No comments about The Viewpoints of Stanley Marcus: A Ten-Year Perspective.

5 comments about Masters of the Universe: Winning Strategies of America's Greatest Dealmakers.

1. I like books that summarize outstanding businessmen. Sometimes I learn something. Sometimes I'm just entertained. This book does not contain massive new information but it entertained me and I learned something. While I recommend the book, it is not in the top 10 business books I have read.



2. I must admit to being utterly disappointed with this book. So much so, that I skipped most of it and ultimately decided it to be a waste of time. Spelling errors, repetitive language and uninteresting commentary seem to be a consistent theme in this book. I would neither recommend its purchase, nor borrowing it from a friend. Don't waste your time.



3. As a business writer, I fruitfully used this book as the barest presentation of the facts before going to do a heavy reporting project. However, had I not spent some time with one of the protagonists in this book and then a great deal more with his associates, I would never have clearly understood what they actually do and how they work. As it stands, this book offers a quick and dirty intro to the biggest dealmakers of their time. While some background and explanations are offered, it leaves out the gritty details and true complexity of what goes on in these huge and often risky deals. That disappointed me about this book more and more as I delved into my work.

   Kadlec also adopts a kind of chummy tone with these guys, like they are bar pals as well as subjects for his work, and so you wonder what he may have left out to protect his professional relationships. He barely questions what they do and never really broaches the questions of ethics, as if such considerations don't exist; well, they do, and the people I spoke to were informed and concerned about ethics.

   So this is merely a superficial trade-journalistic treatment. While this has merit, it is rather more like a vanilla milkshake than the full meal I had hoped for. I wanted deeper info, but then I was preparing to enter on a several-month project about a field I knew little about when I started.

   The writing is also not very good, and lengthy interviews are included verbatim, which is a shoddy way to beef up the text to little purpose.

   Not strongly recommended.




4. Masters of the Universe is a very good airplane/bedroom compilation. It's really a history of the "great" business innovators and shakers during the late 19th and 20th century. Each "mover" is 10-12 pages long. If you like history and business, this should be very educational.



5. This book does a great job showing how an assortment of business people from different industries became successful in their careers. The most important lesson to learn from this book is that many of these business people came from a similar background to your own and you too could have the success they did. This book does not give a large amount of detail as to how each businessperson became successful, but it still gives an excellent high-level view.

1 comments about Shades of Black: Conrad Black - His Rise and Fall.

1. Mr. Siklos' biography, for those who want to get the measure of Conrad Black, is close to definitive. He not only corrects minor inaccuracies in Peter Newman's THE ESTABLISHMENT MAN, but he also extends the story right up to the 2004 ouster.
   
   As you read through it, you'll see certain parallels in Black's life emerging. Conrad Black was the younger son of a businessman who retired early, at a time when retirement at forty-eight was considered odd. As a child, Conrad had a capacious memory, honed into perfection by his father's training of him. He was mentored by Bud MacDougald, the top boss of a dividend company named Argus. It was there that Conrad Black hit upon the idea of accumulating cash flow to use for takeovers, and where he developed an inclination for asset shuffles and corporate reorganizations. Previous to Black being ushered into the Argus world, he and his long-time partner, David Radler, had built up a chain of newspapers, Sterling, almost from the ground up. The secret behind their success was, essentially, cost-cutting. Black had found some notoriety as well as fame from his writings, but it was his takeover of Argus, a true coup, that brought him fame as a businessperson in 1978. Notoreity followed fame when two of the companies controlled by Argus began to founder; he also encountered some legal trouble in the early 1980s.
   
   Conrad Black does have a law degree, and is comfortable following precedent or custom, but is also comfortable with grey areas in the law, and in pushing the envelope of custom or tradition. (An example of this last trait would be his supplementation of Mr. MacDougald's strategy, of using the accumulated surpluses in Argus plus some borrowed money to acquire more shares of companies he thought were undervalued, by borrowing copiously instead of sparingly.) These traits are evident throughout Mr. Siklos' book. Those who want to get the measure of Conrad Black would do well to pay close attention to part 1 of the book, as it describes Black's return to the station of a newspaper proprietor after learning much about financing and asset management at Argus, later folded into Hollinger Inc.
   
   I read the original version when it first came out, and can vouch for the claim that it is "expanded and updated." If you're interested in Conrad Black, you may wind up reading this book a few times, not only once.

5 comments about John D. MacArthur: A View from the Bar (A Memoir).

1. Very disappointing. Costs much more than the book is worth. It is 149 pages of large print and many pictures. There is too much about the author's life and not enough about Mr. MacArthur.

   The section about MacArthur's rise to wealth adds nothing to an earlier book about MacArthur called "The Stockholder". The information in both books is sketchy and incomplete.

   There is almost nothing about MacArthur's wives or children.

   I think that the information about MacArthur's cause of death is incorrect. The author cites pancreatic cancer but I think it was lung cancer which killed MacArthur.

   No one to-date has written a thorough biography of the life of this fascinating man.




2. This is NOT a biography of "Mr. Mac" but a glimpse of a way of life of a powerful man. I've read much of the background material that the author, Bob Sanford used to create his memoir and it is totally accurate. Since I am a new-comer to Palm Beach Gardens it was great to read something about how this "garden" was created. Since I own the bookstore (the Book Rack) where Bob had his first book signing, I have a special interest and pride in that book. It is obvious that Bob admired John D MacArthur, and so the stories about this billionaire are (for the most part) flattering and entertaining.



3. I loved this book. I had often wondered about John D. MacArthur when I read of the MacArthur Foundations' remarkably generous "genius" awards in newspapers. Here was a glimpse of him that might never have been recorded had it not been for Mr. Sanford. The photos are remarkable, I suspect, since I imagine that only Mr. Sanford could have obtained them. What's more, it's an absolutely fun book to read, since it obviously captures the "inside story". Thanks, Mr. Sanford for this well-written and informative book.



4. Bob Sanford's entertaining, biographical, memoir, let's the reader in on what it was like to be up close and personal with the late billionaire John D. MacArthur. This is to date the only book written by someone who actually knew him. This printing contains an extensive chronology of this fancinating mans life. I know, because I was there, I worked for "Mr. Mac", and I lived at the Colonnades Hotel. Two thumbs up on your great book Mr. Sanford!!!



5. This is a well written book. It's lively and interesting. But before you buy it, you should know that it's not really a biography of John D MacArthur in the traditional sense. It's the story of Bob Sanford who worked at MacArthur's hotel as the beverage/bar manager. Sanford does tell a lot of stories about his own experiences with MacArthur (for example the book begins with Sanford being interviewed by MacArthur for a position at the hotel), but most of the book is limited to Sanford's firsthand experiences. And from that perspective the book is interesting (as a collection of experiences that a working man has with one of the wealthiest men in the world), but this is not a biography in the traditional sense. I just wanted to add that to the book's description.

4 comments about A Traitor to His Class: Robert A.G. Monks and the Battle to Change Corporate America.

1. A Traitor to His Class, Robert A.G. Monks and the Battle to Change Corporate America, John Wiley & Sons, Inc. by Hilary Rosenberg

   Consider a book about a large man who built a small fortune in order to carry out a big idea. This biographical work extends the lessons of Robert Monks' previous books, Power and Accountability (1993) and Corporate Governancej (1995), about the need for reform of American corporate governance and together they constitute the best source for the intellectual origins and history of that movement, a subject (now after twenty years) part of every business school syllabus.

   To those who know him, Mr. Monks is a large man, not just in physical power but in the energy of his mind and vision. It must have taken more than rowing in the Harvard and Cambridge eights to generate the qualities needed to put his ideas on the national agenda. The words relentless, persistent, methodical, demanding, resilient, self-questioning, optimistic, risk-taking occur to many of his allies and opponents in the struggle. Experience counts, too. Along the way Mr. Monks is observed in various roles: lawyer, real estate businessman, CEO, venture capitalist, fund manager, director, politician (unsuccessful) and public servant. The battle plan appears to be to surround the problem and attack from every angle. Not every engagement is a victory. Time and again he bounces back.

   There are plenty of numbers in the book for the specialist reader. You learn about how to take over a company without putting up any money, rather as a chef uses egg whites to conjure up a soufflé. The essence of the problem is that there are 800,000 pension funds governed by the Department of Labor's ERISA program. They own publicly traded shares to a value of $1.25 trillion or 25% of the U.S. equity market. The power of their ownership, until Mr. Monks and a few others came along, was unrepresented and therefore ignored by American corporations. Left unsaid is that the financial press must have been asleep for a few generations, accepting press handouts from corporations rather than responsibility to report on corporate America.

   When you think about it, the idea is a big one. It dawned as an epiphany on Mr. Monks in 1977 when he chanced upon a proxy form of a large paper company which he knew to be polluting a river in Maine with its discharge. Why are corporations not accountable to their shareholding owners, what are the requirements of corporate governance? He becomes the Pensions Administrator at the Department of Labor where he is able to change some rules of the game. He goads major pension funds into recognizing their power and responsibility. He establishes the leading company in the field of proxy management. All the time he is amassing information, advocating his cause in any and every forum, writing the text book, girding for war.

   Chance favors the prepared mind, said Louis Pasteur. Mr. Monks was ready to take the battle to corporate America. Sears, Westinghouse, American Express, Eastman Kodak, Stone and Webster and other poorly managed, undervalued companies became the targets. The names have a ring to them, like the names of Napoleon's battles. Mr. Monks called for better financial management, strategic planning and corporate governance. He asked for confidential shareholder voting, the addition of independent directors, the elimination of staggered boards, accountability to shareholders and (usually) the spin off of unprofitable businesses. The aim was to create greater value for shareholding owners through better management. The CEO's and the boardrooms didn't like it. Many of them slammed the door in Mr. Monks' face or kept him waiting for hours as a deliberate insult. Most of them could not survive. It was left for their successors to follow Mr. Monks' recommendations and watch the value of their shares rise. A good feature of the book is that the opposing CEOs were given a chance to have their say. Some of them preferred to keep quiet.

   Mr. Monks is better off for it, and so are we. But most of all this book is a tribute to the power of an idea and what it takes to make it work.

   George Herrick




2. A minister's son takes on the corporate establishment in this illuminating and exciting story of business, politics, and the power of ideas. Robert Monks says, "I've got this beautiful place, a beautiful wife, more than anyone can ask for. What else should I do with my time but think about big important issues?" He does much more than think -- as he also says, "You were not put on earth to be a spectator." His thoughts about big, important issues like corporate governance and accountability have transformed the behavior of every corporate director, every CEO, and every institutional investor in America. His adventures in breaking up Sears, replacing eight directors and three CEOs at Stone & Webster, and running in a roller coaster senatorial campaign read like a Tom Wolfe novel. Monks confronts CEOs (even picking one up and threatening to throw him through a window), takes out a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal calling the Sears board "non-performing assets," and runs as an opposition candidate for one seat on the board of Sears. The lively and perceptive writing matches the lively and engaging subject. Must reading for anyone in the corporate world as a manager, director, or shareholder.



3. Hilary Rosenberg has successfully woven together an engaging biography of a fascinating figure in the corporate world, an intriguing tale of the machinations of big business and government and a necessary primer for corporate shareholders, board members and officers on what rights, responsibilities and duties each has and should expect from the other. Ms. Rosenberg's writing style not only keeps the pages turning for the uninitiated reader but her excellent documentation throughout the volume allows the serious student to use this book as a reference source. A great read for all and a must read for every corporate shareholder, officer and board member.



4. Robert Monks is a kind of a modern day "Don Quijote", battling single handed against corporate dirty tricks. This book tells the very interesting story of how the modern corporate governance movement got under way. A very important read.

5 comments about Longaberger: An American Success Story.

1. This is such a great book. If owners and managers of companies had the same knowledge that Dave had with no college education, there would be a lot more people with better morale in the workplace. His techniques prove to be successful. This was a very touching book too. He went from nothing to something.



2. If you are looking for a book celebrating the life and times of David Longaberger, this is the book for you. If you are looking to learn more about how he built his businesses, look elsewhere. I was very disappointed in this book. Hindsight is supposed to be 20/20, not wear rose colored glasses.

   I'm surprised at all the ultra positive reviews here for this book, but I guess they are all "Longaberger Fans". I enjoy reading about successfully business people and looked forward to reading about how Longaberger built his unique marketing method.
   
   Ask any entrepreneur and they'll tell you that they learned far more from their failures than their successes. Either Dave Longaberger is the luckiest business person ever or he has really selective memory. The history of the Longaberger company and his earlier businesses is written as a series of successes with no discussion of any failures.

   The working conditions of the early basket production were horrible. Unpaid employees working in a dilapidated building without even bathroom facilities. While this may sound like something out of the turn of the century, this OSHA nightmare happened in the mid 70's. Still, Longaberger writes lovingly about it recalling his "devoted" employees, even patting himself on the back for allowing these workers flexible time.

   The "business tips" other reviewers have referred to are nothing new or interesting nor are the anecdotes on how practices like "listening to your employees" contributed to the success of the company.

   After reading this book I do understand the cult-like following that Longaberger enjoys. The selective history, overly positive attitude, and constant emphasis on a team attitude that Longaberger runs his businesses with are very similar to methods used by religious and other cult leaders.




3. If a book's name is success story it will not be a business textbook to explain business strategy or corporate finance. In this book you can see the optimism (which we need right now), persuasion(every entreprenuer needs), and a soft touch to people ( key element to create successful business). So as you understand this book do not make you understand hard business issues but make you understand that the realization of dreams are not restricted to business educated people... It shows you a person who has learning disabilities can create a company of 1 billion dollar worth... it shows you the importance of caring customers and touching customers and caring their families...

   So people who needs business books they need to go text books not success stories... ... if i need a screwdriver and if i get a hammer, hammer will be useless for me but this does not change the effectiveness of the hammer for the person who needs it... so only problem is the person who selects it...

   thanks




4. That was Mr.Longaberger's problem. He knew that handcrafted baskets had a place in Americana, but he didn't know how to make it profitable. But he never gave up. While it was running in the red, he was taking money from his business that was running in the black.

   Those entrepreneurs that are working full time jobs, as well,know the feeling.

   I picked up this book to gain perspective on how to not get discouraged in my own business. It worked.

   I have never had to work in a building that had no roof. I have never had to pay employees with IOUs. I have never had to go into a store and see my handmade baskets tossed in the back of a shelf collecting dusts while cheaper made, inferior baskets go whizzing by.

   What I took away from this book is to constantly persist and innovate. The cliche "Where there is a will there is a way" readily applied to Mr.Longaberger. He gained my utmost admiration as a businessman and as a philanthroper.

   From day one he shared is wealth, with his employees, with his community, and with strangers. I am shopping around to purchase one of his baskets, solely as an inspiration piece, and if you do the same, after reading this book, you will find out what I found out, they are expensive and you have stiff competition among the collectors. He created a $7billion company from an abandon building. Could you do the same.

   Do you have what it takes to get through your hard times, up beat, to really see your business blossom? I do. I look forward to seeing you at the top.




5. As stated by another reviewer, this is a book for "Longaberger fans" (pretty much a waste of time and money for anybody else). The wholesome, made-in America image that the Longaberger family is trying to convey seems ironic to me now, since the company is outsourcing a large amount of their products in China. I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone except the die-hard Longaberger enthusiast!

2 comments about The Steinway Saga: An American Dynasty.

1. A long book to be read unhurried and thoughtfully. The 19th c. period is an overview of commerce "red in tooth and claw." Concerns were often different but methods much the same as now, perhaps even rougher. The last 50 pages or so hits you like a waterfall of bad decisions, bad management, and incredible lack of understanding of what pianos were and are. A very rich book indeed.



2. Get Lieberman's book (or Susan Goldeberg's) if the subject matter interests you. If you're hungry for more Steinway lore, I suggest you read Lieberman's book again, because this one is a mess. What appears on the surface to be a well-researched biography of the Steinway family becomes an excuse for telling various sordid scandals of the day, some of which are totally unrelated to the subject matter at hand, and many of which are purely speculative on the part of the author (I cannot count the number of times the words "possibly" and "perhaps" appear in the text.)

   Worse yet is the author's "creative" writing style, in which every third or fourth sentence is twisted into some obscure metaphor. Every time the story threatens to take flight on its own, Fostle steps in with an inappropriate comment, awkward analogy, or meaningless statistic (he likes to count the number of days between events and the number of words within speeches.) I felt as if I were trapped in an elevator with a second-rate creative writing workshop student.

   Underneath all of the stylistic effluvia lies an on-again, off-again biography of William Steinway. If Fostle had simply gotten out of the way and told the story, we might have had something here. But as things stand, this is a tiring, tedious read. If you're a true Steinway aficionado, you'll probably seek this out regardless of what I've just said. Just don't say you weren't warned. If you're new to the subject matter, the true "Steinway Saga" begins and ends with Lieberman's book.

3 comments about DAY BY DAY: The Story of Cecil B. Day and His Simple Formula for Success.

1. ... or should I say "WOW!" This one almost snuck by me.

   Amazing, fast reading and I want to read more!




2. Mr. Day is someone I never met, but feel like I know after reading Day by Day by his son, CB Day, Jr. I hope to be like him when I grow up. Honest, in attitude, and spiritually. I'm just 10, but now I know good really can be got in America.

   Mr. Day is proof. Read it.

   aaron humes




3. In reading this book thus far, I've learned that I have yet to understand and put trust into following my "tug" to the fullest - which when reading this book is the main part of the formula for success. Add in the basic positives, such as faith, love and respect.....well you'll have to read it for yourself.

3 comments about Turn Your Talents into Profits.

1. Turn Your Talents into Profits has been in the news quite a bit lately. It was featured on the Montel Williams show in late March, in the March issue of American Baby, and in the May 11th issue of Woman's Day. I think this book has been getting so much attention because it focuses on microbusinesses (very small, part-time, home-based businesses), and microbusinesses are the fastest-growing type of small business in America.



2. If you've been dabbling in a home business or dreaming about starting one, this is a book you've got to have. Turn Your Talents Into Profits will inspire you and encourage you. It's easy to read, gives you lots of great ideas, and has an amazingly complete bibliography.



3. I should be more disappointed with this book than I am. It's helpful in its own way, but suggestions to seek out further details using suggested Prodigy & CompuServe keywords seem, to be polite, a little quaint, & the publication date of 1998 makes it fairly clear that this is an "updated" version of an older (self-published?) book. One suggested business, for instance, is to start a BBS, a phenomenon that pretty much had gone the way of the mastodon by then.

   The book is also lacking in serious instruction on how to run a business. Since this book is aimed at people who are enough adrift to need these ideas in the first place, the target audience probably needs more than a whirlwind 9-page overview of practical & critical business skills.

   If that's all there is, I would've struggled to give this book a bare 3 stars. However, the majority of the suggested 100+ microbusinesses aren't too bad. Keep in mind that many of them require some sort of preexisting skills; you probably don't want to leap into a mural-painting business if you have absolutely no sense of form or color, for instance.

   More important than the ideas themselves, though, is their range. If you read this book cover-to-cover, or even just flip through it & glean a few ideas that appeal to you, you will definitely be motivated to start concocting your own small-small business. It might be a variant of an idea from the authors, or wholly your own creation, but you'll have been bitten by the bug -- I guarantee it.

   And if you already have an idea, read it anyway! One of the most crushing weights to the entrepreneurial spirit is the feeling that you're the only one crazy enough to try. Reading this book will make you feel a little less lonely. With that to brace you, you'll be a little more encouraged to follow your dream in a sensible & ultimately rewarding manner.

2 comments about The Age of the Moguls: The Story of the Robber Barons and the Great Tycoons.

1. Holbrook wrote in the first half of the 20th century about the businesses and characters that built the United States. His approach was not one of fawning adoration, rather he focussed on the quirks and oddities. He wrote in an irreverent popular style, yet the quality of the history in excellent. Think of him as a cranky David McCullough.

   Age Of Moguls is a series of biographies/portraits of the big actors in building the business that built this country.Buy this book and any anything else you can find of his.




2. First, some brief background information about Stewart Hall Holbrook (1893-1964). Throughout his adult years, he was at first a lumberjack and then a writer, journalist, and (his descriptive) "lowbrow historian." The Age of the Moguls (1953) is probably his best-known work but it should be noted that, for more than thirty years, he wrote for The Oregonian, the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in the western United States (founded in 1850) and also authored or co-authored dozens of other books whose titles correctly indicate the scope and variety of his interests. For example, Little Annie Oakley & Other Rugged People (1948), Wild Bill Hickok Tames the West (1952) with Ernest Richardson, Davey Crockett (1955), Wyatt Earp: U.S. Marshall (1956), The Golden Age of Quackery (1959), The Golden Age of Railroads (1960), and Wildmen, Wobblies & Whistle Punks: Stewart Holbrook's Lowbrow Northwest (1992), an anthology. Holbrook's style of writing is as lively as his selection of subjects but it would be a mistake to question the authenticity of his historical material. One source (whose name I do not recall) has correctly described him as a "feisty David McCullough."
   
   In The Age of Moguls, Holbrook examines a number of "lords of capital" who, in his words, "made `deals,' purchased immunity, and did other things which in 1860, or 1880, or even 1900, were considered no more than `smart' by their fellow Americans, but which today would give pause to the most conscientiously dishonest promoter....They were a motley crew, yet taken together they fashioned a savage and gaudy age as distinctively purple as that of imperial Rome, and infinitely more entertaining." The group Holbrook considers is divided into three categories: promoters, bankers, and industrialists, with merchants in the latter group. They include Jim Fisk, Jay Gould, Charlie Gates, Thomas William Lawson, Henry H. Rogers, Henry Morrison Flagler, and Samuel Insull; Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Cyrus McCormick, Philip D. Armour, Henry Clay Frick, Henry Ford, and the Du Ponts; also the Guggenheims, Andrew W. Mellon, James J. Hill, Edward Henry Harriman, Henry Villard, the first two Vanderbilts, and the Astors. Some of these names remain familiar in our own time; others do not. All were "tough-minded fellows, who fought their way encased in rhinoceros hides and filled the air with their mad bellowings and the cries of the wounded." A colorful lot indeed.
   
   There are several reasons why I hold this book in such high regard. First, until reading it, I knew very little about the social and economic significance of what Holbrook characterizes as a "savage and gaudy age." As he explains so well, it was certainly both but the moguls he examines, together, established a bedrock of capitalism which remains intact to this day even as new laws and regulatory enforcement of them seem to ensure that, although Holbrook is not overly concerned with comparative business ethics then and now, were they alive today, "almost every man in this book would face a good hundred years in prison." I admire this book, also, because Holbrook succeeds so well in bringing the moguls to life in ways and to any extent I did not anticipate. Some are much more colorful than others, of course, but Holbrook anchors each in a human context, warts and all. Finally, I admire this book because it enables me and other readers to draw comparisons and (especially) contrasts between the current business world and the one which evolved throughout much of the 19th century. Those who receive most of Holbrook's attention have been variously described (then and now) as "giants and titans, and more often as rogues, robbers, and rascals" but Holbrook has convinced me that these and other adjectives (both positive and negative) accurately characterize most of them. For better or worse, all were "larger than life."
   
   Question: Why is this book not available in a paperbound edition?