Shaw Industries, which is based in Dalton, Georgia, is the nation's leading textile manufacturer and the world's largest producer of carpets. This history focuses on the evolution of Shaw's business strategy and its adaptations to changing economic conditions. Randall L. Patton chronicles Shaw's rise to dominance by drawing on corporate records, industry data, and interviews with Shaw employees and management, including Robert E. Shaw, the only CEO the company has known in its more than thirty years.Patton situates Shaw within both the overall context of Sunbelt economic development and the unique circumstances behind the success of the tufted carpet industry in northwest Georgia. After surveying the state of the carpet industry nationwide at the end of World War II, Patton then tells the Shaw story from the boom years of 1955-1973, through the transitional decade of 1973-1982, the consolidation phase of the 1980s and early 1990s, and the 'new economy' of the mid- to late 1990s. Throughout, Patton shows, Shaw's drive has always been toward vertical integration-controlling the outside forces that could affect its bottom line. He tells, for instance, how Shaw built its own trucking fleet and became its own yarn supplier, all to the company's advantage. He also relates less successful ventures, most notably Shaw's attempt at direct retailing. The picture emerges of a company proud of its image as a steady and profitable business surviving in a competitive industry. Patton traces the history of Shaw Industries from its start as a family-owned operation through its growth into a multinational corporation that recently joined Warren Buffett's holding company, Berkshire-Hathaway. The Shaw saga has much to tell us about the continuing vitality of 'old economy' manufacturers.

From Victoria Glendinning, winner of the Duff Cooper Prize, the James Tait Black Prize and (twice) the Whitbread Prize for Biography. 'It's Succession in tailcoats and spats ... This is a vivid and eye-opening group biography, backgrounded by the rise of supermarket moguls from humble beginnings' Sunday Times Who was John Lewis? What story lies behind the retail empire that bears his name? Behind the glass windows and displays of soft furnishing, this book reveals the family that founded the shops in all their eccentricities, and whose relationships became blighted by conflicts of epic proportions as their wealth bloomed. Born into poverty, John Lewis was orphaned at the age of seven when his father died in a Somerset workhouse. Dreaming of a better life, the young man travelled to London at the start of what would become a retail revolution. From early years as a draper's apprentice, we see how Lewis's first pokey little business opened on Oxford Street in 1864, and expanded as an emerging middle class embraced the department stores as a recreational experience. Prize-winning biographer Victoria Glendinning has had full access to the company and family archives to write this eye-opening story. She captures the toxic relationships that unfolded between Lewis and his two sons, Spedan and Oswald, as they collided over the future of their retail empire - their worst moments including emotional blackmail, face-slapping and a kidnapping - and much litigation between father and both sons. Yet the family never broke up and Spedan's vision of a Partnership model to act as an ethical corrective and foster a community of happier, more productive workers was eventually realised and survives to this day. With riveting personal detail, this brilliant group biography captures a rags-to-riches story and a tempestuous family saga, all unfolding against the dramatic social and political worlds of nineteenth-century London. The book concludes with an assessment of the position John Lewis holds in British sensibilities, and whether John Lewis and institutions like it have a place in our future.