Fun and fascinating stories spanning the rise and decline of Polaroid. Made me grab my SX-70 and shoot a few! ( )

Excellent history of an amazingly innovative company that has largely faded from our collective consciousness. The reason I didn't give it a 5 star rating is that with the significant focus of the book on Edwin Land, the incredibly strong inventor and leader of the company for decades - they never discussed in depth Land's style to Steve Jobs - who was in my mind while reading the entire book. ( )

I had ro read it. Chris is one of my floor mates from University and helped me write my first resume.
Good Job Chris! ( )

You know, I liked the book, but didn't like the heavy paper it was printed on. Now that is probably the dumbest thing I've ever written in a review, but there it is.

I found the first 2/3rds of the book quite interesting. This part was about the beginnings of the Polaroid project, the difficulties and the solutions they found to "work around" them. Many known artists actually used Polaroid cameras--I had not realized, for example, that Ansell Adams was a key promoter of the media. I did not know that Polaroid made a "20x24" camera that shot film of that size! This review will take more time than a lifetime if I resort to telling you all that I do not know, so suffice it to say that I learned many fun factoids.

The last 1/3 of the book was about the demise of the company and what perhaps coulda shoulda been done to prevent it. As an example,...well, read the book and find out! ( )

Before there were Steve Jobs and Apple, there were Edwin Land and Polaroid. Land was a charismatic, inventive leader, holding over 500 patents. Land didn’t set out to reinvent photography; his first project was perfecting a synthetic polarizer. Land eventually succeeded; polarized sunglasses as we know them might not exist today without his efforts. From this humble beginning, manufacturing polarizing film for car headlights and sunglasses, Land managed to build his company into the hugely influential multi-national it became. He did this in much the same way Jobs did many years later; that is, by hiring the best minds available to him in any and all specialities, and then turning them loose in well-stocked labs to see what they could come up with. This approach worked well for a long time, but the end was inevitable. Several bad decisions and some bad blood led to Land stepping away from the company he’d built. That was the beginning of the end; Land’s sucessors did not have the same passion and ingenuity and the company changed hands several times before declaring bankruptcy twice, the second time in 2009.

While the behind-the-scenes details of Polaroid’s rise to the top and rapid fall are fascinating, this is truly Land’s story. Very few people today are aware of his contributions to technology and to business. A worthwhile read. ( )