The Corporation Study Guide

Black, Edwin. IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America’s Most Powerful Corporation. New York: Crown Publishers, 2001.

This book examines the role of New York based IBM in “managing” the transport and extermination of millions of Jews during the Holocaust by providing essential technology to Hitler. This book provides a more detailed account than that found in The Corporation, and will be helpful for those seeking a broader understanding of the role of American corporations in World War II.

Brown, Bruce. “The History of the Corporation” BF Communications, Inc. 2003. www.astonisher.com/archives/corporation_intro.html

Contains the text of this recent book on the origins of the corporation and its association with middle age Christianity. Provides an extensive account of the origin of the modern corporation with a discussion of its origin as early as 529AD.

Micklethwait, John. “The Company: A Short History of a Revolutionary Idea.” New York: Modern Library, 2003.

The editors of The Economist examine the history of the corporation “from Assyrian partnership agreements through the 16th- and 17th-century European ‘charter companies’ that opened trade with distant parts of the world, to today's multinationals.” A perspective very much in contrast with that of the makers of The Corporation, Micklethwait argues “that for all the change companies have engendered over time, their force has been for an aggregate good.”

Roy, William G. “Socializing Capital: The Rise of the Large Industrial Corporations in America.” Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997.

This book examines the rise of the publicly traded corporation and its link with American history. The author is deeply critical of ‘efficiency theorists’ and their argument that corporations succeed because of their capacity to continually increase their operational efficiency, and proposes instead that their success was more a result of the ability of business leaders to influence politics throughout the history of American development. Can initiate discussion about the connection between the American history and the development of the corporation as portrayed in The Corporation.

Nace, Ted. Gangs of America: The Rise of Corporate Power and the Disabling of Democracy. New York: Berrett-Koehler, 2003.

This text focuses on key events in the internal development of the corporation, such as the process of incorporation, patenting, legal changes and evolving structures of corporate governance. For those students of history interested in this changing institution.

Zinn, Howard. A People’s History of the United States: 1492-Present. New York: Perennial Classics, 2003.

This classic text is written from the perspective of the often excluded groups of blacks, women, American Indians, and workers. Provides a reading of American history which questions narratives of national unity and progress. Complements The Corporation through examination of the role of economic institutions in U.S. history.

Trachtenberg, Alan. The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in the Gilded Age. New York: Hill and Wang, 1982.

This interdisciplinary work explores the expansion of American capitalism through such developments as the continuing expansion to the west, the mechanization of industry, the emergence of the middle class, the influence of unions, and their effect on American culture and society in the second half of the nineteenth century. A key period in the early development of the corporation as touched on briefly by the documentary.

The Center for Corporate Policy
The Center for Corporate Policy is a non-profit, non-partisan public interest organization. This site contains information especially useful for discussion of history and legal policy.

Fourteenth Amendment
This link connects the text of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution, which can be used to examine the development of the legal status of the corporation as a “Person.”

Mokyr, Joel. The British Industrial Revolution: An Economic Perspective. Boulder Colorado: Westview Press, 1999.
A link to the text of the Editors Introduction to “The New Economic History and the Industrial Revolution,” including a section titled “The Factory and the Modern Industrial Firm.” This text can be read in connection with the portrayal of the emergence of the corporation in the context of the Industrial Revolution as described in The Corporation and provide a springboard for a discussion of the influence of the Industrial Revolution and the role of corporations in it.

The New American Studies Website: History and Historical Culture Studies
Dedicated to American Studies, this site contains numerous links to key aspects of this discipline and to American history. Can be used to assist students in gaining an overview of key historical developments as they correspond to the rise of corporations to a place of political dominance.

A Hypertext on American History from the colonial period until Modern Times
Contains links to various articles and speeches throughout American history on a wide variety of issues relevant to the parallels between American history and the development of the corporation.

Third World Traveler
THIRD WORLD TRAVELER puts up magazine articles and book excerpts that offer an alternative view to the corporate media about the state of democracy in America, and about the impact of the policies of the United States' government, transnational corporations, international trade and financial institutions, and the corporate media, on war and peace, democracy, free speech, social and economic justice, and human rights, in the Third World, and in the United States.

World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD)
WBCSD is a coalition of 170 corporations interested in sustainable development through economic growth, ecological balance and social progress. This Web site can be used to assess and compare practices highlighted in The Corporation.

Bleifuss, Joel. “Know Thine Enemy: A Brief History of Corporations” These Times Magazine, February, 1998.
Links an article that focuses on the role of corporations in the political and social formation of the US, arguing that American revolutionaries “fought for independence not only from the Crown, but from the corporate bodies it had chartered,” that the Boston Tea Party was as much against taxation without representation as against the influence of foreign corporations. It can be used to connect with the early stages of the development of the modern corporation as presented in The Corporation.