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This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Waste in all senses
The thing that struck me most about this book was the horrible editing.This work contained a gross amount of spelling errors (and I am not referring to British spellings) including omitted letters and conjoined words.Even further, there were grammatical mistakes that made a few sentences almost impossible to grasp without having to reread them 4 or 5 times.
Although Derbyshire's prose was engaging he related quite a few anecdotes that pages later he would claim to be "unlikely" of being true.These anecdotes not being pertinent to the character of the tycoons, one wonders why they were included at all.

My two cents: find six separate biographies from a renowned publisher.These are unlikely to contain editing errors and will go into more depth. Don't waste your time or money on this one.

A fascinating anthology of life stories of the rich and famous
Lawyer Wyn Derbyshire shares his fascination with major figures of financial history in Six Tycoons, a biography that traces the lives and influence of six profoundly wealthy Americans: John Jacob Astor, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Henry Ford, and Joseph P. Kennedy. Their successes (and their major mistakes!) offer valuable life lessons, and American history might have turned out quite differently if not for their impact. A handful of black-and-white plates illustrate this fascinating anthology of life stories of the rich and famous.

A nice read
I read Six Tycoons on holiday and enjoyed it very much.Like most people I have heard the names Astor, Vanderbilt, Carnegie, Rockefeller, Ford and Kennedy before.However, I didn't know why most of them were famous or I only had a partial insight into their lives.So finding out the detail was fascinating.I especially liked the way that the 6 lives chosen by Wyn Derbyshire also give you an overview of the the flow of American economic history.Starting with fur and moving through railways, oil, cars and ending with financial wheeling and dealing.Wyn Derbyshire's writing is entertaining and he mixes fact and anecdote in a way that keeps the reader engrossed and page turning.

Fascinating insight
Wyn Derbyshire's fascinating insight into the lives of these six fabulously wealthy self-made tycoons off ers readers a glimpse into what drove these men, how they accumulated their fortunes, how they chose to live their lives, and ultimately the legacies they left behind. ... Read more

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pubOne.info thank you for your continued support and wish to present you this new edition. The man who makes it the habit of his life to go to bed at nine o'clock, usually gets rich and is always reliable. Of course, going to bed does not make him rich— I merely mean that such a man will in all probability be up early in the morning and do a big day's work, so his weary bones put him to bed early. Rogues do their work at night. Honest men work by day. It's all a matter of habit, and good habits in Ame ... Read more

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From the early years of fur trading to today's Silicon Valley empires, America has proved to be an extraordinarily fertile land for the creation of enormous fortunes. Each generation has produced one or two phenomenally successful leaders, often in new industries that caught contemporaries by surprise, and each of these new fortunes reconfirmed the power of fanatically single-minded visionaries. John Jacob Astor and Cornelius Vanderbilt were the first American moguls; John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and J. P. Morgan were kingpins of the Gilded Age; David Sarnoff, Walt Disney, Ray Kroc, and Sam Walton were masters of mass culture. Today Oprah Winfrey, Andy Grove, and Bill Gates are giants of the Information Age. America has again and again been the land of dizzying mountains of wealth.

Here, in a wittily told and deeply insightful history, is a complete set of portraits of America's greatest generators of wealth. Only such a collective study allows us to appreciate what makes the great entrepreneurs really tick. As H. W. Brands shows, these men and women are driven, they are focused, they deeply identify with the businesses they create, and they possess the charisma necessary to persuade other talented people to join them. They do it partly for the money, but mostly for the thrill of creation.

The stories told here -- including how Nike got its start as a business-school project for Phil Knight; how Robert Woodruff almost refused to take control of Coca-Cola to spite his father; how Thomas Watson saved himself from prison by rescuing Dayton, Ohio, from a flood; how Jay Gould nearly cornered the gold market; how H. L. Hunt went from gambling at cards to gambling with oil leases -- make for a narrative that is always lively and revealing and often astonishing. An observer in 1850, studying John Jacob Astor, would not have predicted the rise of Henry Ford and the auto industry. Nor would a student of Ford in 1950 have anticipated the takeoff of direct marketing that made Mary Kay Ash a trusted guide for millions of American women. Full of surprising insights, written with H. W. Brands's trademark flair, the stories in Masters of Enterprise are must reading for all students of American business history.Amazon.com Review
Masters of Enterprise examines the lives of 25 Americanentrepreneurs, from John D. Rockefeller and Henry Ford to Bill Gatesand Oprah Winfrey, to find the common ingredients of theirsuccess. "First, all had good health and abundant energy," writesH.W. Brands, a professor of history at Texas A&M University, "enoughfor half-a-dozen careers each." The other elements that Brandsidentifies: all were hungry for success; they were persuasive atgetting others on their side; they intensely identified with theirwork; and each had a burning creative vision. Brands dedicates achapter to each of the 25, starting chronologically with real estatemagnate John Jacob Astor in the late 1700s, and ending with softwaregiant Bill Gates in the late 1990s. He describes the entrepreneurs'background, vision, and major deals, and draws lessons for today'sbusiness mavens.

Modern-day speculators might find enlightening the story of JayGould's cornering of the gold market in the 1800s, forinstance. Brands dramatically describes the maneuvers Gould took tohide his buying and selling--and his underhanded but failed attemptsat keeping the U.S. government from flooding the market with gold anddriving the price down. And women entrepreneurs of today might findinspiring the lives of cosmetics titan Mary Kay Ash, designer LizClaiborne, and television and movie star Oprah Winfrey--all overcameobstacles, personal and professional, to become giants in theirfields.

Others profiled: industrialist Andrew Carnegie, Ray Kroc ofMcDonald's, Sam Walton of Wal-Mart, Motown founder Berry Gordy, WaltDisney, cable-television pioneer Ted Turner, and Intel's AndrewGrove. Well written and filled with anecdotes, Masters ofEnterprise should be an entertaining read for entrepreneurs andfans of business biography and history. --Dan Ring ... Read more

Customer Reviews (11)

Entertaining and Thought Provoking.
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.

Good Collection of Business Heroics
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.

Hagiography more than history
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.

Sketches of Great American Entrepreneurs
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.

Pure inspiration
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. ... Read more

Product Description
Chapters: Richard Harris, John Jacob Astor, 1st Baron Astor of Hever, Edmund Bury, Evan Noel, Vane Pennell, Henry Brougham, Henry Leaf, Cecil Browning. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 33. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Richard St. John Harris (1 October 1930 25 October 2002) was an Irish actor, singer-songwriter, theatrical producer, film director and writer. He appeared on stage and in many films, and is perhaps best known for his roles as King Arthur in Camelot (1967), as Oliver Cromwell in Cromwell (1970) and as Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (2001) and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002), his last film. He also played a British aristocrat and prisoner in A Man Called Horse (1970) and a gunfighter in Clint Eastwood's Western film Unforgiven (1992). As a singer, Harris is probably best remembered for his recording of Jimmy Webb's song "MacArthur Park", which reached the top ten in sales on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean in 1968. Harris, the fifth of nine children, was born in Limerick City, County Limerick, Munster, Ireland, the son of Ivan John Harris (b. 1896, son of Richard Harris, b. 1854, son of James Harris, St. Michael's, Limerick) and Mildred Josephine Harty Harris (b. 1898, daughter of James Harty, St. John's, Limerick who owned a flour mill.) He was schooled by the Jesuits at Crescent College. A talented rugby player, he was on several Munster Junior and Senior Cup teams for Crescent, and played for Garryowen. Harris might have become a provincial or international-standard rugby player, but his athletic career was cut short when he caught tuberculosis in his teens. He remained an ardent fan of the Munster Rugby and Young Munster teams then until his death, and attending many of its matches, and there are numerous stories of ...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=138483 ... Read more

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Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Chapters: Joséphine de Beauharnais, John Jacob Astor, Charles Xiv John of Sweden, John Kinzie, János Batsányi, Claude Chappe, Franz Danzi, Guillaume Marie Anne Brune, Wolfe Tone, William Cobbett, Pierre Paul Royer-Collard, Lê Văn Duyệt, Józef Antoni Poniatowski, Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany, Jean-Mandé Sigogne, Arthur William Hodge, Leopold Wilhelm Von Dobschütz, Domenico Dragonetti, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, John Cooke, Étienne Méhul, Tadano Makuzu, George Madison, Philip Charles Durham, Jean Paul, John Molson, Dmitry Senyavin, Henry Kable, Frederick Philipse Robinson, Pierre Gaspard Chaumette, Anselm Tupper, Thomas Wright Hill, Étienne-Gaspard Robert, Antoine Ignace Melling, William Maclure, Joseph Fesch, Charles René Magon de Médine, Charles Bulfinch, George Hadfield, Samuel Rogers, Richard Graves, William Wellesley-Pole, 3rd Earl of Mornington, Kobayashi Issa, Caroline Von Wolzogen, George Morland, John Chavis, Jean Victor Marie Moreau, Thomas Campbell, Benjamin Pickman, Jr., Robert Faulknor the Younger, Hugues-Bernard Maret, Duc de Bassano, William Charles Fahie, José Miguel Pey de Andrade, Roger Hale Sheaffe, Edmond-Charles Genêt, Pierre-Charles Villeneuve, Yakov Kulnev, Benedict Joseph Flaget, Henry Procter, Frederick, Duke of Saxe-Altenburg, George Hammond, Henry William de Saussure, James Nicoll Morris, Joseph-Octave Plessis, William Winterbotham, Louis-Mathieu Langlès, James Kent, Léger-Félicité Sonthonax, Princess Luise Eleonore of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, José Bonifácio de Andrada E Silva, Xavier de Maistre, George Africanus, David Milne, Barnabas Bidwell, Louis Nicolas Vauquelin, Adalbert Gyrowetz, Hezekiah Frith, Theophilus Browne, Lewis Wetzel, Samuel Rousseau, Louis Alexandre Andrault de Langeron, Don José Vidal, Teresa Saporiti, Franziska Stading, Robert Adair, J...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=23964203 ... Read more

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Chapters: John Jacob Astor, the Goonies, So Long, Astoria, Fort Astoria, Kkee, Kindergarten Cop, Tonquin, Astor Expedition, Fort Clatsop, Astoria-megler Bridge, Astoria Column, Pacific Fur Company, Kruc, Bumble Bee, Astoria School District, Astoria High School, Shanghaied in Astoria, U.s. Post Office (Astoria, Oregon), Old Youngs Bay Bridge, Clatsop Community College, Samuel Elmore Cannery, Astoria Regional Airport, Captain George Conrad Flavel House, George C. and Winona Flavel House, Fisher Poets Gathering, the Daily Astorian, Albatros. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 111. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: The Goonies is a 1985 American adventure-comedy film directed by Richard Donner. The screenplay was written by Chris Columbus from a story by executive producer Steven Spielberg. A band of kids from the "Goon Docks" neighborhood of Astoria, Oregon, hoping to save their homes from demolition, go on an adventure to find the buried treasure of One-Eyed Willy, a legendary 17th-century pirate. The Goonies, a group of young teenage friends living in Astoria, Oregon, face foreclosure on their families' homes from the expanding Astoria Country Club. On one of their last days their morale sinks particularly low due to the cancellation of their planned farewell road trip due to Mikey's older brother having failed his driver's license exam. While rummaging through the Walshes' attic, they find an old newspaper clipping, a Spanish map, and an artifact relating to a rumor of a forgotten pirate treasure somewhere in the area. Hearing the call of adventure, Mikey tries to persuade his friends to join him in search for the treasure hoarded by a pirate named One-Eyed Willie. Initially reluctant, the group eventually decides to usurp the authority of Mikey's older brother, Brandon, and escape for...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=89631 ... Read more