As the title indicates, Charles Hyde's history of the Chrysler Corporation takes the reader on a historical journey marked by exhilarating climbs, severe descents, and disorienting changes of direction. The meticulous scholarship never gets in the way of a good story, one that shows how the business cycle, changing consumer tastes, governmental regulations, and management decisions impelled the wild ride taken by America's third largest automobile firm.

Charles Hyde has written the first authoritative and complete scholarly history of the Chrysler Corporation. This cogent and insightful work details the company's antecedent business roots in early automobile ventures and traces Chrysler's activities through economic cycles, war production, postwar struggles and successes, and finally its merger with Daimler-Benz. A rich business history made more colorful by the self-styled leadership of Walter Chrysler and Lee Iacocca.

Charles Hyde's book, Riding the Roller Coaster, is a welcome addition to anyone's library of automotive history. This detailed examination of how an eminent 20th century corporation went about its business ranges from the origins of Chrysler (and even its predecessor firms) right up to the modern times of DaimlerChrysler. This volume will serve as a standard reference on the history of an American auto maker, its successes and its failures.

With exquisite scholarship and a deft pen, Charles Hyde tells the story [of the history of Chrysler].

Carefully documented, well written and full of detail, history professor Charles Hyde brings facts and figures together into the often astonishing story of Chrysler, right up to the merger with Daimler in 1998. The 385-page hardbound book includes 60 carefully chosen black-and-white pictures.