Walter A. Friedman
Lecturer of Business Administration
Director, Business History Initiative
Walter A. Friedman is Director of the Business History Initiative. He also edits Business History Review and is a Research Fellow. He specializes in business, labor, and economic history. His book, Birth of a Salesman: The Transformation of Selling in America (Harvard, 2004), traced the history of selling from the days of peddlers and traveling drummers to the development of modern, professional sales forces. He is currently writing a history of economic forecasting agencies in the United States. He was formerly a Newcomen Post-Doctoral Fellow in Business History and a Trustee of the Business History Conference.
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Birth of a Salesman: The Transformation of Selling in America
written by Walter Friedman, Harvard University Press
Walter Friedman chronicles the remarkable metamorphosis of the American salesman from itinerant amateur to trained expert.
From the mid-nineteenth century to the eve of World War II, the development of sales management transformed an economy populated by peddlers and canvassers to one driven by professional salesmen and executives.