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368 pages
ISBN 9780786883561 Published Jan. 1999
Hyperion Books
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Posted Aug. 5, 2011 4:06 a.m. by sally-haldorson
In - 800 CEO Read Blog
In our The 100 Best Business Books of All Time, we included a chapter of recommended biographies. Jack has always championed the form as a valid way to learn valuable business lessons, not just as good entertainment. In the opening of the chapter, we explained:
How did they do it? That is the question we all want to ask when we meet someone famous or wealthy. We want to mimic them, thinking that if we just follow their footsteps we'll arrive at the same place. But, as Mark Twain said, "History rhymes; it does not repeat." Biographies provide a direction and a context so we can better plot our own course."
In that chapter, we included these 7 biographies:
Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. by Ron Chernow;
My Years with General Motors by Alfred P. Sloan, Jr.;
The HP Way by David Packard;
Personal History by Katharine Graham;
Moments of Truth by Jan Carlzon;
Sam Walton: Made in America by Sam Walton with John Huey;
Losing My Virginity by Richard Branson.
Today, Fast Company came out with their own list of recommended biographies. They chose:
Mary Kay: Miracles Happen by Mary Kay Ash;
Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman
by Yvon Chouinard;
Direct from Dell: Strategies that Revolutionized an Industry; by Michael Dell and Catherine Fredman;
Iacocca: An Autobiography by Lee Iacocca with William Novak;
Confessions of an Advertising Man by David Ogilvy;
The HP Way: How Bill Hewlett and I Built Our Company by David Packard;
Body and Soul: Profits with Principles, the Amazing Success Story of Anita Roddick & the Body Shop by Anita Roddick;
Pour Your Heart into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time by Howard Schultz and Dori Jones Yang;
Sam Walton, Made in America: My Story by Sam Walton and John Huey
Father, Son & Co.: My Life at IBM and Beyond by Thomas J. Watson and Peter Petre;
Jack: Straight from the Gut by Jack Welch and John A. Byrne
While our recommendations are quite dissimilar (we only have two matching titles, The HP Way and Sam Walton), some of these books (the Ogilvy and Watson) made our original shortlist, and we also write a bit in the new paperback version of The 100 Best coming out in November 2011 about the game-changing effect that Iococca's book had on the business book genre.
Looking at the sub-genre of business biographies as a whole, unlimited lessons can be learned from the lives of others, and we are privileged to be let into the lives of these masters of business through their books.
Inc. Magazine's 30th Anniversary Book Recommendations
Posted April 8, 2009 10:03 a.m. by todd-sattersten
In Lists - 800 CEO Read Blog
Inc. Magazine is celebrating 30 years of publication this month and as a part of their coverage have put together "The Business Owner's Bookshelf" - 30 books people running small businesses should read.
Here is the list in its entirety:
- Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk, by Peter Bernstein (1996)
- The Art of the Start: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything, by Guy Kawasaki (2004)
The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger, by Marc Levinson (2006)
Brand New: How Entrepreneurs Earned Consumers' Trust from Wedgwood to Dell, by Nancy F. Koehn (2001)
The Dilbert Principle: A Cubicle's-Eye View of Bosses, Meetings, Management Fads, and Other Workplace Afflictions, by Scott Adams (1996)
The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It, by Michael Gerber (1995)
The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done, by Peter Drucker (1967)
The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization, by Peter Senge (1990)
First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently, by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman (1999)
Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…And Others Don't, by Jim Collins (2001)
The Great Game of Business: The Only Sensible Way to Run a Company, by Jack Stack (1992)
Growing a Business, by Paul Hawken (1987)
Green to Gold: How Smart Companies Use Environmental Strategy to Innovate, Create Value, and Build Competitive Advantage, by Daniel Esty and Andrew Winston (2006)
How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie (1936)
The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail, by Clayton Christensen (1997)
Intellectual Capital: The New Wealth of Organizations, by Thomas A. Stewart (1997)
The Knack: How Street-Smart Entrepreneurs Learn to Handle Whatever Comes Up, by Norm Brodsky and Bo Burlingham (2008)
Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman, by Yvon Chouinard (2005)
Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Don't, by Chip Heath and Dan Heath (2007)
The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story, by Michael Lewis (1999)
Nuts! Southwest Airlines' Crazy Recipe for Business and Personal Success, by Kevin Freiberg and Jackie Freiberg (1996)
Ogilvy on Advertising, by David Ogilvy (1983)
On Competition, by Michael Porter (2008)
Personal History, by Katharine Graham (1997)
Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time, by Howard Schultz and Dori Jones Yang (1997)
Small Giants: Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big, by Bo Burlingham (2005)
Soul of a New Machine, by Tracy Kidder (1981)
The Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith (1776)
What Management Is: How It Works and Why It's Everyone's Business, by Joan Magretta and Nan Stone (2002)
The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations, by James Surowiecki (2004)
Jack and I think it is a pretty good list. Eleven of their 30 books match with selections from The 100 Best. The editors provide some big challenges for readers recommending The Wealth of Nations, On Competition, and The Fifth Discipline. Nuts! and Let My People Go Surfing are great for business owners (also check out Raising The Bar). And their fun add of The Dilbert Principle is a great one, showing us what to do by showing us what not to do.
