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Title: Swimming Across: A Memoir by Andrew S. Grove ISBN: 0-446-67970-4 Publisher: Warner Books Pub. Date: November, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.42 (26 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Life under communism as preparation for corporate success
Comment: Andrew Grove was a founder of Intel Corporation and is the company's CEO today. His memoir tells the story of his childhood and early college years in Hungary. Grove survived World War II and emigrated to the United States following the Revolution.
Andrew's parents seem remarkably strong. His family enjoyed a comfortable life as owners of a dairy business. His father survived, improbably, a stint in a prison camp during World War II and later saw the business dissolve into state ownership. His mother's spirit kept him alive during the War.
Both parents worked hard but gave Andrew what we would call "quality time." Even when money was tight, he had English and music lessons.
After reading so many stories of growing-up-in-wartime-Europe, I was surprised to find myself drawn into the story. I wanted to keep reading and actually wish the book had continued into Andrew's early years.
What works is Grove's straightforward, matter-of-fact style. He conveys a sense of, "I did what had to be done," with no time wasted on emotional fallout. As a result, his story can seem cold.
For instance, when escaping from the Austrian countryside to Vienna, Grove and his boyhood friend decide to leave early to avoid "procedures" of the local gendarmes. They do not awaken the two girls who traveled with them from Hungary, and these girls are never mentioned again. Indeed, the only women Grove mentions are his mother, his occasional dates and -- in two sentences -- his wife and daughters.
Apart from the compelling narrative, Grove's book shows how qualities of a future CEO emerge in childhood. Grove continually sought to learn and grow. At one point he even signed up for singing lessons. He had a clear sense of what he wanted and seemed to take for granted his success in school, particularly his talent for chemistry. Ironically, surviving in a Communist society turned out to be excellent preparation for capitalist corporate life. Both, for example, punish those who speak too freely.
Grove's teachers predicted his success. The book's title comes from a teacher's prediction that Grove would "swim across" the river out of Hungary to success. Grove did swim across, and eventually he was able to fly.
Rating: 4
Summary: Intel Chairman Andrew Grove Reminds Us of Our Roots
Comment: ...Intel Chairman Andrew Grove Reminds Us of Our Roots
It is a rare book by a corporate CEO that isn't either a trumpet blasting his visionary insight and strategic brilliance or a dramatic and mawkish retelling of his climb to the top from unimaginably humble origins. Swimming Across: A Memoir - Andrew Grove's simple, elegant recounting of the first 20 years of his life - is that rare exception.
Grove, one of the founders of Intel and still its chairman, was born Andras Grof in Hungary in 1936, the only child of parents who were in the dairy business. We tend to forget that prior to 1945 there was no Iron Curtain, and countries we think of now as post-Communist had vital histories of their own before the Soviet Union stitched together its empire following World War II.
Grove recounts a happy childhood in Budapest, the country's largest and most cosmopolitan city. The specter of war loomed large in Europe in the late 1930s, but Grove was too young to be aware of its darker aspects. His family was Jewish and even as a young child he knew that many Jews were forced to live separately in ghettos. But to the young Grove and his playmates, this reality was simply material for another schoolyard game, much to the horror of their kindergarten teacher.
Grove's early years, before the full force of the war descended upon Europe, were comfortably middle class. Budapest was actually two distinct communities, the wealthier Buda on one side of the Danube River and the more commercial Pest on the other side. Grove's family moved to Pest in 1938 when his father expanded the dairy business.
In 1942, Grove's father was drafted into the Hungarian army. He and other Jewish conscripts were sent to the Russian front not as regular soldiers, but rather as part of a support team sent ahead to clear roadways and build camps, fortifications and other facilities. In 1943, Grove and his mother learned that his father "had disappeared at the front." The Hungarian army was unable to provide the family with any additional information regarding his father for the balance of the war. While his mother never gave up hope, Grove, who had been six at the time of the draft, had a more difficult time holding onto memories of his absent parent.
In one of the book's most moving moments, Grove tells us of the doorbell ringing in their apartment one day in the fall of 1945. His mother opened the door and found "an emaciated man, filthy and in a ragged soldier's uniform standing at the open door." As his mother embraced the man, Grove thought, "this must be my father."
Scenes like this, however poignant, are the book's chief disappointment. The writing is bland and devoid of emotion. Grove describes everyday life in the middle of a war zone and under the tightening noose of communism and even tells of his mother's rape by Russian soldiers, but all in prose that is more redolent of a corporate brief than an evocative memoir.
The meatiest part of the book can be found in Grove's recounting of life in Hungary in the middle 1950s. We see a country that was being slowly strangled by the politburo in Moscow. In 1956, Grove, who had found his passion for chemistry, was looking forward to starting his second year at the university. He was already part of a small class of individuals destined for leadership within Hungary. But in October 1956, Russian troops and tanks rolled into Budapest and clamped down on what had been an incipient, but weak, effort to throw off the Soviet chains.
We can imagine the agony Grove felt at watching his country being overrun by soldiers intent on enforcing a police state. He knew that many of his friends were in fact fleeing Hungary; Grove's parents urged him to get out before the borders were sealed. He and two friends made the difficult decision to leave, undertaking a journey to Austria and eventually to America that is the stuff of movies.
Grove found his way to this country through the combined efforts of numerous relief and charitable organizations. Relatives in New York City took him in and helped him adapt to his new life. Grove entered City College of New York and graduated in 1960 with an undergraduate degree in chemical engineering followed in 1963 by a PhD from the University of California at Berkeley. The rest, as they say, is history. Grove ends this memoir with his move to California.
In an interview in Esquire magazine in 2000, Grove spoke about his life as an immigrant in this country. In an era when many would have the U.S. close its borders and eject every "foreigner," Grove's presence and success is a reminder that the U.S. has been the place for those seeking a better life for almost 400 years. "It is a very important truism that immigrants and immigration are what made America what it is," Grove writes. "We must be vigilant as a nation to have a tolerance for differences, a tolerance for new people."...
Rating: 3
Summary: Read this book or the content, not for literary strength
Comment: I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Grove some time back. He's an intelligent man, with a powerful persona and strong sense of character.
I was surprised then, when I picked up the text. Swimming Across did not meet my expectations from a literary perspective. The presentation is very simply written and seems to be directed at an individual with a 6th or 7th grade reading level. I nearly put the book down and opted for another as a result.
The story however, is compelling. Mr. Grof and his family found a way to survive, compete, and eventually excel despite very long odds in Nazi and Communist dominated Hungary.
Read this story for its content (it is stirring). Read this to understand the character development of a leader. It is likely that your respect for the individual (like mine) will have grown.
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Title: Only the Paranoid Survive : How to Exploit the Crisis Points That Challenge Every Company by Andrew S. Grove ISBN: 0385483821 Publisher: Doubleday Pub. Date: 16 March, 1999 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: High Output Management by Andrew S. Grove ISBN: 0679762884 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 29 August, 1995 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Inside Intel: Andy Grove and the Rise of the World's Most Powerful Chip Company by Tim Jackson ISBN: 052594141X Publisher: E P Dutton Pub. Date: October, 1997 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Strategy Is Destiny: How Strategy-Making Shapes a Company's Future by Robert Burgelman, Andrew S. Grove ISBN: 0684855542 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 15 December, 2001 List Price(USD): $32.50 |
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Title: One-On-One With Andy Grove: How to Manage Your Boss, Yourself, and Your Co-Workers by Andrew S. Grove ISBN: 0399132503 Publisher: Putnam Pub Group Pub. Date: June, 1987 List Price(USD): $47.00 |
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