My Fave Biographies-cum-Business books

If you thought that books in the genre of Business and Management or biographies of business magnates are dull and boring, then you will change your mind after reading these books.

Among the few I have read I list these as my all-time favorites (not in any order). Postinmg them with gists posted on the Ner:

· Made in America: My Story

It's a story about entrepreneurship, and risk, and hard work, and knowing where you want to go and being willing to do what it takes to get there. And it's a story about believing in your idea even when maybe some other folks don't, and about sticking to your guns. Meet a genuine American folk hero cut from the homespun cloth of America's heartland - Sam Walton, who turned a single dime store in a hardscrabble cotton town into Wal-Mart, the largest retailer in the world. The undisputed merchant king of the late twentieth century, Sam never lost the common touch.

· NUTS! Southwest Airlines' Crazy Recipe for Business and Personal Success

Twenty five years ago, Herb Kelleher reinvented air travel when he founded Southwest Airlines, where the planes are painted like killer whales, a typical company maxim is Hire people with a sense of humor, and in flight meals are never served - just sixty million bags of peanuts a year. By sidestepping reengineering, total quality management, and other management philosophies and employing its own brand of business success, Kelleher's airline has turned a profit for twenty four consecutive years and seen its stock soar 300 percent since 1990.

· Losing My Virginity

It's not that Branson is known as a cross dresser, although he sometime does parade down the aisles of Virgin Atlantic wearing a short air-hostess skirt. It's that Branson is expected to do the unexpected, even the bizarre anything to publicize his latest venture...The fact is, Branson's widely reported stunts seem almost staid compared to the conventional way he manages his burgeoning empire.

· Beyond The Last Blue Mountain: A Life of J.R.D.Tata

Written with J.R.D. Tata's co-operation, this superb biography tells the J.R.D. story, from his birth to 1993, the year in which he died in Switzerland. The book is divided into four parts, Part I deals with the early years, from J.R.D's birth in France in 1904 to his accession to the Chairmanship of Tatas, India's largest industrial conglomerate, at the age of thirty four, Part II looks at his forty six years in Indian aviation.

· The Google Story

THE GOOGLE STORY is the definitive account of the populist media company powered by the world’s most advanced technology that in a few short years has revolutionized access to information about everything for everybody everywhere. In 1998, Moscow-born Sergey Brin and Midwest-born Larry Page dropped out of graduate school at Stanford University to, in their own words, ‘change the world’ through a search engine that would organize every bit of information on the Web for free.

· Lee Iacocca's Talking Straight and Iacocca : An Autobiography

He’s an American legend, a straight-shooting businessman who brought Chrysler back from the brink and in the process became a media celebrity, newsmaker and a man many have urged to run for President. The son of Italian immigrants, Lee Iacocca rose spectacularly through the ranks of Ford Motor Company to become its President, only to be toppled eight years later in a power play that should have shattered him. But Lee Iacocca did not get mad, he got even. He led a battle for Chryslers survival that made his name a symbol of integrity, know-how and guts for millions of Americans.

This year’s reading wish list includes:
· The Road Ahead
· Dirty Tricks : British Airway's Secret war against Virgin Atlantic
· It Happened In India: The Story of Pantaloons, Big Bazaar Central and the great Indian Consumer
· The Warren Buffett Way : Investment Strategies of the world's Greatest Investor
· Rags to Riches : Life & Time of Dhirajlal Hirachand Ambani
· Ogilvy on Advertising
· The Second Coming of Steve Jobs
· Confessions Of An Economic Hitman
· The Ranbaxy Story : The Rise of an Indian Multinational