In the Words of Great Business Leaders

Julie M. Fenster

Retail Price: $26.95 LS Price: $24.25 You Save: $2.70 (10%) Availability: Out-Of-Print Format: Paperback, 392pp. ISBN: 9780471348559 Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Pub. Date: October 8, 1999

Order This Book!   Secure Order Guarantee Item No: 9780471348559

Brilliant, practical, obsessed with the day-to-day details of running a company-all are characteristics of the greatest business leaders of our time. This book reveals remarkable insights into these men and women, teaching timeless lessons about business, money, and even human nature.

In the Words of Great Business Leaders presents the accumulated experience of twenty business legends, in their own words. Each leader provides inspiring and motivating wisdom that runs the gamut from investing to setting priorities to making the most of opportunity.

This book also features thorough background information on each leader, telling the stories of their struggles to succeed, their triumphs, and how their various experiences-both good and bad-formed their business philosophies.

From the consummate salesmen. . . like William Wrigley, Jr., who started a soap business in the late 1800s with only $32 to his name and by 1922 was selling ten billion sticks of gum per year.

To hustling hard workers. . . like Edwin Land, president of Polaroid-which may have been the first start-up company in history to get $750,000 out of Wall Street on a promise of inventing things for which there was no market.

To self-made successes.. . . like John D. Rockefeller, who never raised his voice or made cutting remarks, but left no doubts about his power and became one of the richest men in the country.

And of course the bosses.. . . like Harvey Firestone, whose early days as a traveling salesman gained him valuable lessons that would serve him well as he created the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company-which, thanks to Firestone, would weather the Great Depression without even having to consider reducing its dividend.

In the Words of Great Business Leaders delivers enlightening, surprising, and motivating information for business readers of all industries.

Julie M. Fenster is an author and business historian who has written for the New York Times, the LA Times, and American Heritage magazine. She has also been a columnist for Audacity, Forbes' magazine of business history.

	Introduction	v
Part I	Talk About Convincing: Salesmen	1
	Thomas J. Watson Sr. International Business Machines Corp.	2
	William Wrigley Jr. William Wrigley Jr. Co.	28
	Andrew Carnegie Carnegie Steel	50
Part II	No Stone Left Unturned: Hustling Hard Workers	77
	Sam Walton Wal-Mart	78
	Mary Pickford United Artists	92
	Edwin Land Polaroid Corp.	108
	William S. Paley Columbia Broadcasting System	126
Part III	The Thoughts that Count: Self-made Success	143
	John D. Rockefeller Standard Oil Co.	144
	Henry Ford II Ford Motor Co.	174
	Madame C.J. Walker Madame C.J. Walker Manufacturing Co.	194
	A.P. Giannini Bank of America, Transamerica	206
Part IV	The Buck Stops: Bosses	225
	Harvey Firestone Firestone Tire & Rubber Co.	226
	J. Paul Getty Getty Oil	250
	Alfred P. Sloan Jr. General Motors	268
	David Packard Hewlett-Packard	290
Part V	No Matter What Everyone Else Is Doing: Mavericks	311
	Herb Kelleher Southwest Airlines	312
	Clarence Birdseye General Foods	328
	Margaret Rudkin Pepperidge Farm	342
	Ted Turner Turner Broadcasting System	352
	Sources	367
	Acknowledgments	387
	Index	389

Book of Business Wisdom
Book of Leadership Wisdom