This book was recommended to me by a self-help book teaching about how to make your fortune. I enjoyed and recommended it to others. It does a good job of portraying the honest and hard-working business man. This is the reality of business. It would be interesting to read a novel portraying a world in which business men were as ruthless as Hollywood likes to portray them. It would be a horror.

The story is set in the background of the fifties, but the story, like the one in Goldratt's "The Goal", is about all of us good guys who run businesses. It is only four stars because of the fiftie's setting hampers some of the story.

This novel includes description of the ethical basis of win-win agreements, of the value of individualism, and of the threat of corporation worship. It also gives us a cross-sectional look at the fifties, when a management consultant and his wife could finally have "all we had ever dreamed of", now that he makes $25,000 per year! I am reading the 75cent paperback published in 1955.

Cameron Hawley is a distant relative of mine, and that is how I happened to decide to read this book. I did not know anything about the book, except that it was a novel about a businessman. The story does not set any specific time frame, which keeps it from being dated by any specific references to historic events. The chance encounter between Cash and the boss' daughter is still as viable today as it was when it was first written. There is no seemy romantic scenes that are so prevalent in today's drama novels. The novel itself is an easy read for anyone who wants to read about the ins and outs of business dealings, and the quirks of fate that can happen along the way

Hawley follows the exploits of several businessman at a top company and the aftermath of their leader's death. The power struggles, personal ambitions, and future of these men are brought to life most vividly. A good period piece of 1950s business.

Cameron Hawley's "Executive Suite" is an exciting novel about what it really takes to succeed in business.

The businessman is usually presented in fiction as a rapacious looter who will do anything, no matter how criminal, to satisfy his lust for money. Success in business, according to this stereotype, goes to the one who combines the most intelligence with the least scruples. "Executive Suite" is remarkable in that it presents an utterly different view of businessmen and of success in business. Business is presented as an admirable pursuit of honorable men. Success in business does not come from lust for money and power, but from the posession of a creative vision. It is the businessman with a love for his work, and a vision of what it could be, who has the drive and passion to be a success. This view of business is central to "Executive Suite" and the development and resolution of the plot are dictated by it.

The story follows the struggle to select a new president of a furniture company after the company's president dies suddenly. Each of the contenders represents a different view of what matters in business. The struggle between these men is a contest between these views. And the man who ultimately wins, wins by convincing the others that his view is right.

Cameron Hawley was a business executive for many years before he became a novelist. With this book he does right by both of his professions.