by Hardy Green. From the cotton mills of Lowell, Massachusetts, in the late 1800s, to Google's Project 02 facility in Oregon, the U.S. has had a long and complicated history of companies attempting to balance efficiency and profitability with utopian ideals. Company towns, virtually owned and operated by storied names in U.S. business Pullman, Hershey, Ford, U.S. Steel, Corning, Kaiser have offered housing, education, health care, and other benefits in exchange for unquestioned loyalty and control over the lives of workers. Green, a former associate editor of BusinessWeek, offers a completely fascinating look at how American business titans motivated by a combination of practicality, greed, and philanthropy have established company towns. These towns were at the heart of labor issues from the Industrial Revolution, Great Depression, and decline of the manufacturing sector through the digital revolution. The landscape of company towns is littered with paternalism, failed utopian ideals, corporate takeovers, and enduring legacies in capitalism and philanthropy. Green explores utopian ideals gone awry and the changes in labor/management tensions across geography, time, and increasing globalization, and offers cogent insight on the need to balance divergent interests. --Booklist
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