The Fire Within

by Henry M. Rowan, John Calhoun Smith

When industrialist Henry M. Rowan endowed small New Jersey college with $100 million in 1992, he became international news overnight.

Rowan's record breaking gift was just the latest in a lifelong series of personal and professional challenges that led him to create a worldwide industrial giant, Inductotherm Industries, Inc.

The Fire Within is the extraordinary story of Rowans's life and the company he started at his kitchen table in 1953. A quintessential saga of self-made American success, it's about a young engineer who sold his house and risked his future to stake his claim in an industry at the heart of America's manufacturing prowess.

408 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1995

Reviews

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

This biography of industrialist Henry Rowan is, as expected, a detailed examination of his development of the corporation Inductotherm with occasional references to the rest of his family. The book is fairly technical, going into the innovations of his company in the inductive heating industry, although it is also humbling, as he admits his mistakes and deals with a variety of challenges.

He is a man who has big dreams and doesn't back down from a challenge, such as making an unprecedented donation to a public university, and his desire to leave the world in a better state through innovation and self-discipline is admirable.