bA riveting, first-ever, sweeping biography of Thomas Watson, Jr. - more important to the history and development of the modern world than Vanderbilt, Morgan, Rockefeller, and Carnegie - who risked everything, personally and professionally, to reinvent IBM and launch the computer age that created the world we live in todayb p Thomas Watson Jr. drove IBM to undertake the biggest gamble in business history with a revolution no other company of the age could dare- the creation in the 1960s of the IBM System360, the world's first fully integrated and compatible mainframe computer that laid the foundation for the information technology future. Its success made IBM the most valuable company in America. Fortune magazine touted him as the greatest capitalist who ever lived. Time named him one of the One Hundred People of the Century. p Behind closed doors, Watson was a multifaceted, complicated man. As a young man, he was a failed student and playboy, an unlikely candidate for corporate titan.