Masters of Enterprise: Giants of American Business from John Jacob Astor and J.P. Morgan to Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey

Masters of Enterprise examines the lives of 25 American entrepreneurs, from John D. Rockefeller and Henry Ford to Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey, to find the common ingredients of their success. "First, all had good health and abundant energy," writes H.W. Brands, a professor of history at Texas A&M University, "enough for half-a-dozen careers each." The other elements that Brands identifies: all were hungry for success; they were persuasive at getting others on their side; they intensely identified with their work; and each had a burning creative vision. Brands dedicates a chapter to each of the 25, starting chronologically with real estate magnate John Jacob Astor in the late 1700s, and ending with software giant Bill Gates in the late 1990s. He describes the entrepreneurs' background, vision, and major deals, and draws lessons for today's business mavens.

Modern-day speculators might find enlightening the story of Jay Gould's cornering of the gold market in the 1800s, for instance. Brands dramatically describes the maneuvers Gould took to hide his buying and selling--and his underhanded but failed attempts at keeping the U.S. government from flooding the market with gold and driving the price down. And women entrepreneurs of today might find inspiring the lives of cosmetics titan Mary Kay Ash, designer Liz Claiborne, and television and movie star Oprah Winfrey--all overcame obstacles, personal and professional, to become giants in their fields.

Others profiled: industrialist Andrew Carnegie, Ray Kroc of McDonald's, Sam Walton of Wal-Mart, Motown founder Berry Gordy, Walt Disney, cable-television pioneer Ted Turner, and Intel's Andrew Grove. Well written and filled with anecdotes, Masters of Enterprise should be an entertaining read for entrepreneurs and fans of business biography and history. --Dan Ring