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Click here for info on my next book, On the Way to the Web, a June hardcover. 

Blogging Heroes now on sale: $13.49  Click here!

 
Blog update: Click here to see Richard Crossley's Mignet-Crosley Flying Flea model.
 
Click here to see a recent review of Blogging Heroes! (January 15)
Here's another review.
 
(Scroll down for upcoming appearances, review quotes, etc.)
Click here to read The Long Tail author Chris Anderson's comments on my new book,
Blogging Heroes. You can sample chapters at The Long Tail blog, Mark Frauenfelder's
BoingBoing.net, and video blogger Steve Garfield's Off on a Tangent.
My new book:                                                                              The NY Times bestseller:
  Recent Comments & Reviews  

On Blogging Heroes:

On Crosley:

Upcoming Signings and Events
Note: I am booking speaking engagements and signings from now through July,
2008.  Corporate trainers, writers' conferences, trade shows, old radio groups, and
others please click here or contact banksbook at yahoo dot com.

Past: 

  • December 16, Borders, Mason, Ohio, 2:00-4:00 PM
  • December 23, B. Dalton, Northgate Mall, 2:00-4:00 PM
  • December 23, B. Dalton, Tri-County, 5:00-7:00 PM
The Team Behind CROSLEY

Every book has a publishing team behind it. Heading the group at Clerisy Press is Richard Hunt, who willingly took on this challenging project and saw it skillfully through production and distribution. Editor Jack Heffron spent uncounted hours going over the manuscript, making corrections, checking facts, balancing input, and myriad other tasks that a good editor shoulders but for which editors are rarely credited. Steve Sullivan took the book through multiple designs and developed an exemplary cover and other elements. Howard Cohen has done and continues to do a fine job of introducing the book to the media to the book and keeping it in the public eye. For this and more, thanks!


NEW
November 2006
 
Michael A. Banks
 

Powel Crosley, Jr.
The Crosley Story
The Twentieth Century never wanted for heroes. Men larger than life strode through its decades, and their names were woven into the very fabric of history. Most of these men were builders. Henry Ford built cars. Howard Hughes built airplanes. David Sarnoff built a broadcast empire. George Steinbrenner built a major-league baseball team.
 
Powel Crosley, Jr. did all this, and more.
 
An entrepreneur with a restless spirit, Crosley was a man for whom success was never enough. Seeing his ideas and inventions succeed was not enough. Amassing a huge fortune while launching the entire broadcasting industry was not enough, nor was personal fame. So he went on to build the world's most powerful broadcasting station and bring a plethora of technological marvels to the world's consumers. Along the way he became the owner of a world-champion baseball team, the leader of his industries, and presented America with an automobile bearing his name.

What drove Powel Crosley, Jr? His earliest ambition was to become a millionaire, fueled by his once-wealthy father losing his fortune. Along with this was an unending fascination with things mechanical, which led to the desire to become an automaker. That desire was so powerful that at the age 12 Powel and his brother, Lewis, built an electric-powered motorcar. Finally, Powel Crosley, Jr. was driven by the need to prove himself to his father, who had expected his son to become an attorney and criticized young Powel's interest in mechanics.

And so, striving to do enough, produce enough, have enough, and save enough to feel secure and impress his father, Powel Crosley, Jr. built airplanes, sponsored record-setting aviators, commissioned yachts, and created fabulous estates throughout the western hemisphere. When war came, he did his part, turning his industrial empire into part of the Arsenal of Democracy and building a powerful radio station in America's heartland to combat the forces of evil overseas. Unknown until the war ended, the Crosley Corporation also turned out millions of the top-secret Proximity Fuze, cited by the War Department as second only to the atomic bomb in military importance.
 
After the war, Crosley was ready to focus everything on his life's ambition of becoming a noted automaker. Accordingly, he sold the business empire he had created from his reams, retaining only his beloved Cincinnati Reds and the Crosley automobile both relics of his childhood, like the fear that drove him.
 
And, ironically, at the point in his life when he could finally afford to fail, he did exactly that. The Crosley automobile flared like a comet in the constellation of Crosley's successes, then quietly died. It was no financial disaster for him, but the loss was personal and nearly as painful as losing his only son, namesake grandson, and two wives had been.
 
 
Powel Crosley, Jr.
Powel Crosley, Jr. was born in Cincinnati on September 16, 1886. A bright child, he was experimenting with mechanical and electrical devices before he was ten. Among other things, young Crosley built a water-powered generator which he used to power a small electric train set and lights in his grandparents' home.

In the late 1890s Crosley discovered the automobile. He was so enthusiastic about autos that, in 1898, at age twelve, he decided to build one. Powel and his younger brother, Lewis, put together a wooden wagon powered by an electric motor. (Powel borrowed eight dollars from Lewis to finance the construction.)
Click for Mini-Gallery
 

Powel Crosley, Sr. found the idea amusing. "I'll give you ten dollars if it runs," he laughingly told his son.

In 1948, Powel Crosley, Jr. described the demonstration run. "After the short test, my 'automobile' had traversed a whole block. I accepted the ten dollars, repaid Lewis his eight dollars and one dollar as his share of the profits, and gloatingly pocketed my dollar, convinced that I had embarked on a great career in the new industrial age."

The desire to build automobiles never left him. After a bit more than two years at the University of Cincinnati (studying engineering, then law), he dropped out of school, and took the first of many full-time jobs.

By mid-summer of 1907, Crosley decided that it was the time to build a real automobile. He persuaded several local men to invest in his venture, to the tune of $10,000. He leased suitable premises and set to work, giving himself a salary of $12.50 per week.

Crosley named his motor car the "Marathon Six." The "Six" referred to the car's six-cylinder engine, an important distinction at a time when the majority of American automobiles had four-cylinder engines. He landed six advance orders for the car, and all looked well until a financial panic dried up investment funds. Crosley could not raise the money to build a factory. Thus, the fledgling company went under, having barely produced one car.

How did Crosley finally get a car on the road--and what happened afterwards? How did Crosley get into the radio business? What was the source of his first fortune? Was WLW really the world's most powerful radio station? Did Crosley build miniature Jeeps during World War II? What about Crosley Aircraft? Those questions and many more are answered in CROSLEY: Two Brothers and a Business Empire that Transformed the Nation. The result of five years' work, and based on extensive primary-source research as well as and interviews with Crosley family members and others, this book tells parts of the story that have never been revealed!
 
The Crosley Story
The Twentieth Century never wanted for heroes. Men larger than life strode through its decades, and their names were woven into the very fabric of history. Most of these men were builders. Henry Ford built cars. Howard Hughes built airplanes. David Sarnoff built a broadcast empire. George Steinbrenner built a major-league baseball team.
 
Powel Crosley, Jr. did all this, and more.
 
An entrepreneur with a restless spirit, Crosley was a man for whom success was never enough. Seeing his ideas and inventions succeed was not enough. Amassing a huge fortune while launching the entire broadcasting industry was not enough, nor was personal fame. So he went on to build the world's most powerful broadcasting station and bring a plethora of technological marvels to the world's consumers. Along the way he became the owner of a world-champion baseball team, the leader of his industries, and presented America with an automobile bearing his name.

What drove Powel Crosley, Jr? His earliest ambition was to become a millionaire, fueled by his once-wealthy father losing his fortune. Along with this was an unending fascination with things mechanical, which led to the desire to become an automaker. That desire was so powerful that at the age 12 Powel and his brother, Lewis, built an electric-powered motorcar. Finally, Powel Crosley, Jr. was driven by the need to prove himself to his father, who had expected his son to become an attorney and criticized young Powel's interest in mechanics.

And so, striving to do enough, produce enough, have enough, and save enough to feel secure and impress his father, Powel Crosley, Jr. built airplanes, sponsored record-setting aviators, commissioned yachts, and created fabulous estates throughout the western hemisphere. When war came, he did his part, turning his industrial empire into part of the Arsenal of Democracy and building a powerful radio station in America's heartland to combat the forces of evil overseas. Unknown until the war ended, the Crosley Corporation also turned out millions of the top-secret Proximity Fuze, cited by the War Department as second only to the atomic bomb in military importance.
 
After the war, Crosley was ready to focus everything on his life's ambition of becoming a noted automaker. Accordingly, he sold the business empire he had created from his reams, retaining only his beloved Cincinnati Reds and the Crosley automobile both relics of his childhood, like the fear that drove him.
 
And, ironically, at the point in his life when he could finally afford to fail, he did exactly that. The Crosley automobile flared like a comet in the constellation of Crosley's successes, then quietly died. It was no financial disaster for him, but the loss was personal and nearly as painful as losing his only son, namesake grandson, and two wives had been.

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