The Company: A Short History of a Revolutionary Idea (Universal History) (Hardcover)

It deals with subjects that might otherwise be considered to be "heavy" in a very engaging way, with lots of anecdotes and humour, without ever missing its main target of providing a serious examination of a major social phenomenon that has passed most non-academic commentators by.

Forget War, Plague or Famine; for most of the Western world -- since, say, 1750 -- History has been the way that the greater part of the population has earned its living and the economic conditions under which it has flourished (or not). This book shows the critical importance of the company in history and the pivotal role it has played in mobilising economic growth.

If there is one criticism -- aside from the excruciating typographical errors -- it is that the overall impression, at the conclusion, is one of smugness about both what the company has been made to achieve and about the future of the company.

Don't be put off by the apparent dryness of the subject matter, this really is a litle gem that throws light on a largely unexamined theme of history.

Although Micklethwait and Wooldridge do indeed provide "a short history of a revolutionary idea," their book is remarkably comprehensive as it traces the evolution of commercial structure from merchants and monopolists (3000 B.C. -- 1500) through imperialists and speculators (1500-1750) and the "prolonged and painful birth" of the limited-liability joint-stock company (1750-1862) before shifting their and the reader's attention to the rise of big business in America (1862-1913), the rise of big business in Britain, Germany, and Japan (1850-1950), the triumph of managerial capitalism (1913-1975), and what they characterize as "the corporate paradox" (1975-2002) before examining "agents of influence: multinationals (1850-2002) in the final chapter. All this, and done very well indeed, in less than 200 pages! For those interested in further study of any/all of the periods and subjects they discuss, Micklethwait and Wooldridge provide an exceptionally informative "Bibliographic Note" section, followed by all of the footnotes in which additional recommendations are included.

Congratulations to Micklethwait and Wooldridge on what I consider to be a brilliant achievement, one which combines scholarship of the highest order with narrative skills worthy of Austen, Thackeray, and Dickens.

I finally understood the origin of the US term 'Trust' as in 'Anti-trust'.

It was also interesting to see the role the Railways had played in causing the Company to evolve, from the limited-time partnerships of the Sailing Ships to the 'ownership' by the Pension Funds.

Only one irritation - the sub-editor must have been asleep reviewing the proofs. Each page contains genuine hyphenated terms such as 'joint-stock' and 'Anglo-Saxon', but there are rogue hyphenations such as in 'chap-ter', 'Car-negie', 'custom-ers', 'Gas-kell', and you keep having to re-read them to see what they mean? I found them in 5 different chapters, so its not as if only one piece of text was added/removed and threw out the pagination?