Exploring Capitalist Fiction

Business through Literature and Film

By (author) Edward W. Younkins

Publication date:

06 August 2014

Length of book:

344 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

ISBN-13: 9781498500722

Fiction, including novels, plays, and films, can be a powerful force in educating students and employees in ways that lectures, textbooks, articles, case studies, and other traditional teaching approaches cannot. Works of fiction can address a range of issues and topics, provide detailed real-life descriptions of the organizational contexts in which workers find themselves, and tell interesting, engaging, and memorable stories that are richer and more likely to stay with the reader or viewer longer than lectures and other teaching approaches. For these reasons, Exploring Capitalist Fiction: Business through Literature and Film analyzes 25 films, novels, and plays that engage the theories, concepts, and issues most relevant to the business world. Through critical examinations of works such as Atlas Shrugged and Wall Street, Younkins shows how fiction is a powerful teaching tool to sensitize business students without business experience and to educate and train managers in real businesses.

Preface
Introduction
Chapter 1. The Rise of Silas Lapham: A Story of Self-Identity, Self-Respect, and Morality
Chapter 2. Taking a Look at Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward
Chapter 3. Frank Norris's The Octopus: An Epic of Wheat and Railroads
Chapter 4. The Financier: Theodore Dreiser's Portrait of a Darwinian Businessman
Chapter 5. Abraham Cahan's The Rise of David Levinsky
Chapter 6. Babbitt: Sinclair Lewis's Portrait of a Middle-Aged Middle Class Businessman
Chapter 7. "Who is Henry M. Galt?": A Review of Garet Garrett's The Driver
Chapter 8. F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby
Chapter 9. An American Romance: King Vidor's Epic Film of Immigration and the American Dream
Chapter 10. Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman: A Case of Self-Delusion
Chapter 11. John P. Marquand's Point of No Return
Chapter 12. Henry Hazlitt's Time Will Run Back: A Tale of the Reinvention of Capitalism
Chapter 13. Executive Suite: A Story of Corporate Success and Succession
Chapter 14. Cash McCall: The Story of a Heroic Corporate Rider
Chapter 15. Sloan Wilson's The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit
Chapter 16. Atlas Shrugged: An Epic Story of Heroic Businessmen
Chapter 17. Sometimes a Great Notion: The Story of a Family Who Would Never Give an Inch
Chapter 18. Wilfrid Sheed's Office Politics: A Lesson about Organizational Conflict
Chapter 19. The Franchiser: Stanley Elkin's Tale of a Man Who Wanted to Costume the Country
Chapter 20. Glengarry Glen Ross: A David Mamet Word Play
Chapter 21. Wall Street: Oliver Stone's Zero-Sum Vision of Capitalism
Chapter 22. Tucker: The Man and His Dream
Chapter 23. David Lodge's Nice Work: A Tale of Two Cultures
Chapter 24. Other People's Money: A Tale of Capitalism and Creative Destruction
Chapter 25: Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps
Conclusion

This richly annotated bibliography of novels, films, and plays could be read in conjunction with studying business. Arguing that these imaginative works offer insights not found in textbooks or case studies, Younkins explicates their power to represent as well as entertain. After a summary introduction, the author presents 25 brief, chronological chapters, each focusing on a separate work, beginning with William Dean Howells's The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885) and ending with Oliver Stone's film Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010). In summarizing these works, Younkins emphasizes universal themes, such as amorality in Theodore Dreiser's The Financier, the American Dream in Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, individualism in Ken Kesey's Sometimes a Great Notion, and competition in David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross. After a brief conclusion that again summarizes the content, the book ends with appendixes that list additional business novels, plays, and films . . . [T]his volume serves as an ideal primer for an instructor who wishes to include literature in a business course. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates; faculty; general readers.