Customer Reviews

Masters of Enterprise: Giants of American Business from John Jacob Astor and J.P. Morgan to Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey

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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.

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.

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.

If you are chasing the, "American Dream," of becoming a successful entrepeneur, this book is definitely a must read! H. W. Brands has compiled a collection of highly enterprising and inspirational people in his book. I not only was encouraged by reading about such great American men, such as Cornelius Vanderbilt and Andrew Carnegie, I was even more impressed with the profiles of such determined business women as Oprah Winfrey and Mary Kay. Their lives and positive, business tactics shed a shining light, leading the way to establishing a successful enterprise.

Brands is a very entertaining professor who thoroughly understands and enjoys his material. He's also sensitive to the larger issues raised by these stories of entrepreneurs. Oddly enough, something more than money explains their motivation. While American business is based on the dynamic of the individual, self-made entrpreneur, the irony is that they are motivated by a pre-capitalist sense of calling and perfectionism. They are not the profit-maximizers hypothesized by capitalist economists.

And Brands touches on the supreme irony of America, which consists of the tension between all-men-are-created-equal ethic of the Declaration of Independence and constitutional political system and the inequality-of-wealth-and-talent ethic of the capitalist business system. Cynics would say that the some-men-are-more-equal-than-others ethic of the economic system trumps and subverts the equality-based ethic of the political system. Brands would probably say that the empowerment and freedom of the individual can only be preserved via the sanctity of private property.

The sketches of the entrepreneurs are highly entertaining and thought-provoking. I highly recommend it.

These brief portraits of great American businessmen and women are well written. Brands does a creditable job laying out the basics of each of their lives and presenting it in a highly readable fashion. His purpose is to show the historical development of how Americans have made money in a country where the making of wealth has became almost a divine calling.

Brands' selection of business giants could have been better. He seems to have picked his membership more for their diversity as people than for their masterful entrepreneurial skills. Why include Berry Gordy, but not Warren Buffett? Brands' choices obviously skew his presentation of U.S. business history, making it seem more diverse than it really has been.

H.W. Brands' Masters of Enterprises devotes each of his 25 brief, but enjoyable chapters to a successful entrepreneur. I particularly like this book because the author recognizes the importance of the individual in building a business dynasty. Tragically, this recognition is very rare from many business historians today who seem more interested in focusing on the post-retirement philanthropic activities of many great industrialists as opposed to the prodigious effort which was required to first accumulate the wealth.

This book contains great chapters on all of the well known productive geniuses of the U.S. Industrial Revolution, including the following: John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, J. P. Morgan, Henry Ford and Cornelius Vanderbilt.

One of the great values from this book is that it contains a satisfying amount of material on several important and often unsung heroes in business history. This includes, but is not limited to:

* Ray Kroc: The man who turned the McDonalds' franchise into the world's most recognizable fast food empire.

* Robert Woodruff: The man who made the Coca-Cola logo the world's most recognizable logo.

* Alfred Sloan: The man who built up General Motors to defeat the Ford Motor Company as the most dominant automobile manufacturer in the United States.

* Sam Walton: The man who turned Walmart into the retail giant that it is today.

* Andy Grove: The man who made Intel.

* Henry Kaiser: A true renaissance industrialist. He built the Hoover dam, the Bonneville Dam, innovated cement manufacturing, reduced the construction time of cargo ships during WWII to five days (when they previously required 30 days!), and even developed Waikiki beach into a resort.

* H. L. Hunt: discoverer and innovator of oil drilling in East Texas. Unfortunately, he also crippled the industry by lobbying for more government regulation.

The main downside of this book is that I think the mix of entrepreneurs covered could have been more interesting. For one, James J. Hill, the great empire builder of the Northwestern Railroads, is conspicuously absent. For example, if it were up to me, I would have added chapters on James J. Hill, E. H. Harriman*, Warren Buffett, Herbert Dow and C.J. Walker** and removed the chapters on Berry Gordy, Oprah Winfrey, Phil Knight, Ted Turner and Liz Claiborne.

If you enjoy books about great individuals in business history, then I also recommend Andrew Bernstein's The Capitalist Manifesto, Burton Folsom's The Myth of the Robber Barons and Burton Folsom's Empire Builders.

* The turnaround genius who converted the struggling Union Pacific Railroad into a transportation empire.

** She is probably the most under appreciated businesswoman in history. She not only is the first black woman to be a self-made millionaire, she is the first woman to do so. She made a fortune in designing and marketing beauty products for black women at the beginning of the 20th century, when the U.S. was unfortunately still plagued with discrimination.

This is a super treatment of a subject that fascinates us all: business leaders and how they got there. I also recently read a book that explains in detail "how" to get to these positions of leadership and succeed. It's on-line at Amazon: "The Leader's Guide: 15 Essential Skills." Highly recommend it too.

When I got done reading this, I sent an email to the author:

I just wanted to drop you a line to thank you for an excellent read, Masters of Enterprise. Reading these biographies made me contemplate my own future, and how I can improve the lives of my family and others.

I kept thinking to myself, "Gee, I wish that this book was used as a class textbook when I was in high school." If it did gain mass acceptance for that purpose,I believe that it could cause a revolution in America.

______ If you do read this, feel free to email me. I would welcome correspondence with a group of people who have enjoyed this book.

Business is a ruthless business. Dog eat dog and all that. Extraordinarily successful businessmen may have the same basic character traits as their fellow men (and women) but often in more extreme forms. Some of these traits are admirable: ambitious, industrious, driven, resilient, clever. Some, not so much: greedy, cruel, ruthless, opportunistic, dishonest.

Don't count on Brands to notice the latter in his subjects. H.W. Brands has written a history of American businessmen as they would like themselves to be seen. If you enjoy this book, you may also enjoy browsing the National Association of Manufacturer's press releases.