Published in 1964, My Years with General Motors was an immediate                  best-seller and today is considered one of the few classic books on management. The                  book is the ghostwritten memoir of Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. (1875-1966), whose business                  and management strategies enabled General Motors to overtake Ford as the dominant                  American automobile manufacturer in the 1920s and 1930s.What has been largely                  unknown until now is that My Years with General Motors was almost not published.                  Although it was written with the permission of General Motors -- and slated for                  publication in October 1959 -- at the last minute General Motors tried to suppress                  the book out of fears that some of the material in it could become evidence in an                  antitrust action against the company. This book, by John McDonald, Sloan's                  ghostwriter, tells the behind-the-scenes story of the book's writing, its attempted                  suppression, and the lawsuit that eventually led to its publication. McDonald's                  narrative is partly the David-and-Goliath story of a lone journalist taking on the                  world's then-largest corporation and partly a study of strategy in its own right.                  McDonald's struggle to publish the book led him to navigate a complicated course                  among the competing interests of General Motors, Fortune magazine (his employer),                  and Time, Inc. (Fortune's owner). In many ways this "book about the book" parallels                  the Sloan book as a tale of successful, brilliantly planned strategy.

A Ghost's Memoir: The Making of Alfred P. Sloan's My Years with General Motors PDF

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