Explores the management style of the American Honda Motor Company, discussing its commitment to a set of unorthodox management tenets, including decentralization over corporate control, and more.

For decades there have been two iconic Japanese auto companies. One has been endlessly studied and written about. The other has been generally underappreciated and misunderstood. Until now. Since its birth as a motorcycle company in 1949, Honda has steadily grown into the world's fifth largest automaker and top engine manufacturer, as well as one of the most beloved, most profitable, and most consistently innovative multinational corporations. What drives the company that keeps creating and improving award-winning and bestselling models like the Civic, Accord, Odyssey, CR-V, and Pilot? According to Jeffrey Rothfeder - the first journalist allowed behind Honda's infamously private doors - what truly distinguishes Honda from its competitors, especially archrival Toyota, is a deep commitment to a set of unorthodox management tenets. The Honda Way, as insiders call it, is notable for decentralization over corporate control, simplicity over complexity and unyielding cynicism toward the status quo and whatever is assumed to be the truth - ideas embedded in the DNA of the company by its colourful founder Soichiro Honda, sixty-five years ago. With dozens of interviews of Honda executives, engineers,and frontline employees, Rothfeder shows how the company has developed and maintained its unmatched culture of innovation, resilience, and flexibility - and how it exported that culture to other countries that are strikingly different from Japan, establishing locally controlled operations in each region where it lays down roots. For instance, Rothfeder reports on life at a Honda factory in the tiny town of Lincoln, Alabama. When the American workers were trained to follow the Honda Way as a self-sufficient outpost of the global company, their plant pioneered a new model for manufacturing in America. As Soichiro Honda himself liked to say, "Success can be achieved only through repeated failure and introspection. In fact, success represents one percent of your work, which results only from the ninety-nine percent that is called failure."

The renowned design writer on the extraordinary history of car design. In this lively and entertaining work, Witold Rybczynski—hailed as “one of the best writers on design working today” by Publishers Weekly—tells the story of the most distinctive cars in history and the artists, engineers, dreamers, and gearheads who created them. Delving into more than 170 years of ingenuity in design, technology, and engineering, he takes us from Carl Benz’s three-wheel motorcar in 1855 to the present-day shift to electric cars. Along the way, he looks at the emergence of mass production with Henry Ford’s Model T; the Golden Age of American car design and the rise of car culture; postwar European subcompacts typified by the Mini Cooper; and the long tradition of the streamlined and elegant sports car. Rybczynski explores how cars have been reflections of national character (the charming Italian Fiat Cinquecento), icons of a subculture (the VW bus for American hippies), and even emblems of an era (the practical Chrysler minivan). He explains key developments in automotive technology, including the electric starter, rack-and-pinion steering, and disc brakes, bringing to light how the modern automobile is the result of more than a century of trial and error. And he weaves in charming accounts of the many cars he’s owned and driven, starting with his first—the iconic Volkswagen Beetle. The Driving Machine is a breezy and fascinating history of design, illustrated with the author’s delightful drawings.

The original renowned account of the Honda Management System was first published in Japan in 1980. For this English translation, the book was thoroughly revised and up-dated. It serves as a key work of reference for all those in management and industry who want to know the key to Japan's industrial success and seek to emulate the meteoric rise of Mr Honda from back-street garage to transnational corporation. First published in 1990, this title is part of the Bloomsbury Academic Collections series.

In Driving toward Modernity, Jun Zhang ethnographically explores the entanglement between the rise of the automotive regime and emergence of the middle class in South China. Focusing on the Pearl River Delta, one of the nation's wealthiest regions, Zhang shows how private cars have shaped everyday middle-class sociality, solidarity, and subjectivity, and how the automotive regime has helped make the new middle classes of the PRC. By carefully analyzing how physical and social mobility intertwines, Driving toward Modernity paints a nuanced picture of modern Chinese life, comprising the continuity and rupture as well as the structure and agency of China's great transformation.

In Pain Almost In Vain is a real-life account of a nervous disorder patient from the moment he was diagnosed, through his journey finding the cure, not curing, up till rehabilitation. His disorder affects his sensory, muscle motors and digestive system. He is still in continuous pain due to his skin hypersensitiveness, burning sensation, muscle cramps, stiffness, numbness, imbalance and a slightly improved digestive system. He writes about how his disorder brought him to meet different practitioners and people who have changed his outlook towards life. He approached his predicament as a normal human with remorse, anger, frustration and he didn't hide his real feelings. He expressed what he sees and experienced in a casual, sincere and slightly humorous manner. In Pain Almost In Vain shows how all problems should be faced in a child-like attitude, trying everything possible, listen to suggestions and do it without worrying about the results because we are not the one determining it. He realized from his ailment that out there, people are readily willing to help him, not individualistic as he perceived. He has learned that being with other patients is an education. It is a book about appreciation, love and hope.

American entrepreneurs, corporate tycoons, and financiers are plotting what they do best—creating new industries that change the world and making billions in the process—a plot that will ultimately save the planet. The Plot to Save the Planet is an illuminating and inspiring look at the “conspiracy” to make green technology the Silicon Valley of the twenty-first century—the creator of massive numbers of jobs and huge amounts of wealth. Suddenly, the ugly mudslinging between environmentalists and big business has abated, and these two previously opposed forces are now strange bedfellows in a race to head off climate change. How is this new frontier being shaped? Brian Dumaine is your guide in this intriguing look into the very near future filled with colorful and informative stories about the entrepreneurs, investors, and corporate mavericks who are managing to pull off the feat of combining economic growth and environmental protection to battle global warming. You’ll read about: • The savvy investors: Why Warren Buffett is investing heavily in wind power; and why John Doerr, the venture capitalist and early backer of Google, is saying that “green tech is bigger than the Internet and could be the biggest economic opportunity of the twenty-first century.” • The cars of the future: The competitively priced plug-in hybrids that will get 60 miles to the gallon, and the battle being waged by fifteen start-ups competing to capture the electric car market. • The fuels without fossils: New sources of energy from plants such as prairie grass and algae that could capture a big chunk of the $300 billion U.S. wholesale gasoline market. • The corporate mavericks: Companies such as Duke Energy and GE who are creating the low-carbon business models of the future, as well as cleaner ways to provide our power needs. • The energy-miser homes and buildings: The new Bank of America Tower in New York City and the green low- and middle-income homes being constructed by visionaries who were told it couldn’t be done and still be affordable. • The “thin film” solar energy: How it is making the cost of heating a home comparable to traditional methods without emitting greenhouse gas. Plenty of obstacles still exist—among them resistance from the rich and powerful owners of the world’s oil supply, developing nations such as China with their reliance on coal, and an American public reluctant to give up their McMansions, SUVs, and extreme air-conditioning. But the battle cry has been sounded. The green overhaul of the utility, energy, construction, shipping, and automobile industries is well on its way and—contrary to prevailing fears—the ultimate solutions will sustain the environment without demanding huge sacrifices to our contemporary comforts and lifestyles.

An explosive, eye-opening expose of the corporate forces that have for more than a century sabotaged the creation of alternative energies and vehicles in order to keep us dependent on oil. There is enough truth in this book to revolutionize our way of life. Winner of four awards for editorial excellence: American Society of Journalists and Authors Best Book, Thomas Edison Award, Green Globes, and an AJPA Rockower Award.