering high prices from advertisers. The book endeavors to provide an understanding of how auctions really work. The common auction formats, pricing rules, and important properties of auction outcomes are discussed. Various alternative auction rules and their different modeling assumptions are explained. Among useful topics are when to use auctions and why, auctions as games, and eBay’s pricing rules. A glossary at the end aids reading, as does a one-page list of 12 more advanced and technical recommended sources.

Shirazi's Brand Islam is a readable introduction to the concepts of halal (religiously acceptable), haram (not acceptable), and mashbooh (doubtful), as they are being articulated across West and East in marketplaces increasingly organized to profit from the vast demographic of devout Muslims. Shirazi explains that the form of devotion she studies is, first, a “profit-based concept, one that exploits the emergence of a new Islamic economic paradigm.” Chapters on ritual slaughter, toys, cosmetics, Islamic dress, and sportswear make up the crux of the book. The chapter on ritual slaughter describes the widespread banning of halal slaughter in Europe on the putative grounds of cruelty to animals. In contrast, the chapter on halal cosmetics highlights the close connection between these products and vegan and organic cosmetics, whose markets are expanding. The chapter on hijab fashion defines key terms and offers an international perspective that demonstrates the heterogeneity of fashion for Muslim women. This chapter, especially, could be used in multiple settings to guide discussions of a little understood topic. While the introduction provides rather fragmentary news reports to establish that Muslim communities are being marginalized and scapegoated in the West, the chapter is already dated, insofar as the book was published before Donald Trump’s election.

Carlen has provided an overview of the evolution of entrepreneurship from ancient times to the present. He brings insight to Mesopotamian merchants' creation of an urban market economy, the invention of paper money by Chinese tea traders, the role of entrepreneurs in European colonization from the 16th through 19th centuries, and the recent startups offering interplanetary space tourism. The history begins with the end of the Stone Age, when the exchange of luxury items from far-flung places began, as evidenced by the distribution of such items as marine shells and ostrich eggs. The Phoenicians are described as “pollinators” who spread the products of the Mediterranean and western Asia across that expanse. The entrepreneurial impulse, guided by imagination, energy, and shrewdness, is seen as “the forerunner of momentous transformation, an instigator of significant changes that extend well beyond the realm of industry.” Entrepreneurs throughout history served as catalysts of huge developments, such as the democratization of the automobile. Sometimes entrepreneurs have been wildly innovative technologically. At other times the innovation is in how a product or service is made, distributed, or delivered. Entrepreneurs will come to better understand who they are and what they do by reading this book.

According to Muratovski (Journal of Business Design & Society), "Whether we like it or not, consumerism is the prevalent ideology of our times." In this essay collection, he focuses on how the marketing of products and services affects our lives and lifestyles, looking at brands as "icons of popular culture" and links to our identities and political/economic systems. He points out that "consumer economics influences every facet of our lives." Among the essays are "Race, Advertisements and YouTube: Identities and Nationality," "The Use of Gold Rush Nostalgia on Wine Labels," and "Brand IKEA in a Global Cultural Economy." One example noted in the book is that logos of well-known brands like Apple and McDonald's have a power in our lives similar to the totems carried by early tribes. And the videos posted on YouTube enable us to share stories in much the same way that ancient civilizations did. What's more, linking New Zealand wines to the country's Central Otago gold miners in the 1800s turns out to be a good way to capture the fancy of wine lovers. Recommended for upper-division and graduate marketing students, faculty, researchers, and practitioners.

Spellman (Miami Univ.) provides readers with a fascinating description of the role of independent grocers in spurring innovation within the retail function in the 19th century. Though much has been written elsewhere about chain retailers, small grocers vs. chains, etc., the author focuses on the how the entrepreneurial spirit within the small grocer environment enhanced the growth of the industry and business environment. The author does not position small grocers and chains to be at odds with each other but instead considers how the paths of the two intersected and even overlapped. Critical topics considered are the importance of a service orientation to differentiating offerings, management of trust in supply chains, cooperation among retailers, etc. Practitioners, researchers, and students may find this book interesting as it brings to light the contributions of small retailers to innovation within the retail industry and also highlights the importance of uniqueness and creativity at the small business level.

Tapscott, a leading authority on innovation, media, and the economic and social impacts of technology, has reissued this 20th anniversary volume nearly verbatim with the addition of a new preface and new commentaries at the beginning of each chapter. For readers who liked the original, as this reviewer did (CH, May'96, 33-5199), this new edition will enhance their appreciation of Tapscott’s work. He focuses on an age of networked intelligence in which relentless technological change results in both positive and negative consequences for a world where human knowledge is of the utmost importance. Each new commentary reflects on how the world has changed, raises new issues and insights for today, and projects forward to the next 20 years. This new edition includes a foreword by Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google. Recommended for college students at all levels, business practitioners, and anyone interested in how the world is changing in part because of the influence of digital technology.

In this readable, well-organized book containing 101 brief chapters, Pachter (communications and business etiquette coach and professional speaker) presents practical, sound advice on the most common situations involving business etiquette: communication, body language, dress, dining, telephone and cell phone use, making presentations, job interviewing, and many other essentials. Pachter understands how to be seen as a professional even in this day of casual dress and living. The book's "Eat" section contains clear guidance on a range of topics related to business dining (e.g., table manners, food allergies, splitting bills, invitations, and holiday parties) and hones in on key issues in the chapter titled "Avoiding the Seven Deadly Sins of Dining." Particularly timely is the "Tweet" section, which addresses etiquette regarding phone use and is packed with examples of proper and useful ways to use e-mail as well as social media. Readers will learn how to master the art of mingling, networking, and remembering names as well as how to write effective thank-you notes and give the perfect business gift. See related, The Essential Guide to Business Etiquette, by Lillian Hunt Chaney and Jeanette St. Clair Martin (CH, May'08, 45-5077).

Arguably, there are three great stories that have emerged from the current age of technological innovation: Steve Jobs, the "Google fellows," and Jeff Bezos. Bloomberg Businessweek writer Stone employs a historian's approach in presenting Amazon in relentless detail flowing from the personality and focus of founder Jeff Bezos. This can lead to insights as well as mind-numbing detail: "Christopher Smith, a twenty-three-year-old warehouse temp with tattoos of Chinese characters on his forearms...." Amazon is presented as a triumph of small things done well in creating a global organization that is potentially on the threshold of even more exponential growth. Bezos is presented as a driven, detailed-oriented innovator focused on improving the customer experience at Amazon, which has grown as a function of Bezos's personality. Neither Steve Jobs, as presented by Walter Isaacson in Steve Jobs (CH, Apr'12, 49-4500), nor Bezos comes off as an average nice guy. How could they? The real lesson is that the "heroic entrepreneur" is captive to his/her vision and that most other things are secondary. Anyone wanting to learn about Jeff Bezos's remarkable development of Amazon and his ambition to make it "the everything store" will want to read this book.

In this book, Sandoval (culture and creative industries, City Univ., London) takes on corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the media and communication industries by surveying a range of academic writing on CSR and contemporary corporate practices. Sandoval adopts a critical Marxist analytical perspective, using Marx’s vampire metaphor to explain how capital is a monster that “turns ever more living labour power into ever more capital.” One of the work's aims is to reveal the extent to which talk of CSR either functions as a hiding place for corporate monsters or indicates a real shift towards ethical business conduct. The author provides an overview of several theories of social responsibility in the media, and puts forth her own theoretical model of media and communications industries that is used as the basis for a selection of eight companies whose CSR practices are investigated in a series of case studies. These companies are Apple, AT&T, Google, HP, Microsoft, News Corporation, Vivendi, and The Walt Disney Company. To their credit, these case studies discuss companies’ replies to accusations of CSR failings. A broader perspective on socially responsible business, however, can be found in Andrea Grove and Gary A. Berg’s Social Business: Theory, Practice, and Critical Perspectives (2014).

In the tradition of her previous book, Brides, Inc. (2006), Howard (history, Hartwick College) takes readers on a pop culture voyage through the rapid and pervasive rise of shopping concourses in the US. Consumer society research is a burgeoning field, often overflowing with studies on the matrix of shopping and its spaces, but this engaging analysis provides readers with a fresh, expanded, much-needed examination of the field. Howard demonstrates just how callously small chains, independent shops, and community standbys were pushed out, swallowed up, and cast aside by big businesses pushing cheap trinkets en masse. The removal of local shops paved the way for neighbors to become strangers and for communities to lose their centers as reliance on automobiles to transport families to enclosed, climate-controlled stores of mass-produced goods replaced milk deliveries and tailor-made clothing. Howard’s study provides a firm social background for how US society evolved to its current status of box stores' occupying nearly every retail mile and how the chain equates with quality in the public's mind. This well-done study is a great read that will engage lay readers and advanced researchers.

The Internet of Things (IoT), still in its early stages, revolves around increased machine-to-machine communication. For example, welding machines can “tell” air-conditioning systems to operate and the air-conditioning systems "detect" where employees are so not all rooms are equally cooled. Through radio frequency identification devices, sensors, smartphones, and cloud computing, the IoT can potentially reduce manufacturing costs by creating efficiencies and reducing human contributions to the manufacturing process. Greengard, a business and technology writer, explores the history of IoT and describes its applications for retailing, transportation, construction, military, health, and other industries. Such applications have ethical and social repercussions, such as the loss of device security from hacking, safety concerns with computer malfunctions, privacy violations, and the dehumanization of operations. This pocket-size book is all text but easy reading, especially with the help of a glossary with 38 critical terms. A complementary book is Jeremy Rifkin’s The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism (CH, Nov 2014, 52-1529), which provides a related IoT discussion pertaining to other technologies, such as 3-D printing.

This is a highly readable biography, written by a historian, of the leader of one of the country`s largest and most powerful 19th-century corporations, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O). The book is organized into three sections: the first covers John Garrett's origins and his railroad's impact on Baltimore's and the country's development when the nation's primitive commerce and transportation systems were being dramatically transformed by the new railroad technology. The second treats the railroad's enormous role in the US Civil War, and the third deals with the post–Civil War B&O Railroad expansion in fierce competition with other, major, late-19th-century railroads, all with their own legendary Gilded Age tycoon leaders. The Civil War section is the most exciting, displaying the importance of the new troop and supply transportation technology that changed the strategy of combat. The book is an excellent social, political, and commercial history of 19th-century Baltimore and the nation but is not a railroad technology and operation history, lacking operating statistics and maps, etc. The index and 53 pages of footnotes and sources are excellent. There are relatively few illustrations, mostly of the subject and family, not of the railroad.

Dwyer, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, tells quite a story of failure in Silicon Valley: four pizza-eating, geeky friends from New York University set out to end Facebook’s monopoly on social networking. Dreaming of creating a more noble social network, Max, Ilya, Dan, and Rafi launch Diaspora, which makes a brief impression and then fades (but not away). With the help of Kickstarter funding, Diaspora had more than fifty-five thousand lines of code and many contributors to help create decentralized and private communications with a focus on privacy. Dwyer provides in-depth descriptions of the rise and fall of Diaspora in a book that reads like a novel with a story line and numerous quotes. The story line starts with initial relationships between the four friends and ends with the suicide of the talented programmer Ilya Zhitomirskiy. The numerous quotes and detailed content of the book come from interviews with the four founders, emails, online discussions, and founders’ friends and teachers. Diaspora has been tech news since day one, but the book reaches far beyond Silicon Valley to the now urgent issues about the future of the Internet.

Drawing on case studies in Asia, North America, and Europe from 18 media experts, editors Liu (National Chengchi Univ., Taiwan) and Picard (Oxford) examine the impact of digital communication on marketing strategies and laws. The book illustrates how contemporary media platforms such as Internet Protocol Television (IPT) and Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS), and video files offered by Amazon, Hulu, Netflix, and YouTube, allow consumers to control the content of what they watch in contrast to traditional television. Countries can now account for copyright infringement through one comprehensive media law or separate laws covering each platform. The book documents examples of legislation from the EU, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and China. While the first half of the book covers mostly legal issues, the second half focuses on cross-media marketing strategies. For example, online television allows marketers to take advantage of low-capacity costs while tracking consumers' tastes, directly targeting them with different ads. Advertisers can provide texts, images, and videos in multiple digital markets. One chapter analyzes successful business model innovation. The book would be an excellent companion to Chuck Hemann and Ken Burbary's Digital Marketing Analytics: Making Sense of Consumer Data in a Digital World (CH, Dec'13, 51-2178).

A former Businessweek and Forbes staff writer, Woyke has written an interesting—and exhaustive—account of the smartphone industry. She begins her comprehensive overview with DynaTAC, a series of cellular telephones patented by Motorola in 1973, and continues through to today with Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Samsung, detailing their struggles to gain market dominance. However, the book is not merely historical. There is a chapter on managing the assembling of a smartphone, including a focus on Apple and Foxconn. All industrial activity produces waste, including the smartphone industry, and the author discusses carrier economics and the management of e-waste. There is a chapter on smartphones and health, focusing on the alleged connection between smartphone use and cancer, as well as smartphone addiction. A chapter on smartphones and privacy focuses on contemporary topics such as using smartphone apps to collect user data and phone location surreptitiously. The final chapter, which looks toward the future of the smartphone industry internationally, includes a discussion of the Lifeline Program for low-income Americans. It also identifies the top 20 countries in terms of smartphone ownership by percentage of population, contains a discussion of the the Dutch start-up social enterprise Fairphone, and concludes with a smartphone bill of rights.

Spectrum management promotes the regulation of radio frequencies to coordinate a variety of wireless communications. AM radio uses a medium frequency between 300 kilowatts and 3 megahertz. FM radio, broadcast television, WiFi, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags, cell phones, and satellite television use much higher frequencies. Spectrum management is needed to reduce interference between the competing uses. For example, WiFi can potentially drown out RFIDs with much higher power. Some market-based methods to allocate frequencies to users are to have auctions for new frequency licenses or trade for existing licenses. The authors describe how European governments restrict the markets in order to maximize their auction revenues. They maximize them by conducting cost-benefit analyses and government regulatory assessments. Television broadcasters tend to be highly resistant to change frequencies to maximize their income. The authors suggest that spectrum licenses be designed to help reduce interference between different telecommunication uses. Receiver and transmitter performance can also be improved. The authors are among the leading experts on spectrum management. Their volume almost reads like a textbook on the subject.

This complex, scholarly book by an expert on stateless commerce is a colorful, interesting case study of the diamond industry, an ethnic trading network. Richman uses the 47th Street diamond industry in midtown Manhattan as the example. He explains how ethnic trading networks operate as paperless bazaars, primitive commercial networks, and ancient barter economies. They are primitive, outdoor markets in modern, developing economies and operate efficiently on personal exchange with unsecured credit. The author explains that although modern economies usually replace them, they continue in the 21st century because they fulfill the functions that state institutions cannot provide. They sell goods and services by relying on mutual trust and community leaders for resolving disputes. They do not rely on lawyers, courts, police, and the modern state for support or coercion. Richman uses insider interviews to explain the problems of the modern state in governing the economy, why personal exchange succeeds, and the strengths, costs, and limits of stateless commerce. This book is a contribution to understanding how stateless business operates.

The book explores international trade negotiations and outcomes between the Global North and the Global South. Singh (Univ. of Edinburgh) asserts that the lack of reciprocal concessions is due to the Global North's paternalism, which derives from a position of economic and political strength and cultural distance. Original data sets are used to develop an index on paternalism strength and to analyze the rhetoric used by the US Trade Representative for paternalistic references. There is a chapter on the creation of the international trade structure after World War II to the end of the Tokyo Round (1979). Concerning the Uruguay Round (1986–94) and after, chapters emphasize the negotiations on merchandise trade, agriculture and services, and intellectual property. The general conclusion is that while the Global North talks about benevolence toward the Global South, it gives few concessions and expects a lot from the Global South. In addition to notes and references, there are two appendixes on the node classification system used and the code book and data sources. This book provides another perspective on the international trade system and negotiations.

This is a massive, comprehensive survey of transportation history in the US and England recounting the life cycle and evolution of transportation modes from the days of canals and early railroads to the age of automated cars, jets, and the Internet. But more importantly, the book explores the origins of all modes and follows them as they are planned, invented, deployed, expanded, adapted, and reach maturity, after which they may be dispatched by competitors, adapt gracefully to their new, more limited role--or too often--be maintained and propped up by subsidies. The life cycles of each mode are explained in economic and technical terms, explicating why systems get replaced, possible strategies for alleviating the pain, and how outcomes might be improved. The descriptions of each mode in the context of the social, economic, and institutional forces and trends of the era are unmatched. Garrison (Univ. of California, Berkeley) and Levinson (Univ. of Minnesota) blend top academic insight with colorful biographical stories. The authors draw on many transportation experiences to comment critically on the prospects for current modes and policy initiatives in the US. The book includes excellent references, bibliography, and index totaling 76 pages. There is no comparable book.

Feldman (business ethics, Case Western Reserve Univ.) has written this well-researched, informative work "to investigate the ethical and cultural aspects of Chinese-American business relations." The Sanlu Dairy incident offers an actual worst case: when the Chinese dairy company discovered, on the eve of the Olympics, that its baby formula was tainted with a deadly chemical and was about to recall it, the city government overrode this decision, resulting in the illness of hundreds of thousands of babies. Ultimately, the importance of the city's image in the world's eyes far outweighed the safety of children. Feldman offers this as an example of how conflict among cultures (business, societal, and governmental) within China can result in dire consequences. He examines assumptions Americans bring to Chinese negotiations by scrutiny of relevant literature and empirical analyses. He also points out that the Chinese are just as victimized by their corrupt systems as are foreign business partners. Finally, Feldman compares the experiences of American and Chinese businesses in China. Because the primary research in this area is still rather scant, his data collection method was interviews. This firsthand, insider information is vital to understanding the way business is practiced in China.

This is a fine recounting of one of the most interesting business cases in recent years. The tale of Market Basket, a New England supermarket chain, is compelling and provocative, and Korschun (marketing, LeBow College of Business, Drexel Univ.) and Welker (a reporter for the Lowell Sun) exercise care in explaining the context and outcomes. The saga centers around a war between members of a billionaire family over the ownership of a 100-year-old privately owned business, a conflict that illuminated issues surrounding the culture and ethics in the business's corporate management. Through it all, thousands of employees, vendors, and customers showed their support with demonstrations and protests for beloved CEO Arthur T. Demoulas, one of the aforementioned billionaires, who was ousted by shareholders led by his cousin Arthur S. Demoulas. The authors do a good job giving this story life and weight. Board room meetings and company histories are interspersed with comments of customers, vendors, and long-time employees who recall their fondness for the company, its founders, or CEO Demoulas. Some of these interstitial accounts (which tend to be precious and saccharine) break the flow of the narrative, but as the protests get under way, the book settles into a good flow.

This is an engaging memoir and informative history of American railroads written by a very well-connected journalist. A rail fan's dream book, it chronicles the romance and backstories of often larger-than-life railroad executives through the entire 20th century to the present, their decision-making and management styles, the best of them often hands-on, getting dirty fixing washouts and train wrecks. It is a sweeping story of the railroads' huge financial and operating problems due to government overregulation through most of the 20th century, leading to ruinous bankruptcies and endless merger struggles between men with outsized egos. A backstory of the designed-to-fail creation of Amtrak to get rid of the railroads' money-losing passenger service is fascinating. Finally, with the passage of the Staggers Act deregulating the railroads in 1980, they were freed to adjust to rapidly changing markets and changes in technology, and to cooperate with long-distance truckers through intermodalism and double-stacked trains, leading to the railroads' current business boom and profitability. Interestingly, there are no footnotes or bibliography and few pictures, maps or statistics in this memoir of a well-connected, "well-dressed hobo." The index, however, is excellent!

Magnan (Univ. of Regina, Canada) presents a history of the Canadian wheat industry, tracing its development through a political economy lens—specifically, a food regime analysis—over the past 150 years. The book examines how the Canadian prairies, once the world’s unlikely bread basket, struggled through globalization, trade deals, and changes in commodity marketing via the dissolution of the Canadian wheat board, “the world’s largest wheat seller.” Besides the introduction and conclusion, the book is organized into four chapters chronicling the “rise and fall of the Canada-UK grain trade” over three eras encompassing distinct regimes: 1870–1945, 1945–95, and 1995–present. The book represents an interesting case in itself but also tells a broader story: “The Canada-UK wheat trade … provides an ideal opportunity to examine the evolution of agri-food institutions over time, including the social struggles, political calculations, and economic forces that shaped them.” Scholars will be pleased by extensive notes, references, and tables. Magnan’s writing is straightforward, enlivening a dry or esoteric topic of wider-ranging interest. The book compares well to food commodity histories such as Steve Striffler’s Chicken (CH, Mar'06, 43-4155).

More than 300 submarine cables cross the oceans today carrying the bulk of internet traffic across the globe in seconds. Before the 1850s, information would take weeks or months to reach a destination. That changed when Cyrus Field and a small team of visionaries formed the Atlantic Telegraph Company and laid the first successful submarine telegraphic cable, making them 19th-century rock stars. It was a high stakes risk that made personal fortunes, united nations, enhanced commerce, and promised world harmony among civilized cultures. While the last part of the venture didn’t materialize, the story of submarine cables and how they changed the world is a fascinating history of personal triumphs, engineering achievement, and globalized communication. The clash of personalities, establishment of professional organizations, and celebration of momentous achievement are all presented in this intriguing account. The author carefully researched the personalities involved in this endeavor, the political ramifications, and the industry that grew up around the undersea cable business. This book includes appendixes of key people and notes. Müller (Univ. of Freiburg, Germany) creates an excellent resource for communications history.