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The Greatest Capitalist Who Ever Lived: Tom Watson Jr. and the Epic Story of How IBM Created the Digital Age Audiobook
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A riveting, first-ever, sweeping biography of Thomas Watson, Jr. - more important to the history and development of the modern world than Vanderbilt, Morgan, Rockefeller, and Carnegie - who risked everything, personally and professionally, to reinvent IBM and launch the computer age that created the world we live in today
Thomas Watson Jr. drove IBM to undertake the biggest gamble in business history with a revolution no other company of the age could dare– the creation in the 1960s of the IBM System/360, the world's first fully integrated and compatible mainframe computer that laid the foundation for the information technology future. Its success made IBM the most valuable company in America. Fortune magazine touted him as “the greatest capitalist who ever lived.” Time named him one of the “One Hundred People of the Century.”
Behind closed doors, Watson was a multifaceted, complicated man. As a young man, he was a failed student and playboy, an unlikely candidate for corporate titan. He pulled his life together as a courageous World War II pilot and took over IBM after his father’s death. He suffered from anxiety and depression so overwhelming that he spent days prostrate and locked in a bathroom at home while IBM faced crisis after crisis. And he carried out a family-shattering battle over the future of IBM with his brother Dick, who expected to follow him as CEO.
But despite his many demons, he laid the foundation for what eventually became the global information technology industry, which dominates today’s world. His story, and the industry he created, is equal to, if not more important than that of Rockefeller and Standard Oil, Vanderbilt and the railroads, and Morgan in finance.
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About the Authors
Marc Wortman is an independent historian and award-winning freelance journalist. His books include 1941: Fighting the Shadow War: A Divided America in a World at War, The Bonfire: The Siege and Burning of Atlanta, and The Millionaires’ Unit: The Aristocratic Flyboys Who Fought the Great War and Invented American Air Power. Marc Wortman is an award-winning freelance writer whose work has appeared in numerous national magazines.
About Donald Corren
Donald Corren is an audiobook narrator and a New York actor with leading credits on and Off-Broadway, as well as numerous television appearances. On Broadway, he costarred with Judy Kaye in the critically acclaimed production of Souvenir, and replaced Harvey Fierstein in the seminal production of Torch Song Trilogy. His Off-Broadway appearances include The Soap Myth, Dietrich & Chevalier, The Last Sunday in June, Stephen Sondheim’s Saturday Night, and the original New York production of Tomfoolery. His television credits include eight seasons as forensic tech Medill on NBC’s Law & Order, as well as his current role as Dr. Kurian on Syfy’s Z Nation.