I like to dabble for "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" as Ralph Waldo Emerson would remind us. So dabble I have in major biographies, business books, newspaper stories, business articles, that all-consuming yet maddeningly elusive arena of fiction, as well as business consulting and slum lordism.
In more recent history, I've written a number of major white papers for the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth: The Innovation Challenge (Fall 2010); Is Capitalism Sustainable? (Winter 2009); and Oil and Water: Business Opportunities to Fuel our Future (Winter 2008); among others. Frankly, these papers remind me that it's a scary world out there.
My biography work includes:
- Carnegie, published in 2002, which has sold over 25,000 copies. It was selected as one of the best biography/business books for 2002; featured on C-Span’s Booknotes; and was also reviewed widely, in Barron's, The Economist, The Washington Times, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and The London Times, among many other newspapers and magazines. Barron's cited the book as "the definitive Andrew Carnegie."
- Blood & Whiskey: The Life and Times of Jack Daniel, the first ever biography of the flamboyant boy moonshiner turned whiskey baron in the tumultuous post-Civil War South. Blood & Whiskey was featured on NPR’s Marketplace, BBC Radio, C-Span’s BookTV, and was the subject of an Associated Press article reprinted widely across the United States.
- Ignorance, Confidence and Filthy Rich Friends: The Business Adventures of Mark Twain, which was a BookSense pick for March 2007, featured on NPR’s Marketplace program, and reviewed in The Wall Street Journal, among many other periodicals.
- Portrait of War: The U.S. Army's First Combat Artists and the Doughboy's Experience in WWI. This one is my favorite in some respects and perhaps the best, but that's my biased judgement.
I also created a business book series that paid for some meals over the years, with about 100,000 copies sold in English alone. The series includes The Book of Business Wisdom, The Book of Leadership Wisdom, The Book of Investing Wisdom, The Book of Entrepreneurs' Wisdom, The Book of Management Wisdom, and The Little Book of Business Wisdom. These books were endorsed by such industry leaders as Warren Bennis, the CEOs of NBC and Merrill Lynch, and renowned investor Roy Neuberger, among others. Many of the books have been translated into Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Russian, German, Dutch, and Portuguese.
And then there are many articles for Investor's Business Daily, profiling past and present business leaders, and Across the Board, which included a cover article detailing the mega-merger craze of the latter 1990s.
As a lecturer, I've enjoyed speaking before many civic and business organizations, including numerous libraries, museums, and historical societies, the venerable Conference Board; and I was fortunate enough to deliver the keynote address at the Friends of the Library USA event at the 2003 American Library Association conference in Toronto.
To promote all of the above, I have appeared on many national and local television and radio programs.
A graduate of Lafayette College (BA Economics) and Seton Hall University (MA English Literature) and long time Metro NY inhabitant, I have escaped with family to Hanover, New Hampshire.
