Mark Olshaker's 1978 biography of Edwin Land and Polaroid, written while Land still ran the company. It is the only contemporary account of Polaroid at its peak — between the SX-70 triumph (1972) and the Polavision disaster (1977) — and offers a reporter's perspective on the company during Land's own era, supplementing the insider accounts of Wensberg and the later biographical work of McElheny.
Olshaker's book is valuable for the same reason Wensberg's is: it was written while Land was still in charge, by someone who had access to the company and the culture as it operated. But where Wensberg was an insider, Olshaker was a journalist, which gives his account a different kind of access — he interviewed Land, his executives, and his competitors with an outsider's eye.
For founders, the book captures Polaroid at its zenith: the years when Land was at the height of his powers, the SX-70 had just proved that his integrated approach worked, and the company seemed unstoppable. Reading it next to the post-Polavision accounts shows how quickly a founder's standing can shift when a single product gamble fails — and how the same board that celebrated the SX-70 genius would force Land out within three years of Polavision's failure.