On December 17, 2010, Mohamed Bouazizi, a Tunisian stallholder driven to despair by poverty, hopelessness, and police brutality, set himself on fire. He died less than one month later. Ten days after his death, demonstrations provoked by his act brought down the Tunisian government. Just under a month later, protestors overthrew the Egyptian government. The revolt spread to Bahrain, Syria, Yemen, and Libya, where in August 2011, Colonel Gaddafi’s 42-year reign came to a violent end.
When Geoffrey West arrived in the United States from England at the end of 1961, one corporation seemed to embody American dynamism and expertise: General Motors. “That was when I first heard the phrase ‘what’s good for GM is good for the country,’ ” he recalls. And now GM is recovering from a near-death experience, saved only by the U.S. government’s $50 billion in survival aid.
