“More than two decades after Warren (Buffett) lent it to me—and more than four decades after it was first published,” Bill Gates once told The Wall Street Journal, a certain tome “remains the best business book I’ve ever read.”
That’s a pretty remarkable statement by one of the most successful businessmen in the world, don’t you think? And as a serious advisor you may feel somewhat daunted that (a) Mr. Gates could single out a book for this praise, yet (b) you do not know what it is, and (c) you’ve never read it. It becomes my happy task to enlighten you.
(Just before I do, may I ask: is it just me, or are you not faintly charmed by the notion that one of the richest men who ever lived might “lend” a book to a friend of comparable means, instead of just buying him a copy?)
The book is Business Adventures: Twelve Classic Tales from the World of Wall Street, by John Brooks (1920-1993). Brooks was simply the most perceptive, humane and elegant writer ever to turn his attention to the world of business and finance, as I said some time ago when reviewing, in these little essays, his classic Once in Golconda: A True Drama of Wall Street 1920-1938.
Beginning in 1949, Brooks wrote long, thoughtful reports in the New Yorker, and Business Adventures, as the subtitle indicates, contains an even dozen of his very best from the end of the 1950s through the following decade.
Every reader will have his/her personal favorite, and identifying yours will be part of the fun. Mine is perhaps Brooks’ best known, “The Fate of the Edsel,” which is as you can imagine a wryly clinical inquiry into the most disastrous new product introduction of the twentieth century.
But I’ve just as often returned to his vivid report of the “flash crash” of 1962, which as a freshman in college was the very first stock market event of which I became personally aware, and then only because a friend in my dorm was talking about how terribly upset his father was. Five years later to the day, I would be in E. F. Hutton & Company’s stockbroker training program.
To the career investment advisor, long-term perspective is the pure gold of our profession. And there is no more simultaneously useful and entertaining way of acquiring a rich new supply than by reading the peerless Brooks’ Business Adventures. Buffett, Gates and I highly recommend it.
© 2016 Nick Murray. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission. Nick reviews current books, articles and research findings in the “Resources” feature of his monthly newsletter, Nick Murray Interactive. To download the current sample issue, visit www.nickmurray.com, and click on “Newsletter.”