Pierre S. du Pont and the Making of the Modern Corporation

by Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., Stephen Salesbury

Overview

"[An] admirable biography... The book is well‐written, piques the reader's curiosity to keep going, and is well‐documented." — The New York Times

"[A] splendid piece of business history... Chandler and Salsbury's history of du Pont represents a major contribution... as business history [the book] is superb. What is involved in transforming a small firm into a corporate giant? That is the central question and the authors have provided an excellent analytical answer." — Antitrust Bulletin

"Alfred Chandler is the world master of institutional business history... a first-class company and entrepreneurial history." — EH.net

"[An] interesting book... fascinating reading as a study in business decision-making... definitely an important work... a major contribution to business and economic history, as well as required reading for all concerned with twentieth-century American history." — The Journal of Economic History

"Pierre du Pont was the prime mover in the evolution of the DuPont and General Motors companies into two of the biggest of big businesses in early twentieth-century America. This painstakingly crafted study describes with commanding scholarship what du Pont did and how... he did it... This massive, at times microscopic, but always purposeful and controlled study is indispensable to an understanding of the coming of big business to modern America." — The American Historical Review

"Many books and many articles have been written about the du Ponts, the Du Pont Company, and General Motors. Some of them deserve the overworked word excellent, but for the business historian none of them approaches the book that Chandler and Salsbury have written... It is really a history of Du Pont and General Motors in the most important of their formative years... Business historians should read Pierre S. du Pont or turn in their union cards." — Pennsylvania History

Product Details

BN ID:	2940184319261
Publisher:	Plunkett Lake Press
Publication date:	06/23/2025
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	7 MB

About the Author

The great-grandson of Henry Varnum Poor, publisher of the American Railroad Journal, and a founder of Standard & Poor’s, Alfred DuPont Chandler Jr. (1918-2007), born in Guyencourt, Delaware, graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1936 and Harvard College in 1940. After serving as a Navy officer in World War II, he returned to Harvard, finished his MA in 1946, and received his PhD in history in 1952. He taught at MIT (1950-1963) and in 1963, became chairman of the history department at Johns Hopkins University. In 1970, he joined the Harvard Business School where he taught business history and wrote extensively about the scale and management structures of modern corporations until he became Professor Emeritus in 1989.

Chandler’s books include Strategy and Structure: Chapters in the History of the Industrial Enterprise (1962) which examined the organization of E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Co., Standard Oil of New Jersey, General Motors, and Sears, Roebuck and Co.; with Stephen Salsbury, Pierre S. Du Pont and the Making of the Modern Corporation (1971), a detailed study of the reorganization of top-level management at Du Pont and General Motors and biography of its instigator; The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business which won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1978; Scale and Scope: The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism (1990); and the anthology Big Business and the Wealth of Nations (1997) co-edited with Franco Amatori and Takashi Hikino.

Chandler has been called “the doyen of American business historians”. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Philosophical Society.

Stephen Salsbury (1931-1999) earned his BA from Occidental College in 1953 and his PhD from Harvard University in 1961. He became Assistant Professor of History (1963-67), Associate Professor (1968-70) and Professor of History (1970-77) at the University of Delaware. In 1977 he moved to the University of Sydney in Australia as professor of economic history.

Salsbury’s books include The State, The Investor, and the Railroad: The Boston and Albany, 1825-1869 (1967); No Way to Run a Railroad: The Untold Story of the Penn Central (1982); with Kay Sweeney, The Bull, the Bear and the Kangaroo: The History of the Sydney Stock Exchange (1988) and Sydney Stockbrokers: Biographies of Members of the Sydney Stock Exchange (1992).