The reckoning /

"In just twenty-five years we have gone from the American century to the American crisis," Felix Rohatyn, the financier and social critic, tells David Hablerstam. "That is an astonishing turnaround - perhaps the shortest parabola in history." The remark sets the theme of this powerful work: the fateful challenge to American industrial supremacy. Five years in the making, the book reveals a society that got too rich for its own good, racing through its postwar prosperity, developing wasteful habits, until in the mid-seventies it fell prey to the unlikeliest of rivals, Japan, a nation only recently scorned for the low quality of its goods. The Reckoning portrays the conflict between the culture of affluence and the culture of adversity. It presents the plight of an America whose very greatness is on the line. Halberstam鈥檚 trademark is to take a transcending event such as this and, by dint of exhaustive research and illuminating mini-biographies, make it come to life. Here he chooses two companies, Ford and Nissan, each the embodiment of its society, and tells their stories side by side, from the founders and owners right down to the men on the assembly line. Not only has he entered the Ford executive suites far more deeply than previous writers; he has penetrated the closed, hostile world of corporate Japan 鈥?an impressive coup 鈥?and exposed fierce confrontations. He has taken the normally anonymous Japanese and given them faces, emotions, egos, and vanities. He sees the strengths of the Japanese; he credits especially for heeding American experts on quality and efficiency who were ignored in their own land. But where other writers have too readily touted Japanese managerial wizardry and harmony in the workplace, Halberstam has seen through the myths: Nissan, far from benevolent, crushed an independent union and , far from venturesome, had to be kicked and shoved into exporting. One of the most surprising narratives in the book is the colorful tale of Nissan鈥檚 reluctant invasion of the United States. Halberstam鈥檚 Americans are demythologized too. Henry Ford II, a swashbuckler to the general public, is seen as a cautious man, obsessed with conserving the family business. Lee Iacocca is viewed this time not just through his own eyes but in a remarkably balanced look 鈥?the most talented automobile man of his generation, the outspoken symbol of the old Detroit with its large, gas-guzzling cars, but nimble enough to become the spokesman for a new, less powerful auto industry. (The man who 鈥渂rought America back鈥?is revealed as a leader in the trend to send American jobs overseas.) Iacocca emerges as smart and funny but also jealous and vengeful, not a man to be crossed, even by the chairman he works for. Just as striking is Halberstam鈥檚 portrait of a little-known figure named J. Edward Lundy, the chief of finance who created a new modern culture of bright young business-school graduates at the once-primitive company. Lundy led his financial people to victory over Ford鈥檚 manufacturing and product men, changing the emphasis from making cars to making profits, letting quality slip and innovation lag at a firm formerly the symbol of American industrial genius. Meanwhile Nissan was rising from the ashes of war with grim determination, embracing any sacrifice to improve its product. At both Nissan and Ford we meet people on every level, witness boardroom battles, watch the factions contend. At the end we see the enterprising Koreans looking purposively over the shoulders of the Japanese, whom they call 鈥渢he lazy Asians.鈥?The Reckoning tackles the No. 1 subject for Americans today 鈥?our prosperity going down the drain, jobs flowing overseas, foreigners seizing our markets and beating us at our own game, the drastic change ahead for our economy 鈥?and makes it not only readable but riveting. There will not soon be a book that tells more about the next America. - Dust jacket.