Starting in the late nineteenth century, the corporation took over the country's economic landscape as well as, according to Thomas J. Dorich, most aspects of American life. For a time, this was a source of enormous social, economic, and political conflict, but eventually big business won the day. Government justified an uneasy peace through regulatory oversight that tamed corporate excesses but also created a political-economic landscape that favored massive corporations over small businesses. American citizens became consumers, with desires only corporate America could meet. Government even began to look like business, and the public still lists business experience as one their most desired traits in elected officials.

Dorich's Big Business in America: The Corporate Century, 1900–2000 is a look at how twentieth-century big business remade America—and possibly the world—in its image. The book is essentially a survey of twentieth-century business history from the perspective of an organizational synthesis diehard. Chapter 1, on the origins of the modern corporation, and the book's “interlude” on the organizational synthesis are two of the clearest statements of those topics I have found anywhere. But more broadly, Dorich argues that big business was “a social institution and a vital force to integrate social, economic, and cultural aspects of American society” (p. 15). Just as the idea of the frontier was a lodestar for nineteenth-century America, big business has given twentieth-century Americans a way of ordering their social, political, and economic universe. Beyond the simple economic power of the modern corporation, American identity is now a reflection of the pervasiveness of corporate employment and the struggles of the “organization man.” At times, this perspective comes at the expense of the vitally important contextual factors of race, class, and gender, but overall Dorich paints an impressive picture of the far-reaching effects of business and corporate culture.

One of the key themes of the book is the relationship between business and government, which he refers to colorfully as the “dance of titans.” Dorich argues that government and business expanded together in an “evolutionary process of institutional interdependence and interlock” (p. 199). He presents many examples, but the key moments in this evolutionary process were World War I and World War II, in which private and public spheres coordinated for joint aims. This was a successful but not harmonious relationship. Dorich shows not only that these institutions relied on each other but that they were in tension. He notes a “countervailing relationship . . . a negative, antagonistic, or distrustful one. Essentially, the two institutions were congenitally at odds with each other and the normal interactive atmosphere wasn't friendly” (p. 200). Big business and big government worked together, but there were resentments, and that dynamic explains much about the United States.

While Dorich does an admirable job of tracing this story, his account of the causes of this dynamic is not as persuasive. He states in no uncertain terms that “big business caused big government” (p. 199). Business is the driver in this story. Both its needs and its institutional form inspired the modern state. Yet there is a growing body of work suggesting the opposite. Mark R. Wilson's work, for example, first on business in the American Civil War and then on business and government in World War II, suggests that government wartime needs drove the emergence of big business, which derived its institutional structure from earlier state models. Despite this disagreement, what is striking is that both authors identify war as a key driver of the development of business, government, and their uneasy relationship.

At times, Dorich's treatment of big business is a bit like the phrase “big business” itself, admirably capacious but a bit lacking in specificity. Big business here is really any significant American business in the twentieth century, but mostly Dorich discusses the multidivisional hierarchical corporation that emerged in the late nineteenth century. While this form remains dominant, and Dorich is exactly right about the power of big business, the corporate form evolved tremendously over the twentieth century. Dorich's account would have been richer had it more directly addressed the rise of management consulting (I am thinking here of Christopher D. McKenna's work) or outsourcing and leaner forms of corporate organization (thinking now of Bart Elmore's work on Coca Cola).

Overall, though, this book is a fantastic one-volume survey of twentieth-century U.S. business history. With the organizational synthesis as a through line, the account is clear and digestible. I plan to assign chapters to my business history classes. I learned a lot too, and while I disagree with some of the book's conclusions, Dorich has distilled and explained a vast literature. Anyone who wants to understand the history of big business, and where it might go next, should read Dorich's book.