Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace by Nikil Saval
White-collar jobs were originally confined to proprietors that may have a clerk helping out. This began to change during the industrial revolution. Giant organizations and economies of scale led to many of these white collar workers becoming employees. Now employee is the norm, rather than entrepreneur. These workers see themselves as being closer to the management than to the blue collar workers. They identify with the middle class and are generally not unionized. This is an interesting exploration of how office work has changed over time.
I've thought of Stan Lee as the person always willing to take credit for other people's work. This book doesn't dispel that. However, it does show that the business side really is what matters. They were the ones that have made a killing. There have been many people that have contributed to the various characters in the marvel universe. Very few received anything more than small payments for their work. However, they helped contribute to the overall value of the product. The value would have been less if each character had an individual owner. Also, without the correct moves on the business side, the value would have disappeared. (The many poor moves made by the business nearly did evaporate the value.)