Giants of Enterprise: Seven Business Innovators and the Empires They Built

"Giants of Enterprise" is, fittingly, a giant book: Some 400-odd pages of primary text, plus almost another hundred pages of endnotes and bibliographical comments. In the author's choice to explore several of the most extraordinary of "self-made" capitalists from American history (Carnegie, Eastman, Ford, Watson, Revson, Walton, and Noyce), he offers a textbook-quality examination of each case study -- but that is the book's predominant shortcoming, too.It is so very long and exhaustive that the reader is challenged to find a true common thread among all seven subjects. They are each intriguing individually, and even a good student of business history is likely to learn something new. But the central thesis of the book -- that these "Giants of Enterprise" stand apart because they either invented breakthrough technologies or applied those technologies in novel ways -- isn't the strongest common thread to bind them all together.

The book was required reading at a Harvard Business class and was gifted to my husband. We then purchased another copy for our son. The stories of creative, hard working masterminds of American products and their businesses that have contributed to our culture and society are inspiring. It’s a tribute and celebration of individual freedoms and the sacrifices made for achievement of goals.

I was hoping for another set of biographies of these great men. I've read aout them all before, so I really hoped this book had something else. And it did.More than pointing out the accomplishments of these men and how they did it (which is what most people look for, but unfortunately won't find in any book as these men were great because they were born great), this book analyses the psychological aspect and personalities of these Barons of Industry.Granted, you won't find secret formulas here. But you will be surprised by how these great men of business were transformed by their accomplishments to the point that, some of them, were unrecognizable years later. A very entertaining read, with the possible exception of the last part dealing with Intel's Noyce, which gets too technical for my taste.

I was introduced to this book via an article in Investor's Business Daily. It's refreshing to read this kind of history without all of the modern-day revisionist editorializing about "robber barons" or the evil wealthy "one percent". On a personal level, some of the men described in this book were far from moral perfection (especially Henry Ford), but all were years ahead of their time in their respective businesses. The Modern Industrial Era of 20th century America would not have been possible without the efforts of these gentlemen. No view of American history can be complete without understanding who these people were, what they accomplished and what motivated them.

Good. I guess I would recommend to others. Pretty interesting history of some of the USAs most influential people ever.

I was surprised to find that this book is as much about the personalities and idiosyncrasies of the seven "giants of enterprise" as it is about their business methods. The book contains a great deal of interesting information and the author takes issue with a number of previous interpretations of the work of these individuals, but I did not come away with any clear overall argument regarding entrepreneurship or the evolution of big business in the U.S.

Richard S Tedlow book is a history of businessmen who were great. If you are looking for a how to this book is not it. It discusses some great ideas but I found the book rather boring for its 437 pages. It is a dense read and although it does have some inspiration if is a good book but it is not a page turner.

can be a little slow at times, but its a great read.

Lots of incredible detail about how the other half got there and how they maintained it. Very captivating read. B

Just a glimpse into how entrepreneurs think...