Masters of Enterprise

H.W. Brands

• Publisher: Free Press
• Year: 2012
• Topic: Business
• eBook ISBN:
  9781476726939
• Subtopic: Business Development
• Index: Business

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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Prospectus
• Chapter 1: Growing Up with the Country - John Jacob Astor
• Chapter 2: The Warrior - Cornelius Vanderbilt
• Chapter 3: Golden Grain - Cyrus McCormick
• Chapter 4: The Speculator - Jay Gould
• Chapter 5: Auld Lang Syne - Andrew Carnegie
• Chapter 6: By Jupiter - J. Pierpont Morgan
• Chapter 7: The Monopoly Esthetic - John D. Rockefeller
• Chapter 8: The Mechanic of Revolution - Henry Ford
• Chapter 9: Organization Man - Alfred P. Sloan
• Chapter 10: Think—and Sell - Thomas J. Watson
• Chapter 11: The Faith that Launched a Thousand Ships - Henry J. Kaiser
• Chapter 12: The Gambler - H. L. Hunt
• Chapter 13: Emperor of the Air - David Sarnoff
• Chapter 14: Fantasy Inc. - Walt Disney
• Chapter 15: The Real Thing - Robert Woodruff
• Chapter 16: Sweating Burgers - Ray Kroc
• Chapter 17: Bentonville, U.S.A. - Sam Walton
• Chapter 18: The Hero of the Hit Factory - Berry Gordy
• Chapter 19: Every Woman a Queen - Mary Kay Ash
• Chapter 20: Just Do It - Phil Knight
• Chapter 21: Dress for Success - Liz Claiborne
• Chapter 22: The World in Real Time - Ted Turner
• Chapter 23: The Celebrity as Entrepreneur - Oprah Winfrey
• Chapter 24: The Paranoia Principle- Andrew Grove
• Chapter 25: Standard Operating Procedure - Bill Gates
• The Bottom Line
• Acknowledgments
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright