Showing results by author "Daniel Alef" in All Categories

Here's a biographical profile of Ransom E. Olds, regarded as the first of the great American automobile pioneers. He not only sold the first car manufactured in America, his company was the first of the great automobile enterprises, a model and training ground for the Dodge brothers, Henry Ford, Henry Leland (founder of Cadillac and Lincoln), and other automotive trailblazers.

Here's a biographical profile of John M. Studebaker, one of the largest wagon manufacturing concern in the U.S. who foresaw a new mode of transportation. Although five Studebaker brothers were involved at one time or another in the wagon and car business, the evolution of the company from wagons to cars and its enormous success is largely attributable to one brother, John Mohler Studebaker.

Here's a biographical profile of Charles F. Kettering, a man who always sought solutions to great problems. A philosopher, engineer, master salesman, scientist and genius inventor, Kettering, Delco's founder and major shareholder of GM, gave us many things: electric automobile starters, electric headlights, Freon, automatic transmissions, incubators for premature babies, premium gasoline, car generators, electric cash registers, and much more.

Buick is one of the best known automobile brands today as it was more than a century ago. But unlike other automobile pioneers, Ford, Dodge, and Olds, who became rich and famous with their car companies, Buick prospered not at all from his namesake. Although Buick was a visionary and an outstanding engineer, he simply did not have all the tools to succeed, lacking management sense among other things.

Several prominent brother teams pioneered the American automobile industry: Horace and John Dodge, Charles and Frank Duryea, Francis and Freelan Stanley, five Studebaker brothers and James and William Packard. However, the seven burly Fisher brothers were not only the most numerous of all the families, each one extensively involved in developing the famous "Body by Fisher" brand and subsequently General Motors, they were also among the most successful of the automobile titans.

Biographical profile of Walter Elias Disney, the man who built an empire on the back of a mouse. Imbued with an iron-like drive to succeed, Disney pushed, prodded, and pressed those around him, as he did himself, to succeed. He was always on the edge of vision and technology. An unmitigated risk taker, Disney constantly flirted with financial ruin, seemingly bent on a mission to remain in debt while his brother Roy's ambition was to harness Walt's financial excesses.

A Road Well Traveled offers many lessons to be drawn from the pioneers of the automotive industry and the fascinating lives they led. Some became fabulously wealthy; others died in obscurity. But they developed America's largest industry in the space of one generation and demonstrated the skills and characteristics necessary to achieve such success.

J. Edgar Hoover called the FBI the "Seat of Government", and in many way it was. He was one of the most powerful men in American history and while he was at the helm of the "Seat of Government", few dared to defy him. He was a law onto himself, the self-anointed protector of American security and virtues. Hoover's career with the FBI spanned 10 presidents, eight while he was the director. Trying to understand J. Edgar is like trying to solve a Rubic's cube with both hands tied behind the back.

Howard Hughes was a mysterious billionaire, heroic, tragic, brilliant, mad, pathological, and extraordinarily wealthy. He was a great businessman or a terrible one; the jury is still out. But his life was fascinating and disturbing.

Henry Ford, an American folk hero to many, was a man with several faces. He was a genius who revolutionized the automobile industry, irrevocably altered American culture and commerce, developed mass production, and helped the middle class emerge in America. He was also an anti-Semitic autocrat who hated Wall Street, bankers and financiers with unmitigated passion.