Business Adventures
John Brooks's twelve New Yorker stories about Wall Street and 1960s corporate America
Twelve long pieces by New Yorker writer John Brooks, collected in 1969 and revived in 2014 after Bill Gates named it the best business book he had read. The stories cover the Ford Edsel flop, the rise of Xerox, the 1962 flash crash, an insider-trading case at Texas Gulf Sulphur and the man who tried to corner Piggly Wiggly. Brooks writes about companies as collections of people making decisions under pressure, which is why the book has not dated even though every business in it has changed or gone. It reads like reportage rather than a manual, and nobody finishes it looking for a list of lessons.
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Does it: documented as part of their own routine. Recommends: explicitly advises other people to do it. Discusses: covered it substantively without clear personal adoption; this can include criticism or disagreement.
- Bill GatesRecommends
Microsoft co-founder · Gates Notes reading lists
The best business book he has ever read, borrowed from Warren Buffett in 1991 and never returned. He values Brooks for refusing pat lessons, and reads the Xerox chapter as a warning he tried to heed at Microsoft.
Source: Gates Notes: The best business book I've ever read - Warren BuffettRecommends
Investor · Berkshire Hathaway chairman
When Bill Gates asked him for his favorite business book at their first meeting in 1991, he named this one without hesitating and sent Gates his own copy. Gates has since called it the best business book he has ever read, and says he still has the copy.
Source: CNBC Make It: Warren Buffett and Bill Gates agree this 1969 classic is still the best business book of all time
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