Books are fun-damental: People & Companies

It’s been a number of years since CTE published its Literature Review section, in part because we started to receive so few announcements about printed literature as more companies transitioned to electronic media. Because I’m old-school, I find it fortunate that publishers still print books. I recently received three new ones for review.

One is “The Habit of Labor: Lessons from a Life of Struggle and Success” by Stef Wertheimer. Published by Overlook Duckworth, New York and London, the founder of Iscar recounts the significant events in his life, such as fleeing Nazi Germany in December 1936, traveling to what was then Palestine in February 1937, the growth of the cutting tool company he founded in 1952 and eventually sold to Warren Buffet, his family life, his development of industrial parks and his new Marshall Plan for industrialization of the Middle East.

As the title implies, work plays a central role in Wertheimer’s life. He recalled how, while recovering in a hospital from a life-threatening car crash, he was later told of trying to get out of bed while still in a coma, requiring the nurses to tie him down. “One time, still unconscious, I got up on my feet, with the bed tied to my back,” he wrote. “Apparently my desire to return to work and home was so strong that it gave me this power.”

After covering the cutting tool industry for more than 15 years and visiting the facilities of numerous major toolmakers, it’s hard to imagine someone starting a cutting tool company as humbly as Wertheimer did and growing it to such a prominent position in today’s market. But after reading “The Habit of Labor,” I feel an entrepreneur who has the proper balance of ambition, skills, appetite for risk and luck can do it.

Another fascinating read was “International System of Units (SI): How the World Measures Almost Everything, and the People who Made it Possible” by metalcutting consultant Dr. Edmund Isakov and published by Industrial Press Inc., South Norwalk, Conn. Originally issued as an ebook a few years ago, the book is about the metric system, which not only includes SI base units of measurements, such as meter, kilogram and second, but also SI-derived units of measurements, such as tesla for measuring magnetic flux density.