Welch, who began his GE career at GE Plastics in Pittsfield, became known as "Neutron Jack" for getting rid of people and leaving buildings standing - some of which are still decaying in the center of Pittsfield.
The myth of GE CEO and media darling Jack Welch has taken a hit in recent years and Gryta and Mann do a thorough job of debunking the myth. "Lights Out" is above all a tale of corporate hubris, of top executives whose aura of infallibility could only be maintained by law-bending accounting, the intimidation of underlings who suspected that the emperors had no clothes, and the dereliction of a board of directors that rubber-stamped the edicts of the emperors rather than challenge them. That is certainly how the top executives saw the corporation. But it's a story that will resonate with anyone who remembers the GE era, or is interested in the cautionary tale of the collapse of a company that appeared to be an impregnable fortress. The newly released book "Lights Out: Pride, Delusion and the Fall of General Electric" by Wall Street Journal reporters Thomas Gryta and Ted Mann, deals only tangentially with Pittsfield, focusing on the 16-year reign of CEO Jeff Immelt that came after GE had largely abandoned the city. The presence of GE fueled the city's glory days, but today it only makes news locally for fighting the EPA's plan to make the company clean the Housatonic River it polluted with PCBs. The decline of General Electric, once the world's largest and most renowned corporate conglomerate, hit home hard in Pittsfield and the Berkshires.
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