How America's biggest company began taking better care of its workers--and why such efforts will never be enough.Fifteen years ago, Walmart was the most controversial company in America. By offering incredibly low prices, it had come to dominate the retail landscape. But with this dominance came a suite of ethical concerns. Walmart was accused of wiping out of mom-and-pop businesses across the country; ruthlessly pressuring suppliers to cut costs, even if it meant closing up U.S. factories and moving production overseas; and, above all, not taking adequate care of its own employees, who were paid so little that many wound up on public assistance. Today, while Walmart remains America's largest employer, the picture is very different. It has become an environmental leader among businesses, and has taken many other steps to use its immense scale to have a positive social impact. Most notably, its starting wage has risen from $7.25 to $12, and employee benefits have improved. With internal and external threats to its business looming, the company began to change directions in 2005-a transformation that accelerated in 2014, with the arrival of CEO Doug McMillon. By undertaking such large-scale change without a legal mandate to do so, Walmart has joined a number of major corporations that say they are dedicated to practicing a new, socially conscious form of capitalism.In Still Broke, award-winning author Rick Wartzman goes inside the company's transformation, showing in novelistic detail how the company has gotten to where it is. Yet he also asks a critical question: is it enough? With a still-simmering public debate around the minimum wage and widespread movements by workers demanding better treatment, how far will $12 an hour go in today's economy? Or even $15? Or Walmart's average wage, which now hovers above $16-but, even so, doesn't pencil out to so much as $35,000 a year for a fulltime worker? In the richest nation on earth, how did the bar get set so low? How did America find itself relying on an army of low-wage workers without ever acknowledging their most basic needs? And if Walmart's brand of change is the best we have, how can we ever expect to build a healthy society?With unparalleled access to the key executives and change-makers at Walmart, Still Broke does more than document a remarkable business makeover. It interrogates the role of business in American life, and asks what the future of our economy and country can be-and whose job it is to make it.

In this richly detailed and eye-opening book, Rick Wartzman chronicles the erosion of the relationship between American companies and their workers. Through the stories of four major employers--General Motors, General Electric, Kodak, and Coca-Cola--he shows how big businesses once took responsibility for providing their workers and retirees with an array of social benefits. At the height of the post-World War II economy, these companies also believed that worker pay needed to be kept high in order to preserve morale and keep the economy humming. Productivity boomed. But the corporate social contract didn't last. By tracing the ups and downs of these four corporate icons over seventy years, Wartzman illustrates just how much has been lost: job security and steadily rising pay, guaranteed pensions, robust health benefits, and much more. Charting the Golden Age of the '50s and '60s; the turbulent years of the '70s and '80s; and the growth of downsizing, outsourcing, and instability in the modern era, Wartzman's narrative is a biography of the American Dream gone sideways. Deeply researched and compelling, The End of Loyalty will make you rethink how Americans can begin to resurrect the middle class.

J.G. Boswell was the biggest farmer in America. He built a secret empire while thumbing his nose at nature, politicians, labour unions and every journalist who ever tried to lift the veil on the ultimate "factory in the fields." The King of California is the previously untold account of how a Georgia slave-owning family migrated to California in the early 1920s,drained one of America's biggest lakes in an act of incredible hubris and carved out the richest cotton empire in the world. Indeed, the sophistication of Boswell's agricultural operation -from lab to field to gin - is unrivaled anywhere.Much more than a business story, this is a sweeping social history that details the saga of cotton growers who were chased from the South by the boll weevil and brought their black farmhands to California. It is a gripping read with cameos by a cast of famous characters, from Cecil B. DeMille to Cesar Chavez.

An in-depth look at today's most pressing business issues through the eyes of Peter Drucker--the father of modern management

"Channeling Peter Drucker to tackle some of this century's most difficult topics, "What Would Drucker Do Now?" is a veritable treasure trove of fascinating reading. Drucker's insights were nothing short of remarkable, and Rick Wartzman pays high tribute to that fact while adding a few of his own."
--Marshall Goldsmith, author of the "New York Times" bestsellers "MOJO" And" What Got You Here Won't Get You There"

"Rick Wartzman has accomplished what I didn't think was possible: a tapestry of ideas drawn from Wartzman's observations and personal experiences, woven together with the wisdom of the most important management thinker of this or any other age."
--Warren Bennis, Distinguished Professor of Management, the University of Southern California, and author of the recently published "Still Surprised: A Memoir of a Life in Leadership"

"Peter Drucker's thinking has had an enduring impact on consumer-driven companies like Macy's. . . . "What Would Drucker Do Now?"] serves as a compendium of the very best ideas that can help all of our companies win in a highly competitive marketplace for products, services, and customer experiences."
--Terry Lundgren, Chairman, President, and CEO, Macy's Inc.

"This collection of essays . . . will broaden you as a manager, a leader, and as a human being. . . . Rick Wartzman has done the world a great service by collecting the most incisive observations of a beautiful mind and linking them to problems that face leaders and organizations everywhere."
--Brian Walker, President and CEO, Herman Miller, Inc.

"If Peter Drucker is the master, Rick Wartzman is the prized pupil. Drucker would be delighted to see his theories applied in such a cogent, thoughtful fashion."
--Jim Weddle, Managing Partner, Edward Jones, and consulting client of Peter Drucker

About the Book:

As technology, globalization, and business innovation advance at breakneck speed, the question "What would Drucker do now?" becomes more relevant by the day. More than anyone of his time, Peter Drucker understood how the individual, the organization, and society are interrelated. And no one better recognized and articulated the challenges facing all three--or came up with more practical solutions to those challenges.

Since 2007, the Drucker Institute's executive director, Rick Wartzman, has been asking what Drucker would do on a regular basis-- in his popular online column for "Bloomberg Businessweek." In each piece, Wartzman introduces a current issue and provides a view of it through the eyes of Peter Drucker, based on his deep knowledge of Drucker's ideas and ideals.

"What Would Drucker Do Now?" culls Wartzman's best, most timely columns into a single volume, offering a perspective on business and society you won't find anywhere else. Featuring more than 80 articles, the book is organized into seven thematic sections: Management as a Discipline The Practice of Management Management Challenges for the Twenty-First Century On Wall Street and Finance On Values and Responsibility The Public and Social Sectors Art, Music, and Sports

Covering everything from the federal bailout of GM and the scandal at Goldman Sachs to the roles religion and race relations play in a well-functioning society, "What Would Drucker Do Now?" explores a range of subjects as broad as Drucker's remarkable mind. Wartzman provides a smart, original, and provocative look at a world being buffeted by change and in which all organizations--private, public, and nonprofit--are searching for answers. What would Drucker do now, indeed?

Praise for "The Drucker Lectures"

"Peter Drucker shined a light in a dark and chaotic world, and his words remain as relevant today as when he first spoke them. Drucker's lectures and thoughts deserve to be considered by every person of responsibility, now, tomorrow, ten years from now, fifty, and a hundred."
-Jim Collins, author of "Good to Great" and "How the Mighty Fall"

"Rick Wartzman has brought Peter Drucker alive again, and vividly so, in his own words. These samples of his talks and lectures, because they were spoken not written, will be new to almost all of us. A great and unexpected treat."
-Charles Handy, author of "Myself and Other More Important Matters"

"Peter Drucker's ideas continue to resonate powerfully today. His lectures on effectiveness, innovation, the social sector, education and so much more provide fresh insights that extend beyond his other writings and provide lessons for us all. This book is a gem."
-Wendy Kopp, CEO and founder of Teach for America

"Rick Wartzman has performed a great service in pulling together "The Drucker Lectures." The collection is as far-ranging as Drucker's thinking and writing. If you have sampled Drucker before, you will find things you haven't seen. Peter's ideas live on. You will be energized by reading them anew."
-Paul O'Neill, former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury

"Peter Drucker inspires awe. From the 1940s until his death a few years ago, he displayed a combination of insight, prescience, and productivity that few will ever match. This superbly edited collection captures both the range of Drucker's thinking and the sweep of history that informed it. "The Drucker Lectures" is a riveting read that reveals the depth and subtlety of one of America's most remarkable minds."
-Daniel H. Pink, author of "A Whole New Mind" and "Drive"

"Rick Wartzman really has brought Peter to life in "The Drucker Lectures." Reading this book, I practically felt as though I were seated in the audience, listening to my friend and hero, Peter Drucker-truly one of the great geniuses of management. These lectures are as vital today as they were when Peter delivered them. They cover significant territory, from the importance of faith and the individual to the rise of the global economy. It's a classic collection that belongs on every manager's bookshelf."
-Ken Blanchard, coauthor of "The One Minute Manager" and "Leading at a Higher Level"

Previously unpublished talks from the Father of Modern Management

Throughout his professional life, Peter F. Drucker inspired millions of business leaders not only through his famous writings but also through his lectures and keynotes. These speeches contained some of his most valuable insights, but had never been published in book form--until now.

"The Drucker Lectures" features more than 30 talks from one of management's most important figures. Drawn from the Drucker Archives at the Drucker Institute at Claremont Graduate University, the lectures showcase Drucker's wisdom, wit, profundity, and prescience on such topics as: Politics and economics of the environment Knowledge workers and the Knowledge Society Computer and information literacy Managing nonprofit organizations Globalization

During his life, Drucker well understood that over the last 150 years the world had become a society of large institutions--and that they would only become larger and more powerful. He contended that unless these institutions were effectively managed and ethically led, the good health of society as a whole would be in peril. His prediction is unfolding before our eyes.

"The Drucker Lectures" is a timely, instructive book proving that responsible behavior and good business can, in fact, exist hand in hand.

Few books have caused as big a stir as John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath , when it was published in April 1939. By May, it was the nation's No. 1 bestseller, flying off store shelves at a rate of 10,000 copies a week. But in Kern County, California,the Joads' newfound home,the book was burned publicly and banned from library shelves. Obscene in the Extreme tells the remarkable story behind that fit of censorship, a moment when several lives collided as part of a larger class struggle roiling the nation. It is a superb historical narrative that serves as an engaging window into an extraordinary time of upheaval in America, when as Steinbeck put it, A revolution is going on."