Faster, Higher, Farther: How One of the World's Largest Automakers Committed a Massive and Stunning Fraud

by Jack Ewing

Overview

“A rich history of a company whose cars, for better and worse, have touched millions of lives, a character study of a brilliant but deeply flawed leader, and a case study in how a corporate culture can turn toxic.” —Bethany McLean, New York Times Book Review

 Faster, Higher, Farther chronicles a corporate scandal that rivals those at Enron and Lehman Brothers—one that will cost Volkswagen more than $22 billion in fines and settlements. Through meticulous reporting, New York Times correspondent Jack Ewing documents why VW felt compelled to install “defeat devices” in diesel vehicles that unlawfully lowered CO2 levels during emissions testing, and how the fraud was committed, covered up, and finally detected. Faster, Higher, Farther is a briskly written account of unrivaled corporate greed. Updated with the latest information and a new afterword by the author.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393355918
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	05/15/2018
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Jack Ewing has covered business and economics from Frankfurt for The New York Times since 2010. He has worked as a journalist in Germany since 1994, including over a decade as a BusinessWeek correspondent.

Table of Contents

Building an Empire: Volkswagen's Path to World Domination ix

The Porsche and Piëch Families and Volkswagen xi

Chapter 1 Road Trip 1

Chapter 2 The Grandson 5

Chapter 3 Renaissance 19

Chapter 4 The Scion 27

Chapter 5 Chief Executive 33

Chapter 6 By All Means Necessary 50

Chapter 7 Enforcers 67

Chapter 8 Impossible Doesn't Exist 82

Chapter 9 Labor Relations 100

Chapter 10 The Cheat 112

Chapter 11 The Porsches and the Piëchs 129

Chapter 12 Clean Diesel 145

Chapter 13 Enforcers II 159

Chapter 14 On the Road 166

Chapter 15 Exposure 176

Chapter 16 Piëch's Fall 186

Chapter 17 Confession 192

Chapter 18 Empire 201

Chapter 19 Aftermath 211

Chapter 20 Justice 224

Chapter 21 Punishment 249

Chapter 22 Faster, Higher, Farther 259

Epilogue 265

Afterword 274

Acknowledgments 287

Notes 289

Index 329

Editorial Reviews

"A damning indictment of corporate malfeasance and… an accessible account of one of the most expensive business mistakes ever recorded."— Patrick McGee Financial Times

"Faster, Higher, Farther: The Volkswagen Scandal takes readers through the combination of pressures that produced what may be the biggest corporate scandal ever, detailing the company’s personalities and the history behind the saga with fluency and wit."— Atlantic

"Perversely engaging."— Barron’s

"Exhaustive."— Richard Epstein Forbes

"A fantastic book."— Catherine Wolfram, co-director of the Energy Institute at Haas, University of California, Berkeley

"This book, which races along like Jensen Button, tells the inside story of the Volkswagen scandal. Ewing tells it quite beautifully."— Daily Mail

"Ewing reveals for the first time the true extent of the scandal."— The Times (London)

"A must read."— Handelsblatt

From the Publisher

This will go down in history books as a great corporate scandal, but the story told by…Jack Ewing in his new book, Faster, Higher, Farther: The Volkswagen Scandal, is also much more than that. It's a rich history of a company whose cars, for better and worse, have touched millions of lives, a character study of a brilliant but deeply flawed leader, and a case study in how a corporate culture can turn toxic—or as Ewing writes, Volkswagen "vividly shows how a dysfunctional corporate culture can threaten the existence of even the mightiest corporations."

The New York Times Book Review - Bethany McLean