Rating: 
Summary: Great Read
Review: A business biography that reads like a novel... it's quite fascinating to learn what the computer industry was like before the microprocessor era, who the players were, and how it shaped into what it is today. Even more interesting is the pervasive theme of the "culture" of IBM - how an organization's positive culture is critical in creating success. Anyone interested in the computer industry and leadership/management should read this book. I also found entertaining the Song of IBM excerpted at the end of each chapter that praises the glories of the company and its near god-like leader/dictator.
Rating:
Summary: The Story of a Leader
Review: All great stories have a good guy and a bad guy. In this story, it's the same guy. Thomas Watson, Sr., by sheer force of personality, created IBM.The best part of this book is the IBM songs at the end of every chapter. They are hillarious, but probably no more so than some of the silly cheers dot.coms used to pump up their employees. But back to the story: Mr. Watson created the first tech growth company of the 20th century. Mr. Maney had unbelievable access to Mr. Watson's personal notes and correspondence as the primary resource to tell how he created IBM. Some of the details about meetings, drawn from the transcribed minutes, give an eerie "you are there" quality to the book. One feels almost as terrorized as the executives in those meetings. In reading the book, one gets the clear message that Mr. Maney would have really liked to have met Mr. Watson. He truly admires his subject while at the same time showing warts and all. This is not a soft treatment of Mr. Watson. Yet, you can almost hear Mr. Maney saying between the lines, "I just wish I could have met that old S.O.B." This book holds great detail but is an easy read. Mr. Maney's style covers the point without belaboring it. The book is often funny, sometimes sad but never disappointing.
Rating:
Summary: The Story of a Leader
Review: All great stories have a good guy and a bad guy. In this story, it's the same guy. Thomas Watson, Sr., by sheer force of personality, created IBM. The best part of this book is the IBM songs at the end of every chapter. They are hillarious, but probably no more so than some of the silly cheers dot.coms used to pump up their employees. But back to the story: Mr. Watson created the first tech growth company of the 20th century. Mr. Maney had unbelievable access to Mr. Watson's personal notes and correspondence as the primary resource to tell how he created IBM. Some of the details about meetings, drawn from the transcribed minutes, give an eerie "you are there" quality to the book. One feels almost as terrorized as the executives in those meetings. In reading the book, one gets the clear message that Mr. Maney would have really liked to have met Mr. Watson. He truly admires his subject while at the same time showing warts and all. This is not a soft treatment of Mr. Watson. Yet, you can almost hear Mr. Maney saying between the lines, "I just wish I could have met that old S.O.B." This book holds great detail but is an easy read. Mr. Maney's style covers the point without belaboring it. The book is often funny, sometimes sad but never disappointing.
Rating:
Summary: Great American success story of Watson and IBM
Review: As an IBMer, I am especially proud of this great uniquely American success story. It will take a really great story to surpass this one. I will focus on just three elements - Watson as a salesman and company-builder, the birth of modern computers, and father-son relationship. Just like his mentor - Patterson of NCR, Tom Watson was a great salesman and showman. He was consumed by the nurturing of IBM and its customer-first sales culture. He indulged the sales force with presents, superior pay, training, country club, and many other benefits. He was the highest-paid and the first celebrity executive in the US. He placed huge bets, and then worked to make them come out right. He bet that the post-Depression and post-wwII economy will grow rather than shrink, and when it did turn out right, he came out ahead as he was ready with the manufacturing capacity to fill the demand. Just like the story of placing a man on the moon, the advent of modern computers, or tabulators before them, is a story of intrigue and vengeance as much as it is of investment and the brilliance of engineers. The positive but unintended consequences of the government's involvement in the development and use of advanced 'electronic brains' is also critical in this regard. The shift from electro-mechanical machines to electronic machines was an important discontinuity that created new opportunities for the market as well as for the new generation of Watson family to take over. Just like Henry Ford's relationship with his oldest son Edsel, Watson's relationship with his older son was tortured. The son rebelled against the extremely-successful father and would do many things to embarrass the father including getting low grades at school. The son was resolute, fought his father tooth-and-nail, and even threatened to walk out of IBM and crash his father's dreams of keeping the company's control in the family. Unlike Edsel though, Tom Watson Jr. eventually became a highly-effective chairman and chief executive of IBM. There is hope for those rebelling against their successful fathers! The book is well-written and easily readable. It is a multi-level story that is simultaneously a compelling history and an inspiring biography. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: A Really Great Read--Better than I thought!
Review: I actually purchased this book for my boyfriend and ended up reading it first. It's a great story and I was truly amazed at how Watson was deemed the first celebrity CEO before there truly was such a thing. I never knew much about Watson, Sr or IBM but I now understand what went into forming such an iconic company of the 20th century. I never read non fiction books but I think the packaging really lured me in and I found myself intrigued by the story.
Rating: 
Summary: Informative, but too long
Review: I agree with previous reviewers that Watson's story is amazing, but I do not believe that Maney execution of this book is that good. I think that this book would have been a much better read if it was 250 pages. One of the reasons for the extra length is that the author decided to deviate from simple chronological order. Instead, Maney attempted analytical/descriptive biography, but, in my view, did not fully succeed. I came away from this 400 page book with mixed understanding of what sort of person Watson was and what, besides the IBM culture, were his business methods and innovations. Overall, the book did not flow, the organization of some of the chapters was not intuitive and the chapters on Watson's sons were short. I can not quite call the book disapointing, but I can not say that it was a great experience.
Rating:
Summary: I Bleed Blue!
Review: I just finished Kevin Maney's wonderful book about
Mr Watson. I retired from IBM in 1998 after 30 years
and a career of success as a proud IBM salesperson.
Kevin's book explained a lot of our culture origins
and made me even more proud to have been a part of
such a great company. As a training consultant, my
greatest resource continues to be the training I received
at IBM. By the way, I have a closet full of white shirts
and dark suits, and always will!
Again, thanks Kevin!
Rating:
Summary: One of the better business biographies I've encountered
Review: I've generally not been a huge fan of business biographies...they can get very much bogged down in transactional specifics and company arcana, not to mention shoot-from-the-hip hindsight. This Watson biography, though, is very different and exceptionally engrossing, for two reasons: One, because Maney, whose USA Today columns are pretty much always highly entertaining, is a terrific storyteller, and two, because it seems Watson was nuts enough to have stenographers in his boardroom and all kinds of other meetings so as to preserve his words and wisdom for the ages (not something today's Sarbanes-Oxley-bound CEO's are hurrying to do!). Maney took that source material and turned it into what I found to be a very interesting page turner that's a great read for anyone interested in the history of business -- any business, not just IBM. Maney spends a fair amount of time explaining how Watson had large early-career successes at NCR, got into very deep yogurt with the feds for anti-trust activities, and then bounced back from that taint to create the world's first great technology company. It's also fascinating, given our three year old economic malaise, to see how Watson steered IBM through the Great Depression and powered it forward into the modern era. A very vivid and worthwhile book.
Rating:
Summary: This came from that?
Review: IBM is such a big, powerful, and ubiquitous "institution" today that it's almost impossible to believe it was virtually "willed" into existence by an entrepreneur who makes Larry Ellison look humble and boring by comparison. Folks who remember IBM from its pre-Gerstner days as a the ultimate symbol of grey-flannel consistency will be blown away by the way-larger-than-life personality of its founder. Kevin Maney somehow manages to simultaneously convey the greatness, pettiness, fearlessness, and egomania of arguably the most important entrepreneur of the 20th century; and he does so with a style that's as easy to read as his columns in the USA Today. The Maverick and His Machine is an entertaining read that will teach you the early history of the data processing industry (who even thinks of computers in those terms anymore?), give you a feel for how companies were built in the first half of the 20th century, and introduce you to one strange-but-fascinating dude. A big thumbs up for any business/technology geek (like me...)
Rating:
Summary: A classic
Review: If IBM and computers are synonymous, so are Watson and IBM. Whatever the criticisms and the controversies surrounding the 3 magical alphabets in blue, IBM is IBM. To build such a company from ground up, offering solutions to business and scientific computing and thereby acting as the catalyst for the process of economic progress during the most part of the twentieth century is by no means an ordinary feat. That was exactly the material Thomas Watson Sr was made of. Watson has done his job and done it well and now Kevin Maney completes the rest by bringing this story in a truly remarkable manner to our bookshelves. It is difficult not to fall in love with Watson Sr and his beloved company even half way through the book. From his humble beginnings to the misfortune at NCR, for nearly forty years Watson Sr is just another story of struggles, ups and downs. But to him, life just begins at forty with his job at CTR and of course the birth of Tom Watson Jr. The birth of IBM and its growth under the paternalistic care of Watson Sr through depressions, wars, booms and uncertainties gets a lion's share of coverage in this book. Watson Sr took big business risks bordering on a propensity to gamble, pushing IBM into higher orbits. Luck is the word the author takes recourse to while describing these successes. The next logical part of the book deals with the succession plan at IBM that is a story by itself. Father, Son and Co by Tom Jr is widely quoted in these pages. The father's affection for his sons Tom Jr and Dick, his struggle to reconcile their differences and the frequent fights with Tom Jr are very close to what Tom Jr himself has described in his book. The chapters on transformation of IBM into the era of electronics under Tom Jr and the trust suit that had a severe personal impact on Watson Sr deserve commendation. While reading the pages where the old man bids goodbye to IBM and to this world, I stood up in salute to this great man.
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