The Reckoning: The Challenge to America's Greatness

"In just 25 years we have gone from the American century to the American crisis," Felix Rohatyn, financier & social critic, sets the theme: the fateful challenge to American industrial supremacy. Five years in the making, THE RECKONING reveals a society that got too rich for its own good, racing thru its postwar prosperity, developing wasteful habits. Finally in the mid-70s it fell prey to an unlikely rival: Japan, a nation only recently scorned for the low quality of its goods. This chastening study, portrays the conflict between the culture of affluence & that of adversity. It's a high-minded reminder that America's greatness is on the line & that vigilance is the price of survival.
Maxwell's warning --
Amaya surveys the oil age --
Detroit's bleak winter of 1982 --
The founder --
The destroyer --
The victor --
The banker --
The turning point --
The crushing of Masuda --
Tough little rich boy --
The whiz kids --
Ford goes public --
The quiet man --
The Gaijin teachers --
The engineer --
The first victory --
Deming finds an audience --
Henry Kaiser tries Detroit --
The organizer --
The Mustang --
The rivals --
The statue --
The boss --
The pioneer --
The liberation of Yukata Katayama --
The Emperor Shioji --
War and oil --
Henry Ford besieged --
The alienated --
Citizen Nader --
Datsun saves --
The struggle at the top --
Big cars again --
A vacancy at Chrysler --
The arrivistes --
Greathouse in Tokyo --
A man of the system --
Hard times come home --
The fall of a free trader --
Amaya ends an era --
The defection of Marvin Runyon --
The hammer and the nail --
A grateful worker --
Bonus time again --
The scion --
The new American hero --
The raiders --
OPEC unravels --
The upstarts --
The jobs depart --
Instant replay : the rise of Korea --
The venerables --
The reckoning --
The past becomes the future
Author's Note
Bibliography
Index