A nice observation from the Xerox, Xerox, Xerox, Xerox chapter:<p>"In any case, office reproduction began to grow very rapidly. (It may seem paradoxical that this growth coincided with the rise of the telephone, but perhaps it isn’t. All the evidence suggests that communication between people by whatever means, far from simply accomplishing its purpose, invariably breeds the need for more.) "
I feel very uncomfortable that I cannot see what is so brilliant about this book that Bill Gates goes on and on about it. I tried to read it and was bored and stopped half way through it.
Anybody can shed some light? Share what you've learned, please.
How come everything is so dramatic this days? " The Best Business Book I’ve Ever Read". What happened to: "Recommended reading book! you should add it to your reading list"
I bought and read the book a few months back. About half the book is about businesses (mainly large corporations), while the other half is about banking and the stock market. I think this disappointed readers who were expecting a directly applicable "how-to" book on business.<p>Here's a run-down of the book by chapter, with the chapters ostensibly related to business marked by asterisks:<p><pre><code> 1. The Fluctuation -- on stock market volatility
2. *The Fate of the Edsel* -- how Ford failed to find a product-market fit.
3. The Federal Income Tax -- self-explanatory.
4. A Reasonable Amount of Time -- on insider trader.
5. *Xerox Xerox Xerox Xerox* -- read this online.
6. Making the Customers Whole -- about how a large investment firm crumbled
when a single large speculative investment fell through, and how the
stock exchange stepped in to repay the firm's customers.
7. *The Impacted Philosophers* -- on an anti-trust investigation of General
Electric (perhaps Gates related personally to this).
8. The Last Great Corner -- about stock price manipulation
9. A Second Sort of Life -- about David Lilienthal, who went transitioned from
a career in government to investment banking.
10. *Stockholder Season* -- on what it's like, as an individual stockholder,
to attend a stockholder meeting.
11. *One Free Bite* -- on intellectual property and non-compete agreements.
12. In Defense of Sterling -- about how the central banks of the world
cooperate to maintain stability across currencies.
</code></pre>
Many of these stories would be particularly relevant if you ran a multinational corporation or were one of the world's wealthiest investors. I think it's no accident that Bill Gates and Warren Buffet enjoyed this book so much.<p>I happened to enjoy the parts about Wall Street, so I enjoyed the book. The comparisons to Michael Lewis are apt. It was most interesting for me to see how many of the same economic issues being discussed today (income inequality, intellectual property, corporate misconduct, the extraordinary power and influence of the banking industry, etc.) were discussed in nearly the exact same terms 50+ years ago. It doesn't give you the sense that great progress has been made on these fronts, and perhaps we'll still be complaining about the exact same things in 2065.
Everything I've read about this book, apart from comments by Bill Gates, prevented me from reading it. Does anyone have any recommendations of better business books?<p>I was incredibly inspired by Isaacson's Jobs biography. To learn that someone so flawed can achieve such greatness is inspiring. I also read it almost like a mystery novel, trying to decipher what he was actually doing that was creating such value. I've read a number of Isaacson's other books but none were as inspiring. I did enjoy most of them though.<p>Any other recommendations of business books I should actually read?
I remember reading this when it was posted back in July. I thought it was on HN I saw it, but searching for other posts linking to this article came up empty.<p>Anyone know if there is a prior discussion?
This is an interesting follow up for sure <a href="http://www.gatesnotes.com/Development/Great-Books-on-Science-and-Innovation" rel="nofollow">http://www.gatesnotes.com/Development/Great-Books-on-Science...</a>
This book was re-released because of this recommendation. Gates I'm guessing coordinated with amazon to get it back for sale, as previously the rare copies were prohibitively expensive.
> But the final outcome of the struggle was still uncertain late in
1968. McLuhan, for one, was convinced that all efforts to preserve
the old forms of author protection represent backward
thinking and are doomed to failure (or, anyway, he was convinced
the day he wrote his American Scholar article). “There
is no possible protection from technology except by technology,”
he wrote. “When you create a new environment with one
phase of technology, you have to create an anti-environment
with the next.” But authors are seldom good at technology,
and probably do not flourish in anti-environments.<p>That summaries all the government effort with copyright