Bill Gates' praise turns John Brooks' Business Adventures into bestseller
An out-of-print collection of essays about corporate America first published in 1969 has shot to the top of bestseller lists after Bill Gates revealed it was his favourite business book.
An out-of-print collection of essays about corporate America first published in 1969 has shot to the top of bestseller lists after Bill Gates revealed it was his favourite business book.
John Brooks’ Business Adventures is a collection of the late journalist’s articles for The New Yorker from the 1960s, covering topics from the rise of Xerox to scandals at General Electric and Texas Gulf Sulphur. Microsoft co-founder Gates wrote in The Wall Street Journal that the long out-of-print title “remains the best business book I’ve ever read”.
Brooks didn’t boil his work down into pat how-to lessons or simplistic explanations
His praise galvanised other readers to get their hands on the book. AbeBooks reported that on Friday and Saturday last week the book was the top search term on its site. On Sunday, it said it had no copies left.
Gates’ praise – and readers’ subsequent interest – also led to the book being brought back into print. “I was very pleased to learn Bill Gates was a fan of my father’s book,” the late author’s son, Alex Brooks, told business news site Quartz. “That’s kind of great news, so we called my father’s agent, and asked them if we could get an e-book ready in a hurry. They got in touch with the publisher Open Road, and Open Road seemed to think it was a good opportunity.”
On Amazon.com, Open Road’s new edition of the book is number five in the retailer’s overall books bestseller list, ahead of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch, and this summer’s smash hit, Thomas Piketty’s Capital. The publisher will release a paperback edition in September, after putting out an e-book last week.
“It’s certainly true that many of the particulars of business have changed. But the fundamentals have not. Brooks’ deeper insights about business are just as relevant today as they were back then,” wrote Gates of Business Adventures. “Unlike a lot of today’s business writers, Brooks didn’t boil his work down into pat how-to lessons or simplistic explanations for success.”