Books Briefly
BOOKS BRIEFLY Not Making It WHEN THE MACHINE STOPPED: A Cautionary Tale from Industrial America by Max Holland Harvard Business School Press. 335 pp. $22.95 "The notion of an American economy...
...There is, perhaps, no one in the United States as knowledgeable about African affairs as George M. Houser...
...Houser's political memoir will fascinate anyone with even a passing interest in Africa...
...improvisations...
...The U.S...
...Yet he understands that, whatever its shortcomings, "the anticolonial struggle has been a prerequisite for African development...
...Instead, he details a series of more or less calculated decisions—and policies—that led to the collapse of his prototype company, Burgmaster Corporation...
...Instead of consulting the workers, the absentee ownership manipulated them...
...And he notes that the Pentagon's procurement system and the distortions imposed by bloated military budgets were a significant factor in Burgmaster's death...
...Government about the revolutionary changes sweeping the African continent...
...For the past thirty-five years, he has devoted himself to the cause of African liberation...
...He acknowledges the "immediate and depressing realities in Africa"—not just the overwhelming poverty, but the corruption, political instability, and human-rights violations (e.g., Idi Amin's rule) that have soured the taste of freedom...
...22.95 "The notion of an American economy devoid of manufacturing is a recipe for domestic impoverishment, social injustice, national insecurity, and global discord," Max Holland writes in this engrossing study of one American manufacturing enterprise and why it failed...
...instead, he draws telling contrasts between farsighted Japanese strategies and shortsighted U.S...
...manufacturing sector has been in steady decline since the early 1960s, Holland notes, but he scorns the Reagan Administration's claim that the growth of the service sector in its place is a "natural" development...
...15.95 paper...
...He provides detailed accounts of his own experiences observing (and to some extent participating in) the liberation struggles—from Ghana and Guinea-Bissau to Algeria and Kenya and south to Zimbabwe and Mozambique...
...Along the way, he befriended the first generation of Africa's leaders, including Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, who writes a laudatory foreword to this book, and Augustinho Neto of Angola...
...And his own story of activism—from his days as a pacifist draft resister to his thirteen years with Fellowship of Reconciliation and his role in founding the Congress of Racial Equality— proves inspiring reading...
...Houser's account is a personal travelogue and thumbnail history that spans four decades of African politics...
...instead of keeping pace with the market's demand for innovation, the corporate hierarchy rested on Burgmaster's past accomplishments...
...The lessons are important, and are there for anyone who reads this valuable book...
...All that changed—drastically— when Burgmaster was acquired by a conglomerate and fell under the sway of "distant, managerial capitalism...
...Founded (as Burg Tool) in the mid-1940s by a Czech immigrant, Burgmaster rose in two decades to become the largest builder of machine tools west of the Mississippi...
...Houser takes his title from a poem Neto wrote in a Luanda prison in July 1960: "Here in prison/rage contained in my breast/I patiently wait/for the clouds to gather/blown by the wind of history./ No one/can stop the rain...
...388 pp...
...He helped found the American Committee on Africa in 1953 and served as its executive director from 1955 to 1981, educating the American public and lobbying the U.S...
...Holland does not overlook the role of Japanese competition in Burgmaster's fall, but his is no exercise in simplistic Japan-bashing...
...I still feel like a partisan in the struggle for justice and equality in Africa," he writes, but he is not an apologist...
...Burgmaster thrived, Holland writes, "because the Burgs knew their business [and] cultivated a work force that was second to none in its productivity and dedication to quality...
...Africa Memoir NO ONE CAN STOP THE RAIN: Glimpses of Africa's Liberation Struggle by George M. Houser Pilgrim Press...
Vol. 53 • July 1989 • No. 7
