Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-fwgfc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-12T13:16:53.886Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Remembering Robert Sobel (1931–1999)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 September 2015

Extract

Longstanding debates among academic historians about the role of the narrative and the need (or not) for relevance are not likely to end any time soon. Business historians have been relatively unreflective about such matters, at least compared with, say, labor or women’s historians, who regularly sprinkle their journals with historiographic reassessments. Perhaps this is because there was little on the theoretical end of the scale in business history to sustain earnest debate prior to the publication of Alfred Chandler’s first masterwork, Strategy and Structure, scarcely more than a generation ago. Still, it was Allan Nevins—the journalist cum Columbia University history professor whose prodigious writings included several elegant business biographies—who memorably satirized the history academy with “Dr. Dry-as-Dust,” a crusty purveyor of densely ponderous prose for like-minded scholarly elites.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2000. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Business History Conference. All rights reserved.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

The Origins of Interventionism: The United States and the Russo-Finnish War. New York, 1960.Google Scholar
The Big Board: A History of the New York Stock Market. New York, 1965.Google Scholar
The American Revolution. New York, 1967.Google Scholar
The French Revolution. New York, 1967.Google Scholar
The Great Bull Market: Wall Street in the 1920s. New York, 1968.Google Scholar
Panic on Wall Street: A History of America’s Financial Disasters. New York, 1968. (A new edition updated to include the Crash of 1987 was published by Truman Talley Books/Dutton in 1988.)Google Scholar
With Sarnoff, Paul. The Automobile Makers. New York, 1969.Google Scholar
With Oliver, Carl. Our Changing World: Man, the World, and the Social Studies. Forest River, Ill., 1969.Google Scholar
The Curbstone Brokers: The Origins of the American Stock Exchange. New York, 1970.Google Scholar
Conquest and Conscience: The 1840s. New York, 1971.Google Scholar
Editor, Biographical Directory of the United States Executive Branch, 1774-1971. Westport, Conn., 1971. (An updated edition [1774–1989] appeared in 1990, and the 1774–2001 edition [co-edited with David B. Sicilia] will appear in 2001.)Google Scholar
The Age of Giant Corporations: A Microeconomic History of the United States, 1914–1970. Westport, Conn., 1972. (Revised editions were published in 1984 and 1993.)Google Scholar
Amex: A History of the American Stock Exchange, 1921–1971. New York, 1972.Google Scholar
For Want of a Nail.. . : If Burgoyne Had Won at Saratoga. New York, 1973.Google Scholar
Money Manias: Eras of Great Speculation in American History, 1770– 1970. New York, 1973.Google Scholar
Machines and Morality: The 1850s. New York, 1973.Google Scholar
The Entrepreneurs: Explorations Within the American Business Tradition. New York, 1974.Google Scholar
N.Y.S.E.: A History of the New York Stock Exchange, 1935–1975. New York, 1975.Google Scholar
Herbert Hoover at the Onset of the Great Depression, 1929–1930. Philadelphia, Pa., 1975.Google Scholar
The Manipulators: America in the Media Age. Garden City, N.Y., 1976.Google Scholar
Inside Wall Street: Continuity and Change in the Financial District. New York, 1977.Google Scholar
The Fallen Colossus: The Great Crash of the Penn Central. New York, 1977.Google Scholar
They Satisfy: The Cigarette in American Life. Garden City, N.Y., 1978.Google Scholar
Co-editor with Raimo, John. Biographical Directory of the Governors of the United States, vols. 1-4. Westport, Conn., 1978.Google Scholar
The Last Bull Market: Wall Street in the 1960s. New York, 1980.Google Scholar
The Worldly Economists. New York, 1980.Google Scholar
I.B.M.: Colossus in Transition. New York, 1981. (A mass market Bantam Books (New York) edition appeared in 1983.)Google Scholar
I.T.T.: The Management of Opportunity. New York, 1982.Google Scholar
The Rise and Fall of the Conglomerate Kings. New York, 1984.Google Scholar
Car Wars: The Untold Story. New York, 1984.Google Scholar
RCA. New York, 1986.Google Scholar
Salomon Brothers, 1910–1985: Advancing to Leadership. New York, 1986.Google Scholar
IBM vs. Japan: The Struggle for the Future. New York, 1986.Google Scholar
With Sicilia, David B.. The Entrepreneurs: An American Adventure. Boston, 1986.Google Scholar
The New Game on Wall Street. New York, 1987.Google Scholar
With O’Glove, Thornton L.. Quality of Earnings: The Investor’s Guide to How Much Money a Company is Really Making. New York, 1987.Google Scholar
Co-editor with Katz, Bernard S.. Biographical Directory of the Council of Economic Advisors. Westport, Conn., 1988.Google Scholar
Trammel Crow, Master Builder: The Story of America’s Largest Real Estate Empire. New York, 1989.Google Scholar
The Life and Times of Dillon Reed. New York, 1991.Google Scholar
Dangerous Dreamers: The Financial Innovators from Charles Merrill to Michael Milken. New York, 1993.Google Scholar
Coolidge: An American Enigma. Washington, D.C., 1998.Google Scholar
When Giants Stumble: Classic Business Blunders and How to Avoid Them. Paramus, N.J., 1999.Google Scholar
The Pursuit of Wealth: The Incredible Story of Money Throughout the Ages. New York, 1999.Google Scholar
The Great Boom, 1950–2000: How a Generation of Enterprising Americans Created the World’s Most Prosperous Society. New York: St. Martin’s Press, forthcoming, 2000.Google Scholar