Rating: 
Summary: Mahvelous...but with a touch of meglomania!
Review: Jack Welch and John Bryne provide the reader with a fascinating rendition of the corporate world as it exists today in America. Obviously the majority of the opinion and insight is geared towards sustaining Welch's ego, which is legendary in its robustness and obnoxiousness. However, if one maintains focus throughout this ego-stroker, one can read between the lines fairly easily. Those in the know of the industry clearly understand why GE is referred to as "Generous Electric." Much of it has to do with the loss of focus and "golden parachute" corporate mentality that has occurred at GE during Welch's watch. Hopefully someone will write a truly balanced and objective portrayal of Jack Welch in the future...but in today's CEO=Super Hero mentality, you won't learn much more from this book than you will watching Lou Dobbs go down on Mr. Welch during one of his ego-stroking interviews. Stick with Harry Potter.
Rating: 
Summary: Mixed Emotions
Review: I had mixed emotions after reading this book. On one level, it satisfied my interest in learning about the attitudes/behaviors of a corporate executive. Jack Welch reminds me so much of red Aurebach, the president and forme coach of the Boston Celtics. Both of these men are "gamers" and committed to fielding the best team that has the greatest chance to win. I honestly believe that Jack would say he learned a lot about managing and formulating winning teams by watching the Boston Celtics of the 60's. As far as the substance of the book, it was somewhat lacking. I think a careful read and you will come away with some concepts that you can apply to your own day to day managing . And those concepts I believe are very useful. The mixed emotion I really have is Jack's priorities. It's very clear that his life was/is GE. He was married to it. I came away so some extent feeling sorry for him. The many nights he was away from his kids;his divorce. There is not one picture of him in this book touching one of his kids. It gave the impression that he lost something along the way with his blood family for his GE family. Yes, I'm quite sure he loves them and they love him. But you get the sense that the kid from Salem, lost something in his pursuit of the corporate gold. Is Jack Welch the type of leader we want to aspire to? He is all about BUSINESS. He is also not a very reflective man. In the end, I felt I learned something that I have already begun to apply to my job. On the other hand, I don't want to grow up and become a Jack Welch. A man who lost his "roots" in pursuit of great ambition.
Rating:
Summary: WELCH AS BOSS OF A FANTASTIC THEME PARK
Review: Just as Bll Clinton is presented in print as a boss of the
White House theme park,Jack Welch gets $7 million( or so its reported )for this Ididit account of his days as boss of the GE
phenomenon.As a simple man with simple explanations Welch chatters with blue-collar dialog about management days in the world's best-known conglomerate.GE is the firm that paid Ronald Reagan in his out of work days to tour its factories and give simpleton talks to blue collar workers . This book, straight from the gut by Jack,is cut from the same simple cloth.Keep an eye out for the made for TV movie with Johnny Depp as the young Welch and Paul Newman as the old crank.
Rating: 
Summary: get on the JACK bandwagon
Review: There's a few reasons why Jack is the most well-repected CEO of our time--he's leads one hell of a company. In terms of market cap, profitablity, market value, shareholder returns, employee retention, and influence over American life (oh, and his company owns one of the largest TV networks).
Jack does a fine job (enoyable, not excessively self promoting or biased) describing his influence on GE and thier influence on the American business. This book is ideal for most b-book readers, a must read for (aspiring) employees.
Rating:
Summary: Anyone for some inspiration?
Review: Ok so the book isn't written by Hemingway.(BFD)The mans life is amazing. Starting from a middle class family and becoming one of the most powerful men in the world. Hey, works for me. After reading it you are filled with confidence that you too can be successful with a lot of hard work. So if you are looking for a story to inspire you, read Jack.
Rating:
Summary: I, "jack straight", Agree
Review: I read the book and all the Amazon.com reviews. I must say, I agree with the reviewer from Philadelphia who said, "Let Me Tell You Jack Straight". As that reviewer said, I now say that this is one of my two all time favorite books on character and leadership, too. I did read the second one, "West Point" by Norman Thomas Remick, also. The two books, "Jack" and "West Point", may sound like the odd couple, but they do perfectly compliment eachother. "Jack" gives you the practical "how to" in simple terms, and "West Point" (the title is deceiving) gives you the philosophical "understanding why" in simple terms, also. I highly recommend you read about and learn both, as we know Jack Welch has.
Rating:
Summary: An Outline for a Better Tomorrow!
Review: If more CEO's followed the advice of Jack Welch, then we wouldn't have the deplorable social conditions so aptly satirized in Ben Jonjak's recent novel "Glorious Failure." Mr. Welch's tactics are reasonable and painfully obvious, yet it is the burden of all brilliant ideas that they are deceptively simple and easilly overlooked. Here at last we have the outline for the future, a simple, easy to comprehend guide for making the changes that will only result in profit for everybody. You'll be caught up in this book and its common-sense logic. A great read, guaranteed!
Rating:
Summary: Bravo! Will wait for Version 2.0.
Review: The first half of the book was great, but in the second half I could feel that he was getting squeezed by deadlines: the transition, the Honeywell merger, and the fact that he had to move over and turn things over to Jeff. He wrote that thanks to the book, he got out of Jeff's way up to September 7. It would be interesting how Jeff, or rather the GE team, manages in the next couple of years after the events of Black Tuesday. Overall, the book was a great great great read, especially the final chapters (less detailed, but enough to give the reader key points of Jack's last few weeks at the top). Read the whole book, cover-to-cover, on my return flight from JFK to Anchorage to Taipei and Manila. A real page-turner! I'll read it more peacefully one of these days, especially that cute chapter on golf. Tried his tip (finishing your swing) on the driving range, and you know what? It works. Wanna improve your golf game? Get this book.
Rating:
Summary: Go home Mr Welch, and please don't write any more books
Review: This book had gave some interesting insight into the upper echelons of a large corporation, somewhere I'll never be. And I liked getting a glimpse of the successful programs he instituted. (A previous ... reviewer nicely summed it up - it would have saved me 200 pages.) Most helpful was his insistence on recruiting and promoting the best people. He even had a good metaphor ("I may not be the brightest bulb in the chandalier, but I got the other bulbs to light up.")
But mostly I kept hoping the writing would get better, the stories more interesting, or the people more lifelike. I stuck it out to the bitter end, and knew my hope was misplaced when I read the phrase that for me epitomizes bad writing: "...the people roared with laughter..." There was too much namedropping (including restaurants and country clubs) and too little substance about these great people he hired. Not enough character development to be a good biography, and not enough technical detail to be a good management text.
I was left with the feeling: "good for you, but so what" and "I'm glad that's over."
Rating: 
Summary: Surprisingly Bad
Review: This book starts off well enough but soon bogs down into little more than a list of names and deals. There's no context and despite all the names little personal touch. "It was great" seems to be the main them of the book: everything was great: his wife (until he divorced her); his kids (whom he never seemed to see); endless dinner meetings (in which the name of the hotel is mentioned seemingly to provide some kind of grounding in reality). Terms like "Six Sigma" are thrown around without any kind of explanation. In all all Jack, the book, is very, very dull.
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