RETIRED MEN'S ASSOCIATION OF GREENWICH, Inc.
Invites you to its meeting, December 11, 2024, at 11 am at the First Presbyterian Church, 1 West Putnam Ave., Greenwich
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The program will also be shown on Zoom: https://bit.ly/30IBj21 |
Marc Wortman, PhD.
“The Greatest Capitalist Who Ever Lived”
‘Tom Watson Jr. and the Epic Story of How IBM Created the Digital Age’
Nearly fifty years into IBM’s existence, Thomas Watson Jr. undertook the biggest gamble in business history when he “bet the farm” on the creation of the IBM System/360, the world's first fully integrated and compatible line of mainframe computers. As CEO, Watson drove a revolution no other company—then or now—would dare and laid the foundation for the digital age that has transformed every society, corporation and government.
The story of Watson, who lived throughout his adult life in Greenwich, being “present at the creation” of the digital age is intertwined with near-Shakespearean personal drama. While he put IBM and its employees at risk, he also carried out a family-shattering battle over the future of the company with his brother Dick. This titanic struggle between brothers led to Dick’s early death and almost killed Watson Jr. himself. He was eventually touted by Fortune magazine as “the greatest capitalist who ever lived.”
Marc Wortman, PhD, is a multi-award-winning independent historian and freelance journalist. He is the author of five books on American military, technology, and social history, most recently The Greatest Capitalist Who Ever Lived: Tom Watson Jr. and the Epic Story of How IBM Created the Digital Age. The U.S. Military History Group named his previous book, Admiral Hyman Rickover: Engineer of Power (Yale University Press, 2022), winner of the 2023 Captain Richard Lukaszewicz Memorial Book Award as the outstanding military history book of the year. The book was also selected a National Review Book of the Year and received an honorable mention for the John Lyman Award in biography from the North American Society for Oceanic History.
His other books are 1941: Fighting the Shadow War, A Divided America in a World at War (Atlantic Monthly, 2016); The Bonfire: The Siege and Burning of Atlanta (PublicAffairs, 2009), and The Millionaires’ Unit: The Aristocratic Flyboys Who Fought the Great War and Invented American Air Power (PublicAffairs, 2006), basis for a multi-award-winning documentary.
Marc has written for many publications, including Vanity Fair, Smithsonian, Rolling Stone, and Time. He has appeared on CNN, NPR, C-SPAN BookTV, History Channel, CuriosityStream and other outlets. He produced the exhibit on Admiral Hyman Rickover now on display at the Submarine Force Museum in Groton, Conn.
Following college at Brown University, he received a doctorate in Comparative Literature from Princeton University. He lives with his family in New Haven.
Our next speaker, on December 18, will be Hon. Jed S. Rakoff, Senior Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, “Why the Supreme Court is the Most Conservative Branch of Our U.S. Government”.
The Greenwich Retired Men’s Association offers a free program every Wednesday that is open to the public, both men and women; no reservations are required. Our social break starts at 10:40 am followed promptly by our presentation at 11:00 am. Programs are at the First Presbyterian Church, 1 West Putnam Ave. in Greenwich. For additional information see www.greenwichrma.org.
