doc_text: MADE IN AMERICA:
  MY STORY By Sam Walton Doubleday, Dollars 22.50.
  269 pages Being an American folk hero is a tricky assignment, as Ross Perot found out.
  The problem is that the great American public likes its boot-strap entrepreneurs to be very rich and very upright.
  In a country where business practices are not overly genteel, this is a tough combination to achieve.
  A vast media circus, meanwhile, is quick to expose any flaws.
  Sam Walton, founder of the Wal-Mart chain of discount supermarkets who died of cancer in April, negotiated these pitfalls much better than most.
  When, in 1985, Forbes magazine declared him America's richest entrepreneur, the paparazzi descended on the obscure corner of Arkansas, mainly occupied by chicken farmers, where Walton made his home.
  What they found was a happily married, much-liked billionaire who enjoyed quail hunting, breakfasted at the local Holiday Inn, and drove a battered pick-up truck, minus two hub-caps.
  Folksy was an understatement.
  Since then, some aspects of Wal-Mart's business - its anti-union policies, the impact of its Dollars 40bn annual sales on hundreds of Mom-and-Pop shops -have been subject to critical scrutiny.
  So, to an extent, have the less wholesome adventures of the four Walton children.
  But no one has ever been able to make Sam himself look bad.
  The worst that has been said is that he was rather dull.
  Walton is not about to dash anyone's illusions.
  Readers will either find his autobiography lashed with 'good ol' common-sense and a lot of harmless, if charming, anecdotes.
  Or they will find it dreary and downbeat.
  Walton makes no excuses: 'I realise this may sound boring to most you,' he writes at one stage, 'but one of my best items ever was a mattress pad called a Bedmate . . . .'
  A few snippets are more revealing about the character.
  There cannot be many billionaires who admit that they 'never learned handwriting too well' - and have the guts to include a photograph which demonstrates the point.
  Meanwhile, the competitive energy which Sam Walton applied to his business is inescapable.
  In one of many contributions from friends and family, Don Soderquist, Wal-Mart's chief operating officer, tells of finding Sam one Saturday morning on his hand and knees at the local Kmart store, analysing his rival's stock.
  And his wife, in a casual aside, notes that when the couple was on holiday in Italy their luggage vanished while her husband was off on a similar scouting mission.
  But it is David Glass, Wal-Mart's current chief executive, who perhaps captures the entrepreneurial Walton spirit best.
  Explaining the annual contest in which Wal-Mart executives choose one 'volume producing item' to promote, he recalls the time Sam (who usually won) selected minnow buckets for carrying bait.
  Glass was more happily teamed with apple juice. '
  So I would go down to the stores, and get them to take that minnow bucket . . .
  put ice in it, ice down the juice and give away samples out of his minnow bucket.
  I particularly did it in stores I knew (Sam) was going to visit.
  It drove him crazy, and he got off that minnow bucket pretty quick . . . .'
  But the reader can't help feeling that the cosy yarns tell only half the truth.
  Sam Walton was a salesman to the core, and seems to have packaged himself with all the skill that he once applied to selling a gooey southern sweet called Moon Pies.
  For the most part, this makes for an engaging, if one-dimensional, portrait.
  Occasionally, it just grates.
  'I had bought a bank in Bentonville, for about about Dollars 300,000,' Walton remarks, for example, 'just a little old bank with only about Dollars 3.5m in deposits.
  But it helped me learn a lot about financing things.'
  Oh, come on Sam, is that the whole story?
  The real truth, one suspects, comes right at the end of the book - when Walton admits that 'if I hadn't gotten sick, I doubt I would have written this book'.
  Given the pleadings of publishers - Doubleday paid about Dollars 4m for the manuscript - and a rather natural desire to have a final say, he can hardly be blamed for agreeing to write it.
  But these are unlikely to be circumstances which make for the most critical self-analysis.
  At the end of the day, Sam Walton's heritage is in the shopping malls, not the bookstores.
summary_text: Sam Walton died in April 1992.
  Shortly before his death he wrote about his life in a book entitled, "Made in America: My Story".
  It is the story of a happily married and well-liked man who lived frugally in an obscure corner of Arkansas.
  Readers may find the book boring and dreary.
  It is full of common sense, and charming and humorous anecdotes.
  It does not directly address his company's non-union policies, and the impact of his 40 billion dollar giant on the mom-and-pop stores in the small towns where he located his stores.