- Hardcover: 256 pages
- Publisher: Kogan Page
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0749459646
- ISBN-13: 978-0749459642
- Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 5,814,859 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
How They Blew It
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Plus, get an extra £5 Gift Certificate when you trade in books worth £10 or more before June 30, 2012. Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. |
Product details |
More About the Author
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I was really looking forward to reading "How They Blew It", particularly to learning much about the 16 'big time cock-up merchants' of recent times including Bernie Ebbers, Dick Fuld, Ken Lay, Jimmy Cayne, and Robert Tchenguiz.
On reflection I should have looked at the product description closer and realised that in a book of only just over 200 pages, there wasn't enough space to do justice to an in depth, detailed look at the business lives of these 'architects of commercial disasters'. Sure, with some individuals I learned more than I did to start with and with others frankly not a lot more, leaving a feeling of disappointment, and frustration that it stopped somewhat short of the real deal. A comment made by an earlier reviewer suggests that a search on Google would have been just as productive, and while I think this is a little harsh, can understand the point being made.
The 16 CEO's and Entrepreneurs with their finger marks all over some of the world's catastrophic business failures were a complex, varied and, fascinating collection whose story cannot be told, other than in a cursory manner, over an average page allocation of 12.5 pages.
On reflection I should have looked at the product description closer and realised that in a book of only just over 200 pages, there wasn't enough space to do justice to an in depth, detailed look at the business lives of these 'architects of commercial disasters'. Sure, with some individuals I learned more than I did to start with and with others frankly not a lot more, leaving a feeling of disappointment, and frustration that it stopped somewhat short of the real deal. A comment made by an earlier reviewer suggests that a search on Google would have been just as productive, and while I think this is a little harsh, can understand the point being made.
The 16 CEO's and Entrepreneurs with their finger marks all over some of the world's catastrophic business failures were a complex, varied and, fascinating collection whose story cannot be told, other than in a cursory manner, over an average page allocation of 12.5 pages.
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
How does a perceived financial guru bring about a business catastrophe? It is quite a question and there are reasons aplenty behind a humiliating fall from financial grace. The authors of this book - Jamie Oliver and Tony Goodwin - attempt to understand these by highlighting examples of those who had it all and then simply - blew it!
Some treaded where they should not have, some got greedy, some could not respond to financial challenges, some invested in assets they did not fully comprehend while others were simply vain. The end result was the same in each case - financial ruin. In a book of little over 200 pages, the authors provide 16 such examples with stark details of events and failures worth staggering sums of money.
This book is no moral discourse, but while reading it I simply felt obliged to examine the rights and wrongs of each of the cases mentioned. It is hardly a surprise that the egregious James Cayne (of Bear Stearns) and vainglorious Dick Fuld (of Lehman Brothers) are among the sixteen.
Ken Lay and Bernie Ebbers who were at the helm of past failed giants Enron and WorldCom are there too, as are Russian heavyweights Boris Berezovsky and Mikhail Khodorkovsky who find themselves in this book for very different reasons. While financial failure is the common thing among these men, how they got there is not.
The authors look at the personality traits of these business leaders and the perhaps precariously fine line between success and failure. I found this book to be a thoroughly good read. It targets a general readership base and people who appreciate corporate histories. Students of management studies and finance managers would enjoy the book too.
Some treaded where they should not have, some got greedy, some could not respond to financial challenges, some invested in assets they did not fully comprehend while others were simply vain. The end result was the same in each case - financial ruin. In a book of little over 200 pages, the authors provide 16 such examples with stark details of events and failures worth staggering sums of money.
This book is no moral discourse, but while reading it I simply felt obliged to examine the rights and wrongs of each of the cases mentioned. It is hardly a surprise that the egregious James Cayne (of Bear Stearns) and vainglorious Dick Fuld (of Lehman Brothers) are among the sixteen.
Ken Lay and Bernie Ebbers who were at the helm of past failed giants Enron and WorldCom are there too, as are Russian heavyweights Boris Berezovsky and Mikhail Khodorkovsky who find themselves in this book for very different reasons. While financial failure is the common thing among these men, how they got there is not.
The authors look at the personality traits of these business leaders and the perhaps precariously fine line between success and failure. I found this book to be a thoroughly good read. It targets a general readership base and people who appreciate corporate histories. Students of management studies and finance managers would enjoy the book too.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
In recent years, serial entrepreneurs and celebrity CEOs have become rock stars, not just of the corporate world but also of society at large. People love to learn about big business mavens, what they do, where they live, what they drive, where they party and who their spouses are. Even more darkly compelling are the bad boy wheelers and dealers who have dramatically blown up their firms through financial chicanery (almost exclusively a male activity; thus, few bad girls of business exist). In this timely yet disturbing book, journalist Jamie Oliver and recruitment expert Tony Goodwin present a rogues' gallery of entrepreneurs and CEOs who have disgraced themselves and destroyed their companies, often trashing the savings of multitudes of innocent bystanders. Some of these guys didn't blow it, exactly, in that they went home plenty rich - but their firms still suffered on their watch. The authors lightly, charmingly depict the lives of these corporate desperados, offering lessons other leaders can draw from their stories. While morbidly fascinating and a bit sensational, the book sometimes loses its edge as it catalogs deals negotiated, firms bought, bad strategies enacted and millions lost. Nonetheless, getAbstract quite enjoys this voyeur's look at how these big shots imploded and how to avoid making the same mistakes.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Interesting but not informative
I agree with a different reviewer who said that this book is no more than you could glean from reading newspapers on the people involved. Read more
Published 1 month ago by MumofTwo
Disappointing
This was reviewed in the IoD magazine so I was expecting something useful. Instead it is a collection of trite tales re-heated from various press articles. Read more
Published 15 months ago by N. Bettes
Promises so much, delivers so little
This book, unfortunately, is not much better than a glorified Google search. The authors have not conducted any meaningful investigation (e.g. Read more
Published 22 months ago by Breadstick
Great real life lessons
This is a great book - many business books recount the success someone had which is often down to a "time and place" or unique to that individual, this book goes one better, it... Read more
Published 23 months ago by G. B. Read
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Search Customer Discussions
|
![[Start the discussion]](http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/02/x-locale/communities/discussion_boards/start-new-discussion-sec._V192198663_.gif){kind=small}
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
