Product Description

From the early years of fur trading to today's Silicon Valley empires, America has proved to be an extraordinarily fertile land for the creation of enormous fortunes. Each generation has produced one or two phenomenally successful leaders, often in new industries that caught contemporaries by surprise, and each of these new fortunes reconfirmed the power of fanatically single-minded visionaries. John Jacob Astor and Cornelius Vanderbilt were the first American moguls; John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and J. P. Morgan were kingpins of the Gilded Age; David Sarnoff, Walt Disney, Ray Kroc, and Sam Walton were masters of mass culture. Today Oprah Winfrey, Andy Grove, and Bill Gates are giants of the Information Age. America has again and again been the land of dizzying mountains of wealth.

Here, in a wittily told and deeply insightful history, is a complete set of portraits of America's greatest generators of wealth. Only such a collective study allows us to appreciate what makes the great entrepreneurs really tick. As H. W. Brands shows, these men and women are driven, they are focused, they deeply identify with the businesses they create, and they possess the charisma necessary to persuade other talented people to join them. They do it partly for the money, but mostly for the thrill of creation.

The stories told here -- including how Nike got its start as a business-school project for Phil Knight; how Robert Woodruff almost refused to take control of Coca-Cola to spite his father; how Thomas Watson saved himself from prison by rescuing Dayton, Ohio, from a flood; how Jay Gould nearly cornered the gold market; how H. L. Hunt went from gambling at cards to gambling with oil leases -- make for a narrative that is always lively and revealing and often astonishing. An observer in 1850, studying John Jacob Astor, would not have predicted the rise of Henry Ford and the auto industry. Nor would a student of Ford in 1950 have anticipated the takeoff of direct marketing that made Mary Kay Ash a trusted guide for millions of American women. Full of surprising insights, written with H. W. Brands's trademark flair, the stories in Masters of Enterprise are must reading for all students of American business history.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #674512 in Books
• Published on: 1999-06-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 368 pages

Amazon.com Review
Masters of Enterprise examines the lives of 25 American entrepreneurs, from John D. Rockefeller and Henry Ford to Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey, to find the common ingredients of their success. "First, all had good health and abundant energy," writes H.W. Brands, a professor of history at Texas A&M University, "enough for half-a-dozen careers each." The other elements that Brands identifies: all were hungry for success; they were persuasive at getting others on their side; they intensely identified with their work; and each had a burning creative vision. Brands dedicates a chapter to each of the 25, starting chronologically with real estate magnate John Jacob Astor in the late 1700s, and ending with software giant Bill Gates in the late 1990s. He describes the entrepreneurs' background, vision, and major deals, and draws lessons for today's business mavens.

Modern-day speculators might find enlightening the story of Jay Gould's cornering of the gold market in the 1800s, for instance. Brands dramatically describes the maneuvers Gould took to hide his buying and selling--and his underhanded but failed attempts at keeping the U.S. government from flooding the market with gold and driving the price down. And women entrepreneurs of today might find inspiring the lives of cosmetics titan Mary Kay Ash, designer Liz Claiborne, and television and movie star Oprah Winfrey--all overcame obstacles, personal and professional, to become giants in their fields.

Others profiled: industrialist Andrew Carnegie, Ray Kroc of McDonald's, Sam Walton of Wal-Mart, Motown founder Berry Gordy, Walt Disney, cable-television pioneer Ted Turner, and Intel's Andrew Grove. Well written and filled with anecdotes, Masters of Enterprise should be an entertaining read for entrepreneurs and fans of business biography and history. --Dan Ring

From Publishers Weekly
Readers who can imagine a favorite history professor sitting across the table talking about the evolution of American business will have a pretty good idea of the style, substance and approach taken by Brands, a history professor at Texas A&M. Relying entirely on secondary sources, Brands picks 25 businesspeople and shows how they are all the spiritual descendants of one another. While John Jacob Astor and Cornelius Vanderbilt would have difficulty understanding the technology behind the companies Andy Grove and Bill Gates built, they would have completely understood their business models. Brands constantly relates what all 25 people profiled have in common: they work hard; they identify with their work; their desire for success is almost tangible. Perhaps most important, they know exactly what they are trying to create. Fans of any of the business people included here are not likely to learn anything new about them, but that isn't the author's point. It is their connection to one another that matters. Brands does an excellent job at showing that there is a natural evolution to the way American business has developed.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
The 25 biographies featured here highlight the careers of some of America's best-known businesspeopleAfrom Cornelius Vanderbilt and Andrew Carnegie to Mary Kay Ash and Liz Claiborne. Brands (history, Texas A&M Univ.), author of several books on American history, including T.R.: The Last Romantic (LJ 10/15/97), ties each portrait to its historical period, providing valuable social context. The brief biographies are weighted toward the early life and career of their subjects. Brands focuses on major events rather than more obscure details and packs the essential information into a few easy-to-read pages. Most of the profiles concern business owners, but Alfred P. Sloan is noted as a manager of General Motors and Thomas J. Watson Sr. as a salesman as well as leader of IBM. Recommended for public and academic libraries.AA.J. Sobczak, Covina, CA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Rome was not built in a day�
Common beliefs shattered by uncommon men- Henry Kaiser would have taken on the challenge to build Rome in a day!

"Rags to riches" is another common adage; but the route to getting there is what distinguishes the daring from the rest. But the most important factor that has made these great achievers who changed and paved the course of business history is the strong desire to excel against all odds. What else can explain the rise of Andrew Carnegie from the drudgery of working in a dirty shop floor to being the master of one of America's greatest steel company.

Do not read this book in a hurry. Brands has an excellent command on the English language and his style of narration matches the true values that one can derive from the 25 great persons described in this book.

I have recommended this book as the first assignment to my daughter during her summer vacation.

Your search for human excellence ends here.

Masters of Enterprise
An excellent historical overview of American business. You won't need an MBA or a stong desire to become a business mogul to appreciate this book.

H.W. Brand chooses just the right level of detail while tracing the history of American business and building a comprehensive description of some of the most influential American businessmen/woman. He leaves you with both a historical perspective and examples of breakthroughs in business which describe the evolution of free enterprise.

From the days after the American revolution, through the agrarian, industrial, and information revolutions, he paints a clear and accurate picture of how business has evolved to its present form and illustrates the role each "Master of Enterprise" played in this evolution.

Masters of Enterprise
I found this book very informative and well written. The best quality of the book is that each individual is described well enough to give you insight and from there you can decide whether you would like to read his or her biography, or just be pleased with what you have learned.

I learned quite a bit of intresting facts about many of the leaders of industry and that, I belive, is the purpose of the book.