The Sack of Detroit: Common Motors and the Finish of American Enterprise

A provocative, ground-breaking historical past of the downfall of the American auto trade from the extensively praised creator of Herbert Hoover: An Extraordinary Life in Extraordinary Occasions.

Within the Nineteen Fifties, America loved huge progress and affluence, and no firms contributed extra to its success than automakers. They have been the most important and greatest companies on the planet, their management revered, their strategies imitated, and their manufacturers synonymous with the nation’s aspirations. However by the tip of the Sixties, Detroit’s earnings had evaporated and its famed executives had turn out to be symbols of greed, vanity, and incompetence. And no firm suffered this reversal greater than Common Motors, which discovered itself the principle goal of a Senate listening to on auto security that publicly humiliated its management and shattered its repute.

In The Sack of Detroit, Kenneth Whyte recounts the epic rise and pointless fall of America’s most essential trade. On the middle of his absorbing narrative are the titans of the automotive world but in addition the crusaders of security, together with Ralph Nader and a gaggle of senators together with Bobby Kennedy. Their collision left Detroit in a ditch, launched a brand new period of client advocacy and authorities regulation, and contributed considerably to the decline of American enterprise. It is a vivid story of politics, enterprise, and a sudden, seismic shift in American priorities that’s nonetheless felt in the present day.