Joseph Chamberlain (1836-1914) was the first industrialist to reach the highest sphere of British politics. Notably successful as a young man in Birmingham's metal-manufacturing industry, he tackled politics as business--venture by venture, innovative in organization as well as product, alert to the importance of accounting and marketing. Aggressive and direct in both personality and principle, he was loyal to enterprise rather than to party. He never became prime minister, yet by the beginning of the twentieth century he was by general consent "the first minister of the British...