Business Adventures


Business Adventures is a 1969 collection of 12 essays written by John Brooks. The essays, all of which were previously published in The New Yorker, deal with financial and corporate life in the United States. In 1963 Harper & Row published The Fate of the Edsel and Other Business Adventures, which contains 3 of the 12 essays published in the 1969 collection.
On July 11, 2014 in an essay published in the Wall Street Journal and slightly later in his blog, Bill Gates proclaimed Business Adventures, recommended to him by Warren Buffett, as "the best business book I've ever read."
On July 8, 2014, Open Road Media released an e-book edition entitled Business Adventures: Twelve Classic Tales from the World of Wall Street and in August 2014 offered a paperback edition. In 2014 Penguin Random House Audio released an audiobook of Business Adventures: Twelve Classic Tales from the World of Wall Street narrated by Johnny Heller.

Table of contents of 2014 edition

  1. The fluctuation: the little crash in '62
The story of the Kennedy Slide of 1962 is told.
  1. The fate of the Edsel: a cautionary tale
The essay tells how the Ford Motor Company lost $350 million in a failed attempt to sell Edsels.
  1. The federal income tax: its history and peculiarities
  2. A reasonable amount of time: insiders at Texas Gulf Sulphur
  3. Xerox Xerox Xerox Xerox
Bill Gates has made this chapter available for free on his website.
  1. Making the customers whole: the death of a president
  2. The impacted philosophers: non-communication at GE
  3. The last great corner: a company called Piggly Wiggly
  4. A second sort of life: David E. Lilienthal, businessman
  5. Stockholder season: annual meetings and corporate power
  6. One free bite: a man, his knowledge, and his job
  7. In defense of sterling: the bankers, the pound, and the dollar