An Autobiography: Lee Iacocca Essay -- Book Reviews

1. Title: Iacocca, An Autobiography. 2. Author: Lee Iacocca with William Novak. 3. This book is an Autobiography. 4. Publisher: Bantam Books  ® 5. Copyright  © July 1986 6. Pages: 357 7. Historical Background: His name when he was born was Lido, not really Lee. He changed it when he had to go down South for a sales campaign. He thought that the Southerners would like it better if his name was Lee. It worked fairly well too. Anyway, his father was the first person to arrive in America. He arrived in 1902, at the age of 12. His father went back to his birthplace, Italy, and married Antoinette. They came back across the Atlantic. Except this time, his father, Nicola, was an American citizen. They moved to Allentown, Pennsylvania, also where Lee was born and raised. Lee (Lido, I’ll use Lee from now on though.) was born on October 15, 1924. Lee’s father was a sort of philosophical type of person. He always had an important lesson to tell his son. It usually was great advice that just about anyone and everyone could use. His father once said that ‘When times are tough, be in the food business. No matter how tough times get, people still have to eat.à ¢â‚¬â„¢ He was right. He had a hot dog food stand that stayed afloat during all of the depression. Lee was in the Allentown public schools, as a kid. He was an Italian kid in a place full of ‘Pennsylvania Dutch.’ So he was harassed by a lot of kids. He never let it get him down though. His father was always pushing him to be the best. His father was a hard worker and came from a foreign family. Back then, most parents that came from a foreign country always seemed to push their kids to do their best so they can have a better life style than their parents. Lee ended up going to Lehigh for college. He did very well for himself. Before he went to college though, he enlisted in the army. It was around World War II when he did so, of course. But because he had Rheumatic fever when he was a kid , he couldn’t go and fight. The doctors said it was gone. The army said it could come back though. So they rejected his application. He went to Lehigh instead. Ford always took the top student out of the top fifty colleges back then, for a study at Ford. They would get to work at Ford doing just about everything you could do. Lee was one of them invited. He enrolled at Princeton after that. He graduated with a degree in engi... ...no matter what. He thought that spending time with family was far more important than anything else. It’s a good thing to have values like that. He’s an honest hard working man that deserved all the good things he got. He didn’t fold when it looked hopeless at Chrysler, he did everything he could to keep the company alive, and now it’s having more success than it ever has in it’s history of existence. This is a very good book, and I recommend that everyone read this one. It’s got a lot of interesting stuff and advice in it. It also gives great insight into the auto manufacturing business. There are a lot of stereotype’s out there that say a car company tried to kill them. But really, all of the guys that make the cars are driving them themselves. They don’t purposely make bad cars, they drive them and so do their kids, and I don’t think all of them are suicidal maniacs either. I think most of them are sane people. I s ay one thing we need less of in America is blood sucking lawyers. They’re just greedy people that we could do without some of them. I learned that in order to succeed, you must not give up easily. You can’t give up on your dreams until you have put your all into it.