The book for this week, The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business, was written in a distinctly different manner than last week’s book. This week the material felt more historically grounded and I felt more comfortable reading it, though parts of the book were difficult for me to grasp, not having a background in economics. While the biographical book of last week was easier, conventionally, to read and probably appeals to a much wider audience than does Chandler’s book, I have become accustomed to reading certain kinds of history books and The Visible Hand fit that mold better.
The differences between the two books were vast. While the author of last week’s book decided to write his book using the historical ‘great man/woman’ theory, this week’s selection, while it certainly discussed important players of the time, was more concerned with the general trend of the family/bank owned business turning toward the manager based business. While their arguments were not contradictory, they were not entirely related either. As they were not discussing the same time period, however, this is not entirely unexpected.
The aspect about this class that I am enjoying is the amount of knowledge that I feel I am gaining. The probable cause for this is because I had so little knowledge of economics before. This has been a mixed blessing because while I feel as though I am learning a ton, I also feel that I do not already know enough to fully participate. This week's book, for example, discussed the "unseen hand" of the marketplace. I think that if I would have helped me understand the reverse to that theory. Though it was not really a reverse theory just a theory of how the "invisible hand" market evolved.