The Ebooks Review

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Expertly situating his subject’s accomplishments in the context of late 18th- and early 19th-century commercial and geopolitical expansion, Madsen (Chanel; Gloria and Joe) weighs in with an absorbing biography of one of 19th-century America’s most powerful men. Having immigrated to the U.S. from Germany in 1783, Astor was on friendly terms with such prominent figures as Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and Albert Gallatin by the time he came to dominate the North American fur trade in 1800. While Astor’s relationships with Jefferson and others characterized the wheeling and dealing in fledgling Washington, D.C., his mastery over the fur trade figured significantly in opening up the American West. The book’s best moments come when Madsen describes Astor’s efforts to establish a permanent outpost in the Oregon territory. Called Astor, it was designed not only to aid its founder’s domination of the fur trade in the Northwest, but to help him facilitate trade with China–for while fur brought Astor his first fortune, foreign trade provided him with his second. While he had a talent for exploiting new business opportunities, Astor also had the foresight to extricate himself from both the fur and trading businesses before they waned. Astor’s third fortune, the legacy he would pass on to his heirs, sprang from his real estate investments in Manhattan. He sank the profits from his first ventures into large swaths of land in rapidly expanding New York City, where he built mansions and tenements alike. Madsen provides a largely sympathetic portrait of Astor; while no revelations emerge, the book effectively projects his story against the backdrop of seminal events in early American history. 21 illus. and 2 maps.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
For much of our nation’s history, the name Astor has been synonymous with great wealth. Madsen (Chanel, Gloria and Joe) now adds his account of the life and times of the nation’s first multimillionaire. Astor was born in Germany in 1763 and came to the New World at age 20 with a shipment of musical instruments as his stake. By the time he died in 1848, he had made separate fortunes in the fur trade, the China trade, and New York real estate, with a few bucks from opium trading thrown in. But his really big money came from land, which he purchased in large tracts in and around the burgeoning city of New York and leased out on long contracts. By the late 1880s, his descendants were collecting $9 million per year in rent from the city alone! This work is based on such published sources as Kenneth W. Porter’s John Jacob Astor, Businessman (1931) and John Upton Terrell’s Furs by Astor (1963) but does have both footnotes and a list of sources. Unfortunately, there are many awkwardly constructed sentences and geographic errors; otherwise, this would have been an acceptable public library purchase. Patrick J. Brunet, Western Wisconsin Technical Coll., La Crosse
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Order John Jacob Astor: America’s First Multimillionaire: Axel Madsen form Amazon.

Editorial Reviews

The innovative founder of the Eastman Kodak Company was not generally known for his thirst for adventure, his love of art and classical music, or his philanthropic activities, yet these were all important aspects of the man. George Eastman (1854-1932) was a complicated individual who lived most of his long, industrious life out of the public eye; his private affairs both admirable and dubious are now out in the open, thanks to this scholarly and scrupulous biography. Eastman is revealed as cold, shrewd, modest, and surprisingly generous in this colorful portrait. The text is appropriately enhanced by a number of rare photographs.
–This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly
In 1904, when the Dalai Lama had to flee Tibet, he took his Kodak camera. Worldwide, people understood. The cultural revolution begun in 1888 when George Eastman (1854-1932) made photography accessible to anyone with $25 had been completed in 1900, when his Brownie made picture-taking possible for anyone with a dollar (and 15? for film). Brayer, a historian at the Eastman-endowed International Museum of Photography and Film, has written a candid, fact-crammed life of the first camera-and-film tycoon that loses somewhat in liveliness by leaving out almost nothing about how the camera business was dominated for years by Eastman’s canny and baronial practices. A bank clerk as a young man, he was astute enough by his late 20s to weather financial difficulties and manufacture cheap, workable film while withstanding what would become decades of litigation, much of which he won, over patent infringement and antitrust charges. In the end the mother’s boy who could never cut the silver cord and marry was wedded to an enterprise that made him, in wealth, a peer of Rockefeller, Carnegie and Ford. Catchphrases advertising his cameras (”You Press the Button, We Do the Rest”) sold billions of feet of film and threatened to make “Kodak” a common noun for “camera.” He resisted with challenges over trademark and with the maxim “If it isn’t an Eastman it isn’t a Kodak.” His relentless social Darwinism would pay off in consolidations, mergers and buyouts that left him with so many dollars (and no heirs) that only massive educational and cultural philanthropies could reduce the accumulation. “Mr. Eastman,” one associate concluded, “was the only man I ever knew who started out a conservative and wound up a liberal.” Brayer’s biography of the boy fired up by “Oliver Optic” stories such as Work and Win and A Millionaire at Sixteen captures the expansive if callous period in American business in which such fortunes were made. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
–This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Editorial Reviews

If you’ve ever gone out to lunch with a coworker and suddenly found yourself witness to a savage stream of unflattering assessments of bosses, wicked gossip, and the-emperor-has-no-clothes analysis of your industry, you’ll know what it’s like to read High Stakes, No Prisoners. Ferguson, an MIT Ph.D., started up a company called Vermeer Technologies in 1994, a rough time for startups in Silicon Valley. The country was coming out of a recession, the stock market was stagnant, and the Internet wasn’t yet taken seriously by those with money to invest. Vermeer had a software program called FrontPage that only someone who understood the coming power of the Net could appreciate. Even in Silicon Valley, few were so prescient.

Most of High Stakes is the story of Vermeer, from its startup to its sale to Microsoft. (Now bundled with Microsoft Office, FrontPage is used by more than 3 million people worldwide.) Along the way, Ferguson met the players in the Valley and formed strong opinions of them. He describes Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale as an egomaniac and technological dolt in way, way over his head. Oracle founder Larry Ellison is “severely warped.” One of his best lines sums up Silicon Valley as a place where “one finds little evidence that the meek shall inherit the earth.”

But this isn’t just the technological equivalent of WWF trash-talking. Ferguson is very tough on himself, too, and details his own shortcomings as a person and a businessman. Mostly, it’s a gloves-off account of how things really get done in high technology today, as refreshingly honest and acerbic an account as you’ll ever read. –Lou Schuler

From Publishers Weekly
All the characters readers would expect to find in a “behind the scenes” look at what it’s like to build and then sell one of the first Internet-related companies are present and fully accounted for in this first-hand account, written by a coauthor of Computer Wars. We see the venture capitalists who are out to maximize their return on investment in the fledgling company at the entrepreneur’s expense, the voracious large competitors who threaten to crush it like a bug and the stumbling support professionalsAeveryone from lawyers to headhuntersAwho often turn out to be more of a hindrance than a help. Ferguson tells what it was like to create Vermeer Technologies, which produced one of the first software products that made creating Web pages fairly easy, and then sell it to Microsoft for $133 million some 20 months later. While the account is richly detailed, Ferguson’s tone is smug and his attitude toward a great many of the people he describes travels the short arc between patronizing and dismissive. The story of Vermeer’s creation is bracketed by an overview of the high-tech industry, clearly showing that Ferguson has an interesting view of the issuesAboth great and smallAraised by the remarkable growth of the Internet. It’s a shame that he didn’t give us more perspectiveAand less invectiveAon the travails associated with building his company. (Nov.) FYI: The author will donate his earnings from this book to a nonprofit educational organization.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Order High Stakes, No Prisoners : A Winner’s Tale of Greed and Glory in the Internet Wars: Charles Ferguson, Charles H. Ferguson form Amazon.

Editorial Reviews

Review
“A bit skimpy.” — Warren Buffett

“A wonderful compilation of stories and anecdotes about Buffett’s experience, his investments, his hobbies, and his outlook on life.” — John Tier, author of The Winning Investment Habits of Warren Buffett and George Soros

“The definitive story of {Buffett’s} career” — London Daily Telegraph

"A bit skimpy." –Warren Buffett

"A wonderful compilation of stories and anecdotes about Buffett’s experience, his investments, his hobbies, and his outlook on life." –John Tier, author of The Winning Investment Habits of Warren Buffett and George Soros

"The definitive story of {Buffett’s} career" –London Daily Telegraph

The first chapter makes the case that Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, although based in Omaha, has emerged as a truly international company. Chapter 2 explores Buffett’s extraordinary gift of the bulk of his fortune to the Gates Foundation. Chapter 3 reveals what Gates gave Buffett as a thank you (surprisingly, Gates gave Buffett a 1776 first edition of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations). And Chapter 4 tells of Buffett’s purchase of Iscar, the precision tool company in Israel, and tracks BUffett’s visit to Israel to visit Iscar’s facilities and to meet with the Israeli prime minister. Also, there are chapters (among the 335) about Buffett’s wedding on his 76th birthday, Berkshire’s stock price surpassing $100,000 and Berkshire’s bid to bail out the Lloyd’s of London "Names." The fully revised book has more than 1,200 photos. The back cover photo is of Buffett and NBA’s LeBron James.

Order Of Permanent Value: The Story of Warren Buffett/2007 International Edition/in 2 volumes: Andrew Kilpatrick form Amazon.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
In 1998, Daisey gave up his life of frequenting cafes, temping and participating in small-time theater to join an up-and-coming bookseller called Amazon.com. Here, he offers a kind of workplace coming-of-age memoir the young hero comes to terms with his ambition, synthesizes it with his liberal arts education and finally spits it out. All the dot-com punching bags are here: the lampooning of new economy jargon, the girlfriend worrying about her boyfriend’s sudden obsession with the company picnic, and jokes about Pets.com. What saves the book from being an exercise in shooting fish in a barrel is Daisey’s sharp eye: he renders even banal corporate moments with energy and wit. (On a clueless colleague: “No one does tai chi at ten am in front of their coworkers around a coffee kettle unless they want to be hated.”) Class-conscious to the point of obsession he has ambivalent thoughts about his “startlingly sharp, attractive” managers and dreams of “social hacking” his way into becoming a Net executive Daisey flirts with a broader social critique of bourgeois values. Still, his incessant flippancy blocks real insight. At the end, when an imaginary e-mail to CEO Jeff Bezos turns unexpectedly vicious, readers may wonder how a man so aware of and so glib about his employer’s flaws comes to play the role of the exploited proletarian. Still, Daisey’s talent for the punch line, along with his facility for sketch comedy, makes the book an enjoyable, if unedifying, experience, like an afternoon playing foosball.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Amazon.com may have made many mistakes since it opened its e-doors for business, but the one it made in hiring Daisey to do “customer service” in 1998 continues to haunt the company in a big way. Daisey is a writer, playwright, and actor who has mined his employment experience at Amazon.com to produce, first, a one-man show and now a memoir recounting his life as an Amazonian. His vignettes and anecdotes, while at times sophomoric, are quite funny, especially his explanation of how his book got its canine title: “Conventional wisdom held that Amazon Time was equivalent to dog years, which meant that one actual human year equaled seven Amazonian ones.” Daisey started his dot-com job in 1998, responding to telephone orders as a “phone monkey.” His description of the “freaks” he worked with, the “gothic” work environment itself, and the crazy incoming calls make for hilarious reading. Additionally, Daisey’s amusing reflections on Amazon founder Jeff Bezos portray someone who seems remarkably disengaged, even when his company’s stocks are falling. After getting promoted to an equally unsatisfying regular office job, Daisey finally quit, cashing in his stock options. This is an eye-opening testament as to how truly dysfunctional a dot-com can get. Recommended for all nonfiction collections in public libraries. Richard Drezen, Washington Post/New York City Bureau
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Order 21 Dog Years : Doing Time @ Mike Daisey form Amazon.

Editorial Reviews

Review
Road to Purpose chronicles Ken Behring’s journey from poverty to wealth to caring. He is a gift to humanity. — Anthony Principi, U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs (2001-2005)

This book is powerful and compelling. Once you start reading it, you can’t put it down. — Gary Littrell, Medal of Honor Society

Ken Behring was the man who had everything and who lived the American Dream. He went from Depression poverty in rural Wisconsin to the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans. He owned mansions, hundreds of classic cars, a jet plane and his own football team. But something was missing. Join Behring on his journey of discovery, his travels on his road to purpose, from poor hospitals in Africa and Eastern Europe to the battlefields of Afghanistan. Learn how the gift of a simple wheelchair not only transformed the lives of their recipients, but also his life–and how it could transform yours.

Order Road to Purpose: Kenneth E. Behring form Amazon.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
In this surprisingly warm and wise memoir, banker and first-time author Baer recounts his privileged but accomplished life, taking readers from Zurich to New York and back again, with stops around the globe. Following his father’s death at the end of 1940, Baer’s mother took him and his siblings to America, where he attended private schools, fell in love with New York and, ultimately, made the difficult decision to return to Zurich to follow in his father’s footsteps at the family banking firm, the Julius Baer Group. Highly knowledgeable regarding shifting political and economic climates worldwide, Baer’s perspective-on everything from banking to the 9/11 attacks to music and friendships-is clear-eyed and intriguing, especially his honest account of the banking world’s reaction to the World Jewish Congress’s attempts to win back the assets of Holocaust victims. Though an unremitting cascade of names may frustrate, Baer’s account is a smart, personal look at the international challenges of the post-war world, as well as a life lived well through philanthropy, the arts and rich relationships, with a motivational streak that should connect even with those who don’t have a successful Swiss financial institution on their side. 32 pages of b&w photos.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

In his memoir, Hans J. Baer reveals the drive and emotions behind one of the most distinguished careers in swiss banking in the twentieth century. During his almost sixty-year career as manager of the Julius Baer Group, he helped develop it into one of the largest independent wealth managers in Switzerland. When scandal involving the dormant accounts of Jews murdered in the Third Reich rocked the staid and secretive swiss banking community, Baer brought his leadership and negotiation skills to the table, ultimately helping to form the Volcker Commission.

It’s Not All About Money is the extraordinary story of a high-finance insider. As the title suggests, more than even his prominent career, his devotion to music, art, and philanthropy have been central to Baer’s life. He relates his interactions with the Shah of Iran, his friendship with Carnegie Hall savior Isaac Stern, and other luminaries of art and science. Baer shares his intriguing story with humor and humility.

Order It’s Not All About Money: Memoirs of a Private Banker: Hans J. Baer form Amazon.

Editorial Reviews

“In China, I feel the explosive combination of forces aligning to create the kind of change that alters the course of history,” writes David Sheff in the introduction to China Dawn, his book on the entrepreneurs who are trying to spark a social transformation and make a mint as they bring the latest information technology to the planet’s most populous country. The idealistic heroes of this story are Bo Feng and Edward Tian, both friends of the author. Feng is a Marin County busboy who becomes one of China’s top venture capitalists; Tian is the cofounder of AsiaInfo, the first private Chinese firm to go public in the West. Like so many others, Feng and Tian were deeply affected by the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, and they believe the Internet can set their country on an irreversible course toward freedom. At bottom, though, China Dawn is an engaging business book that chronicles the “unlikely group of revolutionaries” who hope to become the Bill Gates and Andy Groves of their country. It is difficult to know whether they will succeed, but hard not to wish them luck. –John Miller

From Library Journal
With China poised to enter the World Trade Organization, the importance of its billion-plus potential customers to the global economy cannot be overestimated. Journalist Sheff (Game Over) describes how the country’s information technology leaders are battling outdated business models, a tumultuous market, and a government that pushes expansion while trying to censor Internet usage. Despite these sometimes overwhelming odds, estimates predict an astounding 30 to 60 million Chinese Internet users by 2005. Sheff uses biographies and case studies to introduce the visionaries and venture capitalists leading Asia into the 21st century. Readers will enjoy this well-written and clearly organized study of an extraordinary economic and social revolution, and anyone whose company plans to begin or increase trade with China will profit from learning about the major players and the forces influencing the new Chinese economy. Business collections in all types of libraries will want to purchase. Susan C. Awe, Univ. of New Mexico Lib., Albuquerque
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Order China Dawn: The Story of a Technology and Business Revolution: David Sheff form Amazon.

Editorial Reviews

Review
“…interesting company history. Don’t skim the chapter on the Tylenol crisis…. Johnson’s fingerprints are all over the company’s casebook response.” — USA Today

“An interesting book about one of America’s great companies . . . and Robert Wood Johnson’s revolutionary management concepts.” — Tampa Tribune, FL

“An interesting book about one of America’s great companies . . . and Robert Wood Johnson’s revolutionary management concepts.” — Tampa Tribune, FL

“Drawing on 10 years of personal contact and more than 150 interviews, Foster wrote with a sense of purpose.” — Home News Tribune, NJ

“Drawing on 10 years of personal contact, 250,000 pages of documents and more than 150 interviews, …Foster wrote with a sense of purpose.” — Home News Tribune, NJ

“Johnson lived his professional and personal life with flair and tenacity.” — Worldwide, J&J

“Robert Wood Johnson’s Credo is a statement of ideals and vision that sets a standard for American business. Its impact can be seen in everything from the company’s acclaimed handling of the Tylenol crisis (which is recounted in the book) to Johnson & Johnson’s first-place standing in a study of corporate reputations published recently in the Wall Street Journal.” (Business to Business, Ft. Lauderdale/Miami (Dec. ‘99)) — Business to Business, Ft. Lauderdale/Miami

“The book is a primer for anyone with a vent for the historical elements of health care and corporate trust.” — Yardley News, PA

“This is a warts-and-all biography. It tells of Johnson’s achievements . . . and also his shortcomings.” — Business News - New Jersey

“This is a warts-and-all biography. It tells of Johnson’s achievements . . . and also his shortcomings.” — Business News - New Jesey

The fascinating story of the life and times of Robert Wood Johnson, a creative and dynamic leader who put the public trust before profit. He made Johnson & Johnson one of the world’s great companies, then left his fortune to The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to improve health care in America.

Order Robert Wood Johnson — The Gentleman Rebel: Lawrence G. Foster form Amazon.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
In Tokyo’s San’ya district, day laborers live in crowded, smelly bunkhouses (doya) and rise early each morning to visit the San’ya Welfare Recruiting Office, where the competition is fierce for backbreaking work that pays paltry wages. Oyama (a pseudonym), a college graduate who dropped out of the corporate world at age 40, lived in San’ya for 12 years, six of them during the 1980s “bubble economy” and six after its collapse. At some point, he began writing down his experiences, and submitted his manuscript to a competition “as a lark.” He won, but declined to attend the award ceremony, and continues to live on the streets of Tokyo, albeit in a different neighborhood. He has a self-described “inability to interact with other people,” and translator Fowler acknowledges that even among day laborers, Oyama is particularly eccentric. But the narrative here is generally strong and engaging. To those interested in Japanese culture, this book will surely be an intriguing look at an obscure aspect of the culture.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The New Yorker
A failed salaryman, Oyama (a pseudonym) abandoned the corporate world at the age of forty and retreated to the Tokyo slum of San’ya, "where someone lacking any vitality whatsoever could go about the business of accommodating his own fecklessness and ill luck." There he scrounged for day labor and bunked in flophouses with eight men to a room, all the while seeking to minimize contact with other people, to the point of renouncing sex ("Any deficiencies in my sex life are a small price to pay for the pleasure of living apart from my fellow man"). "I am truly devoid of all virtue," he informs us. This is neither a boast nor a bid for sympathy; although Oyama’s dim view of himself and others recalls the rantings of Dostoyevsky’s Underground Man, his tone is resigned, even serene. This meditative memoir won a literary prize in Japan; since then, Oyama reports in an epilogue, he has left San’ya to live on the streets, scraping by with the award money from his book and looking forward to the "thrill" of one day scavenging for food.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

Order A Man with No Talents: Memoirs of a Tokyo Day Laborer: Oyama Shiro, Edward Fowler form Amazon.