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's Business Adventures is a collection of the late journalist's New Yorker articles from the 1960s, covering topics from the rise of Xerox and the $350m Edsel disaster to scandals at GE and Texas Gulf Sulphur. Gates wrote in the Wall Street Journal this weekend that the long out-of-print title "remains the best business book I've ever read".
His praise galvanised other readers to get their hands on the book: Abebooks reported this weekend that on Friday and Saturday, Business Adventures by John Brooks was the top search term on its site. "This morning (Sunday), we have no copies left on the site," said spokesman Richard Davies.
Gates's 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 ebook ready in a hurry. They got in touch with the publisher Open Road, and Open Road seemed to think it was a good opportunity and jumped right in."
On Amazon.com, Open Road's new edition of the book is currently number five in the retailer's overall books bestseller list, ahead of Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl and 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 ebook last week.
"It's certainly true that many of the particulars of business have changed. But the fundamentals have not. Brooks's 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. (How many times have you read that some company is taking off because they give their employees free lunch?) You won't find any listicles in his work. Brooks wrote long articles that frame an issue, explore it in depth, introduce a few compelling characters and show how things went for them."
Gates highlights Brooks's coverage of Ford's Edsel fiasco, saying the journalist "refutes the popular explanations for why Ford's flagship car was such a historic flop. It wasn't because the car was overly poll-tested; it was because Ford's executives only pretended to be acting on what the polls said. 'Although the Edsel was supposed to be advertised, and otherwise promoted, strictly on the basis of preferences expressed in polls, some old-fashioned snake-oil selling methods, intuitive rather than scientific, crept in.' It certainly didn't help that the first Edsels 'were delivered with oil leaks, sticking hoods, trunks that wouldn't open and push buttons that … couldn't be budged with a hammer.'"
Alex Brooks told Quartz that "I think he was one of the first to consider business journalism as a sort of topic for just general popular readership. I think mostly before he came along business journalism was written for businessmen. The idea of telling business stories as just kind of entertaining pieces of reading was a real innovation."
Gates, meanwhile, revealed that he first picked up the title after stock-market maven Warren Buffett lent it to him, not long after the pair met in 1991. "Warren, if you're reading this, I still have your copy," writes Gates.
