THE ENTREPRENEURS: Explorations Within the American Business Tradition

Nine major American businessmen -- even if little sense is made of their great diversity in method, character and occupation, thematically or historically. What links Francis Cabot Lowell, the originator of textile factories employing impoverished farm gifts, with John Wanamaker, whose fastidious preference for a middle-class clientele doomed his retail empire? Or Donald Douglas, father of the DC-3, with Royal Little of conglomerate notoriety, and tobacco king James Buchanan Duke? What did James J. Hill of the Great Northern Railroad have to do with Teddy Vail at AT&T? Sobel has written twelve other books on the stock market and related topics; this is neither an exciting Horatio Alger testimonial, nor a muckrake job, nor a serious history of entrepreneurial innovation. A drab mural.