Summer Reads: New England Business
From instant photography to baseball to ice cream, you may be surprised how many famous businesses were born and raised in New England! Check out these titles on the history and impact of business and innovation in Boston and the greater New England area. Want to learn more about business news from a local lens? BU Students have access to the most recent 3 months of the Boston Globe via PressReader!
Featured Reading: New England Business
Instant: The Story of Polaroid
"Instant photography at the push of a button!" During the 1960s and '70s, Polaroid was the coolest technology company on earth. Like Apple, it was an innovation machine that cranked out one must-have product after another. Led by its own visionary genius founder, Edwin Land, Polaroid grew from a 1937 garage start-up into a billion-dollar pop-culture phenomenon. Instant tells the remarkable tale of Land's one-of-a-kind invention-from Polaroid's first instant camera to hit the market in 1948, to its meteoric rise in popularity and adoption by artists such as Ansel Adams, Andy Warhol, and Chuck Close, to the company's dramatic decline into bankruptcy in the late '90s and its unlikely resurrection in the digital age. Instant is both an inspiring tale of American ingenuity and a cautionary business tale about the perils of companies that lose their creative edge.
The Fenway Effect : a cultural history of the Boston Red Sox
To be a part of Red Sox Nation is to be a hopeful romantic who neither betrays loyalty nor surrenders hope in the direst of circumstances. From Bangor to Back Bay, New Englanders endure in baseball matters. And life. The team's history has intersected with the history of Boston and well beyond it, through the Curse of the Bambino, the military service of Ted Williams during World War II, and the Boston Marathon bombing. The Fenway Effect chronicles these stories and others that have built the incredible saga of the Boston Red Sox. How did Cheers depict the passion of Boston's sports fans? Why is Narragansett beer so important to New England? What's the architectural impact of The Teammates--the statue of Bobby Doerr, Johnny Pesky, Ted Williams, and Dom DiMaggio outside Fenway Park? What did the Boston press really think about Red Sox owner Harry Frazee selling Babe Ruth to the Yankees? What was the origin of Fenway Park's predecessor--Huntington Avenue Grounds? Even Yankees fans will tip their caps to the rich impact of the Red Sox on music, movies, branding, broadcasting, and more. Plus, there's a chapter focusing on the oral history of Red Sox fans, some of whom share here anecdotes that are funny, insightful, and heartwarming.
Harvard Square: a love story
Diving into Harvard Square's past and present, Catherine J. Turco, an economic sociologist and longtime Harvard Square denizen, tells the crazy, complicated love story of one quirky little marketplace and in the process, reveals the hidden love story Americans everywhere have long had with their own Main Streets and downtowns.
Books & E-Books
Harvard Square: a love story by
Diving into Harvard Square's past and present, Catherine J. Turco, an economic sociologist and longtime Harvard Square denizen, tells the crazy, complicated love story of one quirky little marketplace and in the process, reveals the hidden love story Americans everywhere have long had with their own Main Streets and downtowns.
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2022
Radio Free Boston : the rise and fall of WBCN by
Blaring the Cream anthem "I Feel Free," WBCN went on the air in March 1968 as an experiment in free-form rock on the fledgling FM radio band. It broadcast its final song, Pink Floyd's "Shine On You Crazy Diamond," in August 2009. In between, WBCN became the musical, cultural, and political voice of the young people of Boston and New England, sustaining a vibrant local music scene that launched such artists as the J. Geils Band, Aerosmith, James Taylor, Boston, the Cars, and the Dropkick Murphys, as well as paving the way for Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, U2, and many others. Along the way, WBCN both pioneered and defined progressive rock radio, the dominant format for a generation of listeners. Brilliantly told by Carter Alan--and featuring the voices of station insiders and the artists they loved--Radio Free Boston is the story of a city; of artistic freedom, of music and politics and identity; and of the cultural, technological, and financial forces that killed rock radio.
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2013
The Fenway Effect : a cultural history of the Boston Red Sox by
To be a part of Red Sox Nation is to be a hopeful romantic who neither betrays loyalty nor surrenders hope in the direst of circumstances. From Bangor to Back Bay, New Englanders endure in baseball matters. And life. The team's history has intersected with the history of Boston and well beyond it, through the Curse of the Bambino, the military service of Ted Williams during World War II, and the Boston Marathon bombing. The Fenway Effect chronicles these stories and others that have built the incredible saga of the Boston Red Sox. How did Cheers depict the passion of Boston's sports fans? Why is Narragansett beer so important to New England? What's the architectural impact of The Teammates--the statue of Bobby Doerr, Johnny Pesky, Ted Williams, and Dom DiMaggio outside Fenway Park? What did the Boston press really think about Red Sox owner Harry Frazee selling Babe Ruth to the Yankees? What was the origin of Fenway Park's predecessor--Huntington Avenue Grounds? Even Yankees fans will tip their caps to the rich impact of the Red Sox on music, movies, branding, broadcasting, and more. Plus, there's a chapter focusing on the oral history of Red Sox fans, some of whom share here anecdotes that are funny, insightful, and heartwarming.
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2024
A History of Howard Johnson's by
Learn more about the "Father of the Franchise Industry" in this illuminating history about the Howard Johnson restaurant franchise and the man behind it all. Howard Johnson created an orange-roofed empire of ice cream stands and restaurants that stretched from Maine to Florida, and all the way to the West Coast. With a reputation for good food at affordable prices, hungry customers would regularly return for more. The attractive white Colonial Revival restaurants, with eye-catching porcelain tile roofs, illuminated cupolas and sea blue shutters, were described in "Reader's Digest" in 1949 as the epitome of "eating places that look like New England town meeting houses dressed up for Sunday." Highlighted in television shows such as Mad Men and films Netflix's 2019 The Irishman, it's obvious that Howard Johnson's occupies an indelible and pleasant place popular culture. Boston historian and author Anthony M. Sammarco recounts how Howard Johnson introduced twenty-eight flavors of ice cream, the "Tendersweet" clam strips, grilled frankforts and a menu of delicious and traditional foods that families eagerly enjoyed when they traveled.
Location: Pardee Stacks TX945.5.H595 S25 2013Publication Date: 2013
Ben and Jerry's Double Dip : lead with your values and make money, too by
In this text, the authors explain their business method, that of values-led business, and how anyone who owns, works for, invests in, or shops with a company might help make it a socially responsible business using this method.
Location: Pardee Stacks HD9281.U54 B463 1997Publication Date: 1997
Instant: The Story of Polaroid by
"Instant photography at the push of a button!" During the 1960s and '70s, Polaroid was the coolest technology company on earth. Like Apple, it was an innovation machine that cranked out one must-have product after another. Led by its own visionary genius founder, Edwin Land, Polaroid grew from a 1937 garage start-up into a billion-dollar pop-culture phenomenon. Instant tells the remarkable tale of Land's one-of-a-kind invention-from Polaroid's first instant camera to hit the market in 1948, to its meteoric rise in popularity and adoption by artists such as Ansel Adams, Andy Warhol, and Chuck Close, to the company's dramatic decline into bankruptcy in the late '90s and its unlikely resurrection in the digital age. Instant is both an inspiring tale of American ingenuity and a cautionary business tale about the perils of companies that lose their creative edge.
Location: Pardee Stacks HD9708.U64 P653 2012Publication Date: 2012
L. L. Bean : the making of an American icon by
L. L. Bean is one of only a handful of American companies to have attained almost legendary status in the minds of its consumers. Thanks to the integrity of its product line, consistently strong brand association, and the ability to change with customers' needs, L. L. Bean embodies the best qualities long associated with traditional American living: rugged individualism, stubborn determination, and simple ingenuity. Written by Leon Gorman, grandson of founder L. L., this is the first authoritative, true-to-life account of the iconic retailer and its quirky history and culture. This engaging account candidly reveals Gorman's behind-the-scenes struggles to preserve the identity that built Bean as he also opened the door to needed change. Woven throughout the narrative are themes that will resonate with managers and general readers alike: how to shape a powerhouse brand around bedrock beliefs and values, how to balance growth and tradition, and how to craft and preserve an authentic corporate identity.
Location: Pardee Stacks HD9993.C354 L1828 2006Publication Date: 2006
Restaurant Republic : the rise of public dining in Boston by
Before the 1820s, the vast majority of Americans ate only at home. As the nation began to urbanize and industrialize, home and work became increasingly divided, resulting in new forms of commercial dining. In this fascinating book, Kelly Erby explores the evolution of such eating alternatives in Boston during the nineteenth century. Why Boston? Its more modest assortment of restaurants, its less impressive--but still significant--expansion in commerce and population, and its growing diversity made it more typical of the nation's other urban centers than New York. Restaurants, clearly segmented along class, gender, race, ethnic, and other lines, helped Bostonians become more comfortable with deepening social stratification in their city and young republic even as the experience of eating out contributed to an emerging public consumer culture. Restaurant Republic sheds light on how commercial dining both reflected and helped shape growing fragmentation along lines of race, class, and gender--from the elite Tremont House, which served fashionable French cuisine, to such plebeian and ethnic venues as oyster saloons and Chinese chop suey houses. The epilogue takes us to the opening, in 1929 near Boston, of the nation's first Howard Johnson's and that restaurant's establishment as a franchise in the next decade. The result is a compelling story that continues to shape America.
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2016
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