Power Failure
The dramatic rise—and unimaginable fall—of America’s most iconic corporation by New York Times bestselling author and pre-eminent financial journalist William D. Cohan
No company embodied American ingenuity, innovation, and industrial power more spectacularly and more consistently than the General Electric Company. GE once developed and manufactured many of the inventions we take for granted today, nearly everything from the lightbulb to the jet engine. GE also built a cult of financial and leadership success envied across the globe and became the world’s most valuable and most admired company. But even at the height of its prestige and influence, cracks were forming in its formidable foundation.
In a masterful re-appraisal of a company that once claimed to “bring good things to life,” pre-eminent financial journalist William D. Cohan argues that the incredible story of GE’s rise and fall is not only a paragon, but also a prism through which we can better understand American capitalism. Beginning with its founding, innovations, and exponential growth through acquisitions and mergers, Cohan plumbs the depths of GE’s storied management culture, its pioneering doctrine of shareholder value, and its seemingly hidden blind spots, to reveal that GE wasn’t immune from the hubris and avoidable mistakes suffered by many other corporations.
In POWER FAILURE, Cohan punctures the myth of GE, exploring in a rich narrative how a once-great company wound up broken and in tatters—a cautionary tale for the ages.
ACCODLADES
“This page-turner should be required reading for anyone trying to understand the spectacular crash of one of America’s most-vaunted corporate success stories.”
—JANE MAYER, author of Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right
“General Electric was once the most important, powerful, and influential company on Earth— and this is the definitive story of how it got that way and what happened next. William Cohan takes us inside the company’s boardrooms and factories with a rollicking and fascinating tale of corporate brilliance, bitter infighting, business daring, and monied folly that illuminates not just General Electric but the world and economy it helped create.”
—CHARLES DUHIGG, bestselling author of The Power of Habit and Smarter Faster Better
“With the sweep and authority of an accomplished historian, the digging of a fearsome investigative reporter, and the storytelling skills of a novelist, Bill Cohan takes us from the nineteenth-century birth of GE, to its rise as America’s most-valued company in the twentieth, to its near death in the twenty-first. With incredible access to Jack Welch and the major actors in this drama, he paints a panoramic view of America and of capitalism, how it has changed and still must.”
—KEN AULETTA, bestselling author and contributor to The New Yorker
“Cohan rides this wild tale like a racehorse to the bitter end. It’s all here: the birth of this most American of inventive American companies and the triumphs, flaws, and missteps to come. If at 130 years old, GE has indeed fallen, this masterful work remains.”
—MARK SEAL, author of Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli: The Epic Story of the Making of The Godfather
“For most of our lives GE was one of the familiar, trusted U.S. companies, and in the early 2000s still the biggest company on Earth. In one generation this icon of the American corporate imperium has turned into an icon of American corporate failure. We’re fortunate that the great business chronicler William Cohan has now applied his extraordinary reporting skills and lucid, knowing prose to tell this story in breathtaking detail from beginning to bitter end. Power Failure is fascinating and definitive.”
—KURT ANDERSEN, bestselling author of Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America
“This epic tale of arguably the most dominant corporation in American history has it all: money, power, sex, and larger-than-life characters, from Thomas Edison to “Teflon Jack” Welch and beyond. Cohan’s fine pacing and narrative flair make for a page-turner that becomes a compelling story of American capitalism itself.”
—JONATHAN ALTER, author of His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life
“Power Failure by William Cohan is a tour de force of reporting, a deeply researched chronicle of the flawed personalities and dysfunctional company politics that led General Electric, once hailed as the great American corporate success, to self-destruct. The story reads like a tragedy.”
—LIAQUAT AHAMED, author of Lords of Finance and winner of the Pulitzer Prize