Flying High: How JetBlue Founder and CEO David Neeleman Beats the Competition… Even in the World’s Most Turbulent Industry: James Wynbrandt

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From Publishers Weekly
As the founder by the age of 40 of three successful discount airline companies-most recently the billion-dollar JetBlue-David Neeleman and his story deserves in-depth analysis. Unfortunately, this largely uncritical profile doesn’t provide that. Veteran aviation and business writer Wynbrandt presents Neeleman’s life in a lively and highly readable style. The first half lays out the details of Neeleman’s major successes: turning the small leisure business Morris Travel into a national air charter by developing the concept of ticketless reservations, which Wynbrandt correctly claims “would forever revolutionize airline bookings,” and brokering a deal with Southwest Airlines, which purchased Morris and then cut Neeleman loose. But the bulk of the book describes the development and success of JetBlue and presents a superficial look at some extremely troubling aspects of Neeleman’s business philosophy, such as his disdain for unions (”I think they did a great thing for our country at a certain time”) and his allowing JetBlue to share records of five million passenger transactions (a violation of its own privacy policy) with an army contract company working on post-9/11 security problems, a decision Wynbrandt too easily explains as a product of Neeleman’s Mormon-based “respect for patriarchal authority.”
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review
As veteran airlines writer James Wynbrandt shows in his excellent new book, Flying High, it took JetBlue’s hyperkinetic free spirit David Neeleman to extend the revolution started by Southwest’s Herb Kelleher into a heady new frontier—by putting the discounters in a nose-to-nose rivalry with the major carriers. A devout Mormon with nine children, Neeleman, from Salt Lake City, learned about customer service as a kid on a milk crate in his grandfather’s convenience store. When customers demanded a product his granddad didn’t have, young David would bolt out the back door to Safeway to buy it. After a stint as a missionary in Brazil, Neeleman—a college dropout with ADD—started a travel agency, a charter airline to Hawaii, and a low-cost carrier called Morris Air, which he sold to Southwest. After just five months, Kelleher fired Neeleman, who’d barge into meetings and loudly lecture Southwest’s proud managers on where their airline was screwing up.
By the time he founded JetBlue in 1999, Neeleman had already pioneered many of the boldest innovations in aviation, including e-ticketing, automatic ticket machines, and at-home reservation staffs. Backed by farsighted investors, among them George Soros, JetBlue busted the biggest myth in airlines by proving that a low-cost carrier can also beat the majors on service. While Wynbrandt clearly idolizes Neeleman as a curious blend of saint and gladiator, his idol does deserve our gratitude. It took this hyperactive dreamer to put a fresh face on a tired industry, to show at long last that customers, not old-line carriers, are charting the future of commercial aviation. (Fortune, June 28, 2004)

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The Associates: Four Capitalists Who Created California: Richard Rayner

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Novelist and nonfiction author Rayner (The Devil’s Wind) provides a first-rate look at the little-known story behind the creation of America’s first continental railroad—the story of Collis Huntington, Charles Crocker, Mark Hopkins and Leland Stanford, founder of the university that bears his name. The associates were unscrupulous, savvy profiteers, whose motives were driven solely by a lust for riches and whose success usually came at the expense of others. After usurping engineer Theodore Judah’s campaign to connect the Atlantic with the Pacific, the foursome capitalized on anti-Chinese sentiment, hiring desperate Chinese to do hazardous work in inhumane conditions for substandard wages. They later sanctioned murder yet successfully painted themselves as philanthropists thanks to the journalists and historians in their pockets. Amid a story of greed and ruthlessness, Rayner offers a fascinating glimpse into the growth of the U.S., illustrating how these determined if ruthless men revolutionized transportation and greatly influenced the expansion of California. The author claims their business acumen defined the nature of the modern corporation, and their legacies live on in a library, a university, art galleries and museums. Entertaining and well written, Rayner’s book will appeal to readers interested in history as well as business.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Product Description
A true-life tale of ruthless ambition, staggering greed, and the making of a nation.

One hundred forty years ago, four men rose from their position as middle-class merchants in Sacramento, California, to become the force behind the transcontinental railroad. In the course of doing so, they became wealthy beyond any measure—and to sustain their power, they lied, bribed, wheedled, and, when necessary, arranged for obstacles, both human and legal, to disappear. Their names were Collis Huntington, Leland Stanford, Charles Crocker, and Mark Hopkins, and they were known as “The Big Four” or “The Associates.” Their drive for money—nothing more, nothing less—was epic. Their legacy is a university, public gardens, museums, mansions, banks, and libraries–and to a large degree California itself, a state that even today owes its aura of “can-do” and limitless possibilities to The Associates.

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The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger: Marc Levinson

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
A book about the history of the shipping container? At first, one has to wonder why. (An eventuality not lost on the author, who muses “What is it about the container that is so important? Surely not the thing itself…the standard container has all the romance of a tin can.”) The catch, though, is that Levinson, an economist, “treats containerization not as shipping news, but as a development that has sweeping consequences for workers and consumers all around the globe.” That latter statement drives this book, which is about the economic ramifications of the shipping container-from the closing of traditional (and antiquated) ports to the rise of Asia as the world’s preeminent provider of inexpensive consumer goods (distributed, naturally, using mammoth shipping containers). Levinson maintains his focus on the economics of shipping vast quantities of merchandise, organizing the book into snappy, thematic chapters on different facets of shipping (”The Trucker,” and “Union Disunion,” for instance), an approach that lends itself well to spot-reading. Throughout, the writing is clean-more informal than rigidly academic (union boss Teddy Gleason is “a voluble Irishman born hard by the New York docks”)-making the book suitable for casual readers as well as students looking for a different take on the evolution of 20th-century world economics.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review
“An engaging tale of how the shipping container helped usher in globalization”. — BusinessWeek

“He tells his tale using just the right blend of hard economic data and human interest”. — David K. Hurst, Strategy + Business, Summer 2006

“If all this commercial dynamism sounds thrilling, well, it is.” — The Wall Street Journal, Tim W. Ferguson

“Indeed, it is hard to imagine how world trade could have grown so fast—quintupling in the last two decades”. — Christian Caryl, Newsweek International

“It is a classic tale of trial and error, and of creative destruction”. — Virginia Postrel, The New York Times

“Levinson’s concern is business history on a grand scale. He tells a moral tale”. — Howard Davies, The Times

“Our lives have changed irrevocably because of what’s known as containerization”. — Sarah Murray, National Post

“Shipping companies that bet on containers won, and those that resisted were washed away”. — Joe Nocera, The New York Times

“Since they were developed 50 years ago, they have made possible today’s global economy”. — William Wineke, The Capital Times

“Without the container, there would be no globalization”. — The Economist, March 18, 2006

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International Logistics: Global Supply Chain Management: Douglas Long

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Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Students of logistics, transportation, and supply chain management, as well as international managers will find International Logistics: Global Supply Chain Management an essential reference for understanding how cargo is moved around the world. A comprehensive guide that includes the theory and practice of global supply chain management, International Logistics: Global Supply Chain Management uses current, real-world issues to make the material as relevant as possible, notwithstanding the fast-paced nature of this industry. Yet, the author also includes the theory and history of global supply chain management to provide a deeper understanding of the intricacies involved.
Logistics and transportation are the key elements of business and international trade. Based upon his experience in over 120 countries, including private industry, the military, and the United Nations, the author challenges conventional wisdom by discussing the myth of supply chain management and offering penetrating questions on the role of information systems.
International Logistics: Global Supply Chain Management is distinct in the following ways: A balanced approach between theoretical research and real-world practice, Cutting-edge, original graphics help explain concepts better than any current book, Instructor’s Manual provided by the author upon request. Combined with pedagogical features and real-world case studies, International Logistics: Global Supply Chain Management is a must-have textbook for students of logistics, transportation, and supply chain management students, as well as a reference for international managers.

Book Info
Text provides an understanding of how cargo is moved around the world, overviewing the theory and practice of global supply chain management. The author challenges conventional wisdom by discussing the myth of supply chain management and offering questions on the role of information systems. For students of logistics, supply chain management, and transportation.

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Financial Institutions and Markets: Meir Kohn

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Editorial Reviews

Review

“In this second edition, Meir Kohn addresses the structure of financial institutions and markets and investigates why and how existing markets are evolving. The book emphasizes a functional focus on financial intermediaries and markets such as government securities, mortgage, corporate debt, equity markets, derivatives, and market microstructure. Chapters cover liquidity and risk, regulation, and developing financial systems.”–Journal of Macroeconomics

Product Description
Why do financial institutions and markets have the structure they do? Why is that structure changing? These questions are central to the scope and purpose of Meir G. Kohn’s Financial Institutions and Markets, 2/e. Unlike most books designed for financial markets and institutions courses, this successful text focuses on the “why” of existing and evolving markets and instruments as well as the “how.”
Financial Institutions and Markets, 2/e, makes clear the general principles and economic functions underlying all financial intermediaries. It provides a thorough discussion of the specifics of banking, insurance, pension funds, and mutual funds. In a similar fashion, the book elucidates the general principles and economic functions common to all financial markets and offers an in-depth look at the specifics of the particular markets for government securities, mortgages, corporate debt, equity, and derivatives. The final section addresses the management of liquidity and risk and discusses the safety, stability, and regulation of financial intermediaries and financial markets.
Each chapter begins with a list of study objectives and concludes with a summary. Key terms are listed at the end of each chapter and defined in marginal glossaries as they occur in the text. End-of-chapter questions are included to provide a stimulus for discussion. Accessible to a wide range of students, Financial Institutions and Markets, 2/e, is ideal for courses in financial institutions, financial markets, or a combination of institutions and markets at either the undergraduate or graduate level.

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