Men Money And Motors

Robbins, Harold: The Betsy - A Novel, NY Trident Press 1971
ISBN: 0-671-27086-9 Fine in Fine Dust Jacket Dust Jacket Design and Photograph By Bob Nemser

First printing of Trident Press hardcover edition. 504pp. Black cloth, silver gilt spine and front cover lettering, blue/gray endpapers, blue/gray top-stain. Dust jacket price 7.95. Signed by Robbins to title page. Book and dust jacket appear in fine, tight, unread condition. No remainder markings." Harold Robbins was the single most influential novelist from late 20th century to contribute to the issues of sex and love from a male point of view which he achieves through his many fictions. He treats his powerful male protagonists, not only to a world of money, cars, unions, corporations and business, but also to their love interests. He would become one of the world's bestselling authors, publishing over 20 books which were translated into 32 languages and sold over 750 million copies." - wikipedia. Basis for the 1978 film directed by Daniel Petrie, starring Laurence Olivier, Robert Duvall, Katharine Ross, Tommy Lee Jones, Jane Alexander, Lesley-Anne Down, Joseph Wiseman, Kathleen Beller, Edward Herrmann, Paul Rudd. " Not since 'The Carpetbaggers' or 'The Adventurers' has Harold Robbins written a novel of such sweep, such compelling narrative drive. Moving across generations, it tells the turbulent history of the Hardeman family-their struggles and loves, their fears and their hates. It's the story of men who lived in a world of speed, whose momentum carried them to the peaks of power, and of the women - wives and mistresses - who rode their destinies. These men were a special breed, demanding of others far more than they ever gave. But in their relentless race to the top, they dramatically changed the tempo of the entire country, and reshaped the times in their own heroic images. The founding father was Loren Hardeman I, a contemporary of Walter Chrysler and Henry Ford. Tough, dedicated, he created a dynasty with the building of one car. His career began in a backyard bicycle repair shop. It climaxed many years later in a Detroit board room where he engaged in a life-and-death battle for control of his vast financial empire. A giant of a man, with sexual desires that equaled the size of his fortune, he took on women with the same savagery that he fought a business competitor. And because he had a will of steel and the cunning of a predator, he could never be denied. Striving in the awesome shadow of the man they called Number One, was Loren Hardeman II. Unable to match his father's prowess or to win a respect that could not be his, he bought his own kind of love at a terrible price. But Loren Hardeman III knew how to use his money and position. Though prudent in business, he had inherited his grandfather's appetite for playing it rough and dirty. He put it all on the line when Number One threw down the challenge, and fought back with Hardeman ferocity. Number One may have outlived his time but he was still willing to risk everything to recapture the vitality and thrust of his youth. And to achieve his purpose, he would go outside the family and find a protege who shared his kind of daring. Such a man was Angelo Perino. Grandson of an Italian immigrant who lived outside the law, Perino was Number One's spiritual heir. He had the same lust for women, glory and power, the same go-for-broke recklessness as the man he agreed to serve. Together they had a dream - a dream of the car of tomorrow. But pitted against them and their vision were the forces of L. H. III. Out of their conflict developed a blood war, a war between trained and well-armed adversaries, a war in which men were killed, a war whose outcome was worth hundreds of millions of dollars. And caught in the battle were the women: Sally Hardeman who was torn between her husband and the love she had for his father: Cindy who blew her mind on the sound of charged up motors: Lady Roberta Ayres who traded a noble title for the fortune of a man she did not love. In a scene that speeds from Detroit to Honolulu, from Grosse Pointe society to the gold coasts of Palm Beach and the Riviera, from the assembly lines of the Pacific Northwest to the teak-paneled sanctums of Wall Street, Harold Robbins gives us the tumultuous story of a dynasty - a dynasty of industrialists, a dynasty of willful, amoral adventurers. Framed in the most primitive and elemental terms, it's a story based on the very guts of the American human experience. It's the story of The Betsy." - dust jacket flaps. " At the beginning of 1971 Robbins's novel 'The Betsy'... remained unwritten, even though Trident hoped to publish the book in November. He knew there was only one answer: he would have to immure himself somewhere, away from the temptations of the South of France and Beverly Hills, and bash away at his typewriter until the novel was finished. At the beginning of February he locked himself in a sparsely furnished room at the Elysee Hotel in New York. He closed the blinds so he never knew whether it was day or night, tacked a chart listing the ages of his characters at various points in the narrative onto the mirror above his desk, and completed the book, sometimes at a rate of thirty-pages a day, in just four months. "If you came in anytime during that twenty-four-hour cycle, I'd either be eating, working, or sleeping", he said. "And this went on for seventeen weeks until I finished.".... "Sometimes I think. . . it's the only time I'm functional," he said of the writing process. He wrote in his typically idiosyncratic fashion, knowing the names of the characters and the subject matter of the book but little else. Initially, Loren Hardeman I (whose name gives the reader a not-so-subtle clue as to his particular physical endowments), the founder of the car dynasty, was going to play a quite minor role in the novel, but as the work progressed, the character came to dominate the narrative. "In another case there was this one scene in the book where an automobile comes of the production line - it's the thirteenth car - and a man gets into it and drives off, and the automobile blows up, " he said. "I remember looking at it after it was typed and I said, 'My God the car blew up.' Five lines before then I didn't know it was going to happen, and yet when it did happen, it was right." - Andrew Wilson, 'The Man Who Invented Sex.' Signed by Author First Edition Fine Hard Cover 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall

[SW: Fiction]

Details

Various authors: The Newcomen Society of the United States: a Collection of Their Publications, New York Newcomen Society in North America ; weicher Einband / soft cover
Very Good

Publications in the collection are as follows: The Newhall Land and Farming Company (Dickason); General Oil Company of Texas (Perryman); The Lincoln Telephone and Telegraph Company (Geist); ALLTEL Corporation (Case); Faith in Men: the Story of Armco Steel Corporation (Verity); The United States Air Force Academy (Scott); Alcoa: a Retrospective (Parry); The Menninger Foundation (Menninger);The Gulf & Western Story (Bluhdorn); Smith, Hinchman & Grylls Associates, Inc. (Meathe); The Duke Power Story (Horn); From Jalopies to Jets--Sixty Exciting Years of Growth (Grant); "U. S. News & World Report" (Lawrence); To Add to the Sum Total of Human Knowledge (Lepage); "Dayton Power & Light" (Tait);The Story of Colgate-Palmolive (Foster); Building on 75 Years of Excellence: the General Motors Story (Smith); The Liberal ARts and Reality: an Exhibit (Phillips); Kingswood-Oxford School (Lazear); A Maine Heritage: a Brief History of Union Mutual Life Insurance Company 1848-1968) (Lane); The Achievement of Excellence: the Story of Rolls-Royce (Keith); The University of Dayton (Roesch); Cliffs Notes, Inc. (Hillegass); Alabama Bancorporation (Woods); "Eighty-Nine Years of Service in the South: The Story of the Progressive Farmer Company (Cunningham); Money Isn't Everything! the Story of the E. F. Mac Donald Company (MacDonald); Phoenix Country Day School (The First Twenty Years) (Monell); The History of the Charter Company (Mason). Paper Booklets

Details

Theodore F. Macmanus: MEN, MONEY, AND MOTORS the drama of the Automobile, Harper & Brothers 1929
Very Good

very Good condition hardcover with burgundy cloth boards that have moderate wear and some soiling; 284 clean pp; No Jacket Cloth 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall

Details

Theodore F. Macmanus: MEN, MONEY, AND MOTORS the drama of the Automobile, Harper & Brothers 1930
Good

Good condition hardcover with burgundy cloth boards that have moderate wear and some soiling; small chip from the spine; slightly twisted; some spotting to the page ends; 284 clean pp; No Jacket Cloth 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall

Details