Book Description
From the author of The Sisters, a chronicle of the most brutal, turbulent, and exuberant period of England's history.
Bess Hardwick, the fifth daughter of an impoverished Derbyshire nobleman, did not have an auspicious start in life. Widowed at sixteen, she nonetheless outlived four monarchs, married three more times, built the great house at Chatsworth, and died one of the wealthiest and most powerful women in English history.
In 1527 England was in the throes of violent political upheaval as Henry VIII severed all links with Rome. His daughter, Queen Mary, was even more capricious and bloody, only to be followed by the indomitable and ruthless Gloriana, Elizabeth I. It could not have been more hazardous a period for an ambitious woman; by the time Bess's first child was six, three of her illustrious godparents had been beheaded.
Using journals, letters, inventories, and account books, Mary S. Lovell tells the passionate, colorful story of an astonishingly accomplished woman, among whose descendants are counted the dukes of Devonshire, Rutland, and Portland, and, on the American side, Katharine Hepburn.
Customer Reviews:
I loved this book.......2007-05-07
My first experience with Bess of Hardwick was through a historical romance novel several years ago. After some research online, I discovered so much more about her. I find her to be an extraordinary woman who lived in difficult times. I felt that Mary Lovell captured her perfectly. There was so much more information that I had never read before. I would recommend this biography to anyone who enjoys reading about life in the Tudor era.
absorbing.......2007-01-04
A well researched, very interesting study of a remarkable woman who kept her head when many around her were (literally) losing theirs. She also managed to keep and enlarge a fortune.
An Excellent readable biography but with some reservations.......2006-12-28
Mary S Lovell has written two of my favourite biographies and I find her work generally excellent. She is very considerate of her subjects, but also very thorough, digging through screeds of papers to find information not previously discovered by other biographers. With Jane Digby and with her biography on the Mitfords she provided new and at times stunning insights into their lives.
She has done so again with Bess of Hardwick, interestingly a distant past relative of Dukes of Devonshire. Certainly she has put this woman into persepctive of her time. In her introduction to the biography she writes that Bess was the second most powerful woman in Tudor Times next to Elizabeth the first, an extraodinary feat given that woman at that time had few legal or property rights. She was born just before Elizabeth 1 and died after her, so their times were very much reflected.
However the introduction also introduces the reservations she has. Firstly that there is almost nothing written or in reference to Bess's early years, and so Lovell has had to make large jumps on faith in what what happened or what was likely. She has clearly researched the period thoroughly, the customs, the religious practices, the geographical situation she found herself in and political expediencies of the time. However as the old saying goes, "one swallow does not a summer make" - and simply because this is how things were generally done in these times does not mean that this is how Bess did them. So I found it somewhat annoying that Lovell talked with seeming certainty (and no clear documentary evidence) of how Bess would have been christened, given to a wet nurse, educated and so on. I think, that given Lovell's research it is PROBABLE, however I felt with the information given to us that it could not have been as confidently accepted as she makes out.
I also found some other points a bit annoying. For instance Bess lived with The Lady Frances Brandon for some time (mother of Lady Jane Grey and her sisters). Apparently she was a rather haughty rude woman and Lovell Quotes one of Lady Frances' children talking about how her mother and Father pinch and torment her no matter what she does. However it is clear that Bess got on well with her and was well treated and from this Bess must have been quite charming and politically incredibly able. After all Frances was the grand-daughter of a King. To be allied with her was politically incredibly expedient. But Bess managed to retain friendships with both herself and her children. This points to an extremely adept woman. However when it came to Bess's second marriage a couple of years later Lovell insists that it can only have been for love. The man, William Cavendish, was twice Bess's age, in his 40's with children almost her own age. A politically influential courtier and someone enormously useful for Bess. She may well have loved him, but at 19 and having lived 5 years as companion and lady in waiting in several houses I cannot imagine a young Tudor woman of Bess's age not understanding the political expediency of marrying this well. Lovell Talks about Bess not knowing if she was fertile and so not knowing if she could set up a dynasty or not. Frankly she knew that CAvendish was virile enough to have children, why she should not think that she could also have children and establish a dynasty? She was smart enough at this stage to have pursued, legally, her widows rights through the courts to her first marriage, why could she not be smart enough to see a bright future politically and financially with this man?
This is simply a few of the items I found a little annoying in Lovell's reasoning, it is almost as though she wanted Bess to be a naieve and love stricken tudor lass early but contrary, I think, to the evidence she provides.
However with reservations such as these, I still found the biography an excellent read, and the possibility of making your own conclusions to the information provided easy enough. Lovell writes well and presents her information nicely. The only other problem I had was that she keeps talking about things that will come up later in the book and so not really explaining them. Teeth Grindingly annoying at times, but necessary if you are going to present a story in a strictly chronological manner which she has.
I would recommend this book, and certainly her other works. But read with an open mind.
highly readable account, especially strong on the early years.......2006-08-18
Mary S. Lovell is a much more skillful writer and story-teller than most serious historians writing about Tudor figures; her full coverage of Bess's long life is a pleasure to read.
Lovell makes her strongest contributions in recounting Bess's early life, especially the significance of her connections with the family of Lady Jane Grey. Thanks in part to her own coincidental family connections, Lovell has also rescued Bess's third marriage to Sir William St. Loe from historical obscurity.
While the book is highly readable throughout, the later sections-- roughly from the marriage to the Earl of Shrewsbury onward-- don't really add much new ground versus David N. Durant's earlier "Bess of Hardwick: Portrait of an Elizabethan Dynast." Durant tells a more interesting account of Bess's building projects at Hardwick; provides more drama as he recounts the eventual conflict between Bess and her granddaughter Arbella Stuart; and covers Bess's mastery of the legal system in fascinating detail, something Lovell largely overlooks in her emphasis on personal relationships. Neither author has quite solved the dilemma of how to present Bess's life during the period it was dominated by her husband's custody of Mary Queen of Scots, but Lovell offers more insight and an impartial stance in assessing how and why the Shrewsburys' marriage broke down. Lovell occasionally gets sidetracked by other figures around Bess, notably the Earl of Essex at one stretch late in the book.
These are fairly minor quibbles, though. Overall, Lovell has produced a highly successful biography, a book that really paints a nuanced and persuasive portrait of Bess. This is undoubtedly the single best account of Bess's remarkable life.
Wonderful book.......2006-07-23
This is a marvelous book. I was at first worried it would be too dry and erudite for me, but I enjoyed every word. It is beautifully written with new research and strong documentation. The footnotes are intesting also. I apprecaited the way Mary Lovell referred to the present to make situations more understandable and how she explained old terms and side issues with footnotes at the bottom of the pages. Because the British nobility has so many names and titles the same, she refers back to other incidents to help keep them straight in your mind. I highly recommend this book.
Average customer rating:
- I walked away with key concepts that will stay with me!
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Trammell Crow, Master Builder: The Story of Americas Largest Real Estate Empire
Robert Sobel
Manufacturer: John Wiley & Sons
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0471613266 |
Book Description
Brings alive the story of Trammell Crow--the visionary real estate developer whose brilliant career served to shape the future of the field. Follows Crow from his origins as a small-time real estate dealer to his transformation into a corporate symbol. Discusses the bold methods that Crow used to build the most influential real estate company in America. Includes an examination of how Crow's risky strategy of making all principals partners in his firm and offering equity interest to deal managers paid off with spectacular profits. A lively account of Crow's mission to break all the rules and become the greatest builder of our age.
Customer Reviews:
I walked away with key concepts that will stay with me!.......2005-05-22
Trammell Crow
Trammell Crow; Master Builder, The Story of Americas Largest Real Estate Empire by Robert Sobel
The book brings you through Trammell's life from his early years doing odd jobs such as, plucking chickens for 15 cents an hour in the early 1930's to his eventual start in real estate at the age of 33. By 1975 Crow was involved in 604 partnerships and 132 corporations.
The most memorable concept that Crow embraced was making almost every key employee a partner in his deals. I believe this kept him going though the tough times because partners as opposed to employees will go the extra mile in a squeeze. And Crow went through some tough times! He was loaded with dirt, (land) during a downturn and as you can imagine, dirt does not generate cash flow. So, as so many real estate giants do, he ran into cash flow problems during a downturn. The book walks you through his remarkable restructuring and how everyone involved with him pulled together and unified to get through the cash crunch.
It's a tremendously insightful concept that our company, Delking has embraced, by making key employees partners in deals. We hope this will increase longevity and keep them focused and exhilarated as it did for Trammell Crow.
I enjoyed the ability to peer into the life of a truly charged real estate operator and was able to walk away with some key concepts that will stay with me for life.
By Kevin Kingston, author of, "A 20,000% Gain in Real Estate"
http://www.bloglines.com/blog/KevinKingston
Book Description
Alexander the Great endures as one of the most admired and emulated leaders in world history. In our time, his example of unprecedented and unparalleled success has inspired leaders of business and government, from media mogul Ted Turner (who keeps a bronze bust of Alexander in his office) to Desert Storm commander General Norman Schwarzkopf (who credits Alexander's tactical innovations for his dramatic flanking maneuver against the Iraqi army in the liberation of Kuwait).
In Alexander the Great's Art of Strategy, Partha Bose, one of the world's leading experts on business strategy, gives fresh insight into Alexander's leadership and legacy--and shows how you can use the secrets of his success to conquer today's challenges, as successful executives, politicians, and generals have.
Blending insights from his years of experience in the business world with his lifelong study of Alexander, Bose interweaves a gripping biography with compelling analyses of contemporary case studies of successful corporations that have applied Alexander's lessons to their business, including Dell, General Electric, Wal-Mart, and the Washington Post company. This is a provocative and invaluable audiobook for leaders everywhere.
Customer Reviews:
Good Fun Overview of Alexander and Modern Business.......2007-04-03
I agree with some reviewers that this book isn't a serious scholarly work and the connections between Alexander's strategies and military/political conquests and the strategies used in the modern corporate world tend to be disjointed here and there, but still, it's good reading and it forces the reader to think about the similarities or simply discard what the author sees as such. It takes imagination on the part of the reader to analyze what Alexander had achieved and apply it to our daily modern lives, but Alexander certainly does have many things to teach us in the areas of strategy and the application of tactics and execution.
Some of the examples that Bose bring up make sense and show some connection to what Alexander did while others make you roll your eyes somewhat and go, "Yeah, okay, if you say so." Nonetheless, the book is fun to read and much faster to go through than most Alexander biographies as Alexander's achievements and strategies implemented are applied to things that we can relate to more readily. We are not constantly bombarded with names and places that we can't remember or put our fingers on as so many Alexander biographies tend to do. I finished this book in little over a day and had good time reading it and I'm sure I'll refer back to it more for enjoyment than anything else.
There is certainly much to be learned through the study of Alexander's remarkable life and his near-mythical achievements in such a short period of time. This is a good primer in that area although I would certainly not recommend it to anyone as the definitive book about what Alexander was all about and this book doesn't purport to be as such. That's what makes it good fun reading. Alexander was certainly a strategist of the highest order although he seems to have been guided as much by keen natural instincts as by highly-developed intellect. Obviously, some of these things simply cannot be taught. Still, the conjectures are interesting and fun to ponder and I recommend this book to the Alexander buff who already has a good well-rounded collection and wants to add a "fun" book for easy reading.
Light reading at best..........2007-01-07
That's what it is.
Not to be taken too seriously for historical accuracy or as a serious Harvard Business School management session.
But nice book juggling two supposedly disparate topics.
Gives you a good picture and some lessons.......2006-04-19
The problem with this book is that it simplifies and doesnt crasp some of the true lessons we could learn from Alexander.
However, the book gives a excellent account about his life and battles. I think that you should buy this book if you are intrested in alexander from a learning standpoint. I learned a few things from this book! But if you want to learn alexanders leadership style, then try find another book.
Like ancient history & business?.......2006-02-21
Then this is for you. While working on the WEF competitive reports with Besife Tonwe, we got into a discussion about how despite all the technology advances human nature has changed little in 3000 years. I thought not. Besife's claim was that read Niall Ferguson's House of Rothschild and you pretty much have the narratives of the 1929 crash and the 2000 tech wreck - except they take place between 1798 and 1848. Bose's book was the test and confirms his theory. Rats.
Good book if you like fiction.......2005-02-25
The people rating this high must be paid to do so. It's just riddled with historical inaccuracy ... Fuller's book on this topic is SO much better that I'm still kicking myself for buying this.
Just because I made the mistake doesn't mean you have to.
Average customer rating:
- Up Style, Down
- Essential reading if you own RailRoad Tycoon II
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Railroad Tycoon, II: Master Strategies for Empire Builders
Gathering of Developers
Manufacturer: Gathering of Developers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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Railroad Tycoon 2
ASIN: 1892817004 |
Customer Reviews:
Up Style, Down.......2001-09-19
Well it is a very good game and should be updated to build any where in sandbox mode and blah bla blah blah
Essential reading if you own RailRoad Tycoon II.......2000-05-06
Railroad Tycoon II is extremely flexible. At one level you can play it as an exciting multi-user game with robbers robbing trains, trains blowing apart and ruthless AI opponents. At another level you can read through the book and understand much more about how the game was built and its capabilities. You can control the speed of play, I use the slowest speed and even then I find it too fast when running over 300 trains in the UK at the same time. For me using the book, RailRoad Tycoon II Official strategy guide and the game together meant learning about the map editor so I could customise other people's maps and make my favourite map of England much more accurate to play. The game itself becomes much more interesting as you deal with more levels of complexity. You can even eliminate the AI opponents and robbers. Introduce new events and generally create your own world.
The game shows its North American roots. My background being English is very different, nowhere in England is more than 50 miles from the sea. Fishing and ports are much more important. My personal wish list would be to add different types of ports and a fish cargo to the game.
But to enjoy the game to the full you really need the Official Strategy Guide. Is it likely to have a harmful effect. Don't know. I have spent many hours playing the game, I have even learnt a bit of geography whilst playing it, I now know roughly where a few places like Denver and Frankfurt are. Also I can tell you exactly where the mountain ranges that are going to slow down trains are as well. It also gives an introduction to economics, how resources interact with cites and manufacturing plants.
Book Description
They built some of the first communal structures on the empire's frontiers. The empire's most powerful proconsuls sought entrance into their lodges. Their public rituals drew dense crowds from Montreal to Madras.
Customer Reviews:
Imperial Freemasons.......2007-05-28
Scholarly observations on the spread of freemasonry through the advance of Britain's empire.
Average customer rating:
- Good start, let down in the end
- Expectations Not Met - Novel Too Juvenile
- Really a 3.5 star rating...
- Excellant Novel
- Typical Bova--Excellent
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Empire Builders (The Grand Tour)
Ben Bova
Manufacturer: Tor Science Fiction
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Bova, Ben
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Powersat
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The Precipice (The Grand Tour; also Asteroid Wars)
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The Rock Rats (The Asteroid Wars, Book 2)
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Moonwar
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Moonrise
ASIN: 0812511654 |
Book Description
Dan Randolph never plays by the rules. A hell-raising maverick with no patience for fools, he is admired by his friends, feared by his enemies, and desired by the world's loveliest women. Acting as a twenty-first privateer, Randolph broke the political strangle-hold on space exploration, and became one of the world's richest men in the bargain.Now an ecological crisis threatens Earth--and the same politicians that Randolph outwitted the first time want to impose a world dictatorship to deal with it.Dan Randolph knows that the answer lies in more human freedom, not less--and in the boundless resources of space. But can he stay free long enough to give the world that chance?
Customer Reviews:
Good start, let down in the end.......2005-09-01
This book, my first by Ben Bova, started out very well. Dan Randolph was an amusing character and the overall setting was interesting. Bova generally did a good job of detailing the Grand Tour universe and began to develop a sense of doom from the impending environmental crisis. However, ultimately, the book was let down by three problems: 1) Jane Scanwell was a terribly weak character, especially for who seemed to have been a master politician, and it was hard to understand why she appeared to hate Dan so much at the beginning; Kate Williams wasn't that much better; 2) the irrelevant submarine earthquake; 3) the ending simply degenerated into a feel-good Hollywoodian James Bond rip-off.
A good start, but ultimately disappointing and unsatisfying.
Expectations Not Met - Novel Too Juvenile.......2004-11-17
Everything in this novel is too simplistically told - the greenhouse cliff that could be avoided by a conversion within 10 years to all fusion engines, to Dan Randolph who double dammed and said rain don't make applesauce too many times for me. The characters of Fletcher and George were better drawn.
Give me Bova's Mars book.
Really a 3.5 star rating..........2004-02-25
Rating System:
1 star = abysmal; some books deserve to be forgotten
2 star = poor; a total waste of time
3 star = good; worth the effort
4 star = very good; what writing should be
5 star = fantastic; must own it and share it with others
STORY: From back cover - "Dan Randolph, has become Dan Randolph, empire builder. His staff has found evidence that the greenhouse effect has been gathering speed and that soon, Earth will be on the edge of the greenhouse "cliff". Millions will die unless humankind changes its ways immediately."
On the run from the world government and other forces, Randolph battles to regain all that he has lost and save the world at the same time.
MY FEEDBACK:
1) At first I was groaning at the thought of some extremist "tree-hugging" storyline. Yet Bova handles the subject matter VERY well without getting overly preachy.
2) Some nice plot twists and believable opposition established
3) A complaint (not the only one) is that the end seemed to get wrapped up a little too swift and nicely. It ignored some issues that normally would carry on a lot longer considering the "history" Bova built between characters and the world they live in.
4) The character of Dan Randolph was enjoyable to read and the people who help him at various turns are a nice mix to watch
5) The audio book reader does a good job and even had different voices for different characters, which I always prefer.
OVERALL: It was interesting and entertaining. The "hard science" of the book was ok...nothing spectacular. It is worth the effort if you don't have anything else pressing to read.
Excellant Novel.......2000-07-20
This is really a unique novel. I don't recall reading anything by Ben Bova before this book. After reading this novel I decided that Mr. Bova wrote a good novel and I bought several more of his titles to see if he is consistent. Well, that is not the point of this review. This is a review of `Empire Builders' not Ben Bova.
What a really good novel this was. The protagonist Dan Randolf is a wonderful creation on Bova's part, as a previous reviewer noted. I don't know how much of the science involved in the book is realistic but it was written in such a way that I found it believable. The motives of the key players were logical and the plot made sense. What more can you ask for.
Amazon did an adequate job of giving the plot overview so I won't waste your time here with the same. I will only add that this novel succeeds in nearly every particular. As you are reading the novel you are constantly confronted with actions and reactions that are surprising to you, as the reader, but seem like the only logical event after reading them. A definite recommend on my part.
Typical Bova--Excellent.......2000-05-02
The best thing about this book is how Bova is able to please the entire political spectrum on the enviromental issues that are addressed in the book. Left wingers will be pleased that the plot includes pending enviromental catastrophe caused by humanity's excesses while right wingers will be pleased that the solution is more freedom, not less. Dan Randolf, the main character of the book, is the best protagonist Bova has ever created.
Book Description
This authoritative and richly illustrated history covers the Empire Builders though its 1970 demise. Included here are the trains, their various forms of motive power and rolling stock, and their services. A wealth of black and white archival images and period color photography depict the Empire Builder along one of the nation's most scenic routes. Also shown are uniforms, dinnerware, terminals and stations, interior views of Pullman and dome cars, period advertisements, and route maps.
Customer Reviews:
Great Northwest and Railroad History.......2007-03-17
This book starts with a biography of Great Northern Railroad founder, James J. Hill.
It then goes on to a history lesson about the building of the Great Northern Railroad
and its early years. Next comes a picture of the inauguration of the Empire Builder
and its early service as a heavyweight luxury train. Finally, the book addresses
the post World War 2 streamlined version of the train. There are some colored
pictures of the streamliner and of several color ads touting the luxury features of
the train and the magnificent trip through the Rocky Mountains. I wish the pictures
of the ads were larger, so that I could read the copy without a magnifying glass.
This book gives a good picture of the development of the Northwest and the part
played in this development by Great Northern and the Empire Builder.
Not For The Detail-Seeking Hobbyist.......2006-04-13
This is mostly a history of James Hill and the Great Northern Railroad. If someone is trying to build an accurate model of the passenger train the Empire Builder or the Great Northern Railroad they won't find the information they need here. There is little information about the trains themselves, the facilities, or the equipment they used. There's a lot more background information than I've seen in other books, and more history of the business side of GN than in other books.
Average customer rating:
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Empire Builder in the Texas Panhandle: William Henry Bush (West Texas a & M University Series, No 1)
Paul Howard Carlson
Manufacturer: Texas A&M University Press
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0890967121 |
Average customer rating:
- A Narrow Gauge Bio
- An interesting biography of a business genius
- left empty
- Great Book !
- A good brief bio of the Empire Builder
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James J. Hill: Empire Builder of the Northwest (The Oklahoma Western Biographies , Vol 12)
Michael P. Malone
Manufacturer: University of Oklahoma Press
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James J Hill & Opening of Northwest (Borealis Books)
ASIN: 0806128607 |
Customer Reviews:
A Narrow Gauge Bio.......2007-07-28
Right up front Malone admits this is neither an authoritative nor exhaustive biography of Jim Hill and he keeps his promise. But as a pretty quick (280 page) read of Hill it is a solid book if slightly antiseptic and repetitive at times. It is particularly interesting if you want to know more about the history of the Great Northern Railway.
An interesting biography of a business genius.......2000-07-25
«The wealth of the country, its capital, its credit, must be saved from the predatory poor as well as the predatory rich, but above all from the predatory politician» - James J. Hill.
In her 1962 lecture, «America's Persecuted Minority : Big Business», Ayn Rand distinguished two types of entrepreneurs, whom Burton Folsom Jr. was later to label «economic» and «political»: «self-made men who earned their fortunes by personal ability, by free trade on a free market» and «men with political pull, who made fortunes by means of special privileges granted to them by the government.» And according to her, James Jerome Hill was an arch-representative of the former group, because he built his transcontinental railroad, the Great Northern, «without any federal help whatever.»
Michael P. Malone's admiration for Hill, on the other hand, is much more moderate (and for those who think such moderation unjust, he is kind enough to direct us to Albro Martin's «highly laudatory» two-volume biography of Hill, *James J. Hill and the Opening of the Northwest*)
For instance, he puts the phrase «self-made man» in quotation marks when applying it to Hill, for, he says, Hill's fortune «sprout... from the rich seedbed of federal subsidy»: by completing his first large scale project in time (the Manitoba railroad), Hill managed to reap the «seventh largest of the original seventy-five railroad grants», located mostly in the fertile Red River valley. Therefore, Malone says, we should forget the «hoariest, and most mischievous, of all the many legends surrounding Hill»- the one perpetrated by Ayn Rand and, after her, Burton Folsom Jr.- which «rhapsodizes about how he built a great transcontinental line without the benefit of a federal land grant.»
Was Hill therefore just another political entrepreneur? I don't think so.
First, Malone here seems to be conflating federal subsidies and land grants. A federal subsidy, in my understanding, is a transfer of money or produced goods, which by its very essence involves a forced redistribution and is therefore immoral. A land grant, on the other hand, consists in the granting of a non-improved natural resource to its actual developer, in a good approximation of the Lockean ideal of acquisition through labour. What makes it a form of «federal aid» is only the government's assumption of the power to acquire land by some non-Lockean process (i.e. by fiat, or in this case, purchase from another government that had acquired the land by fiat.)
Second, the lands granted to the railroads actually owed most of their value to the building of the roads. As Clarence Carson explains in *Throttling the Railroads* : «the lands granted [however fertile] were worth little to nothing on the market at the time they were granted.» This was so because cultivating those lands would have been economically hopeless without the cheap transportation to population centers provided by the railroads.
And third, Malone's metaphor makes it sound as though Hill's fortune merely grew out of the «soil» of federal subsidy by some natural, automatic process or, to mix metaphors, a snowball effect. Actually, the building of the Manitoba railroad is only chapter 2 of the biography, and there are 6 more chapters to go in which Malone himself offers ample illustration that the building of Great Northern and the rest of Hill's achievements did not simply «sprout» from the government's bounty.
Whatever the motivations for Malone's very mixed final estimate of Hill, he does grant his subject a certain number of admirable character traits, which confirm Edwin Locke's conclusions in *The Prime Movers*. For instance, Malone singles out the following as Hill's distinctive traits in chapter 4: «his remarkable mastery over every detail of what was now a far-flung operation, his vision of the inevitable triumph of transcontinental through-carriers [together forming Locke's virtue of «independent vision»], his insufferable [Malone again...] iron will and work ethic [Locke's «drive to action»], and his recruitment of an able coterie of men [Locke's «love of ability in others»].» And this is only Malone himself trying to summarize Hill's virtues : the book offers much more concrete material for you to make your own identifications and corroborate Locke's analysis.
The flaw of *Empire Builder of the Northwest*, in my opinion, is that it is merely interesting and informative where, given its subject, it could have been epic. Malone himself is no great enthusiast of economic freedom: at one point, he refers to «the simplistic bromides of laissez-faire». Moreover, the book only offers two maps, which makes following some of the descriptions rather difficult. However, if you do not have the time for Albro Martin's longer work and are frustrated by the mere 22 pages in Folsom's *The Myth of the Robber Barons*, Malone's book remains a good introduction to the life of an immensely productive and hardworking man, who was also a voracious reader, a faithful husband and- as the opening quote reveals- a «true believer in the virtues of unfettered capitalism».
left empty.......2000-01-06
Perhaps the author should have written a history of the Northwest, and northern railroads. I found very little of the persona of James J. Hill in this. It is a very historical narritive, not very biographic.
Great Book !.......1999-09-07
A new favorite of our staff..and recomended to our members who would like to understand the Northwest in a brand new light. Malone is an excellent writer and this book a gem !
A good brief bio of the Empire Builder.......1997-05-12
Malone's book is a good introduction for people interested in the early history of the Northwest, the Great Northern Railway, and the man who greatly influenced both. While not as detailed as Martin's 1976 bio, Martin's is at least twice as long and too tedious for many readers.
Both Martin and Malone had access to the James J. Hill papers, a collection of almost every business paper Hill ever handled that is located in the Hill Reference Library in St. Paul, MN. Except for Pyle, previous Hill biographers and railroad historians did not see those papers, such much of what they say is more rumor than fact. Malone (and Martin) set the stories straight.
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Books Index
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