Bookshelf.

• Author: Marshall, Jeffrey
• Position: Book review

Jeff Immelt and the New GE Way: Innovation, Transformation and Winning in the 21st Century. By David Magee. McGraw-Hill, 270 pages. $25.95. Poor Jeffrey Immelt--General Electric Co.'s chief executive officer. He has watched the bellwether stock get battered in the past few years amid a chorus from snipers that includes his revered predecessor, Jack Welch.

David Magee, however, has a very sanguine view of Immelt. While Immelt has made a few public misstatements that have roiled analysts and commentators, Magee believes that the GE chief's foresight and belief in global diversification will eventually pay off and "ignite growth in an improved market." Indeed, the book's chapter headings offer more than a whiff of approval: "Confidently Seize Opportunity," "Invest in Innovation," "Strength in Crisis" and more.

Magee waxes warm on GE and Immelt's move into the wind-power generation business, where it bought a series of distressed technologies once belonging to Enron Corp., and set about rebuilding the business. In fact, he writes, GE showed great patience and sagacity in not plunging into wind power in the 1990s, when the market and the technologies were immature. GE paid roughly $300 million for its wind business in 2003, and by 2008, revenues had grown to 20 times that.

Given "unprecedented" access to Immelt and senior managers, it's unsurprising that Magee seems sold on GE's overall strategy. He quotes Immelt liberally, and it's clear he thinks that Immelt and his team have the right stuff, no matter what the market might think at this juncture.

Magee has written previously about transformations--for automakers Toyota Motor Sales Inc. and Ford Motor Co. He clearly believes in happy (okay, happier) endings, and GE may yet deliver. Immelt has been rocked by events and impressions largely beyond his control; compared with Welch, he has been unlucky. If Magee is right, GE may regain its place in the corporate pantheon--and its triple-A rating--before Immelt rides off to retirement.

Hit the Ground Running: A Manual for New Leaders. By Jason Jennings. Portfolio, 256 pages. $25.95. What's compelling about Jason Jennings' book is that it isn't a compendium of theories about leadership. It's built around 10 chief executive officers who had created the most shareholder value in the first years of their tenures, based on a database of Fortune 1000 CEOs during the past decade.

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So what did this group do? Just, on average: double...