Books, Arts & Manners: Sweating the Details

The Reckoning, by David Halberstam (Morrow, 7-28 pp., $19.95)

As Hal Sperlich rested in his Grosse Pointe home with visions of fuel efficiency pounding in his head, he could not have known that the product of four thousand years of Asian culture was about to come barreling forth from the East, shattering the casual complacency of pampered American psyches, smashing the hollow confidence of Western ethnocentrists, shackling the American worker in a union-made straitjacket of humiliation, degradation, and ruin. He could not have known that the front-wheel-drive mechanism, the very idea he had unsuccessfully pitched to the Ford Motor Company establishment that morning, would alter the eternal destiny of all mankind.

DB

About the Author

David Brooks

Featured Tags

The Reckoning, by David Halberstam (Morrow, 7-28 pp., $19.95)

As Hal Sperlich rested in his Grosse Pointe home with visions of fuel efficiency pounding in his head, he could not have known that the product of four thousand years of Asian culture was about to come barreling forth from the East, shattering the casual complacency of pampered American psyches, smashing the hollow confidence of Western ethnocentrists, shackling the American worker in a union-made straitjacket of humiliation, degradation, and ruin. He could not have known that the front-wheel-drive mechanism, the very idea he had unsuccessfully pitched to the Ford Motor Company establishment that morning, would alter the eternal destiny of all mankind.