The author seams try to hide the little information he was able to gather from outside the Soros's circle with a poetic writing about his rise to be a "Master of the Universe". But the fact remain that the book give only a very superficial idea about Soros and for sure do not address the big question about him: "Devil's Master of Globalization or Saint of a New Economy?"

This book helps decipher the code of a great speculator. Financiers like Soros help keep the financial and economical mkt mesh in sync. Recent news on the dismantling of his Quantum (largest hedge fund in the world) and Quota funds has many on the street bewildered about his authority, but it should be understood that Soros publicly announced about two years ago that he no longer meddled in any of the funds' investments. This is a good book that explains the why's of a worldly speculator.

After reading this book, I thing the author was pretty neutral. But the conclusion is just one:these kind of investors are the synthesis of what rotten there is in capitalism.

I think the book was ok, but it left out a very important jewish person. That important person is Albert Einstein. As I finished this book I realized that it did not have Albert Einstein in it. That was very dissapointing. So, in conlusion, I would give this book 3 stars because it left out the amazing Albert Einstein.

This book is an excellent book. It covers information about many different men who have played important roles in Judaism, from Abraham to David Ben Gurion. The book is good if you are looking for a 2-3 page biography and certain highlights of a person's career, but could not be used as an only reference for a research project.

Overall, the Slaters have created a good book documenting important aspects of Jewish history.

This book is quite simply, horrible. I could overlook the fact that it assumes the reader just graduated first grade, if the ideas, methods and tools were any good. Reading this book, I have to believe GE got where it did in spite of Jack Welch, not because of him. These are not the concepts that revolutionize a business. The first great idea offered? An employee suggestion program. Wow, thanks. An entire book could be written on the futility of such efforts. Employees can't change the bad systems they are trapped in. Then we get the 4 E's. This is Jack Welch's idea that all managers in the organization must posess four ingredients: energy, be an energizer, edge, execution. Anyone familiar with Myers-Briggs, or True Colors personality type methodologies will see that Welch is basically saying he's after one personality type (I'll let you guess which one). This is nuts. The strive should be for diversity in personality types, especially on a leadership team. A good mix of idea people, action people, detail people, people who care about people, etc. And on that topic - caring about people, I hope the Jack Welch way doesn't become "the way". The ideas presented here about performance appraisals and forced distributions are not only stupid they are inhumane. I would refer you to the fine book "Abolishing Performance Appraisals" by Tom Coens and Mary Jenkins for a more enlightened view on people and performance.

The stuff about six sigma is not bad, although I'm not a big believer that you can problem-solve your way to excellence. It is possible to make entirely defect-free that which you should not be making at all.

In short, skip this book. The ideas are nothing new, and in many cases wrong, and the tools and illustrations are too simplistic to be of value.

The text of this book could be reduced to 20% its original size if the author addressed the reader as a competent, intelligent manager. Instead, it's filled with cute pictures and 'how to's' I've heard the GE Way is good; don't opt for the Fieldbook.

I have read everything that has ever been written about the golden boy of corporate america - Jack Welch. He is a genious for our times and this book is just another example of his legendary managerial style. An easy read that is filled with key information to turn any company into an industry leader and any manager into a corporate leader. This book details everything a manager will ever need to know. A MUST BUY !!!!!!

this book says nothing about a company that has become a monster by developing an outstanding distribution system. That is really what Wal-Mart is all about.
The book says Wal-Mart adapted by beefing up its PR department. Anyone who has ever talked with the PR department at Wal-Mart knows that even at the top they are a bunch of underpaid, underqualified fools.
This lacks the meat it needs and does not deal with reality of good or bad with the company.

A very shallow analysis of Wal-Mart's growth over the past ten years, providing little insight on how the managment charted the course of the Company following Sam Walton's death.

The main thrust of the book is Wal-Mart's culture, which is certainly strong. The author uses interviews with Wal-Mart senior executives as the primary vehicle to narrate "highlights" of the past ten years, rather than providing an analysis of how key decisions made by these executives have led the Company to the top of the Fortune 500. I can't believe that there is no mention of how Wal-Mart and Procter and Gamble worked to integrate their supply chain during the period, which was a key ingredient to their success in the past ten years!

For the history of Wal-Mart and Sam Walton, stick with "Made in America", Walton's memoir with John Huey. For better insight to the engine behind Wal-Mart's growth, search out articles from Harvard Business Review (e.g., on the Wal-Mart/P&G supply chain from 1994) and other management journals. These sources will certainly be less "rah rah Wal-Mart" and will provide more details on the what was actually done and spare you the executive reflections on "what Mr. Sam would think" of today's Wal-Mart.

Hmm, how do you manage a billion dollar corporation like Wal-Mart with over a million employees?? well, this book will answer the billion dollar question(literally) for all that is curious. The story is very interesting as it detailed the operating model of Wal-Mart during its early days when Sam Walton was flying around and visiting all the Wal-Mart stores and personally jote down comments from his employees on his yellow notepad. wow! By the end of the book, I feel like I know Sam pretty well and really admire his character as he stood his ground and refused to give in to bureaucratics and politics, be true to himself and hold on to his personal beliefs. The author did an excellent job in giving us the "insider scope" of how Sam's successors has managed to take Wal-Mart to a whole new level and bring it to international visiblity after Sam left. I left this book with a strong 'Wal-Mart spirit' deeply engraved in me. All-in-all, a very entertaining and inspiring read!!

While there are some genuinely great Jewish women in this book, there are too many whose claim to greatness rests solely on fame and left-leaning politics. How is Barbara Streisand a "Great Jewish Woman"? Is it because she is a great Democtratic fundraiser? And How does Shulamit Aloni get to be great? By being an anti-Israeli Israeli? Diane Arbus (eeww) hated being Jewish and would be uncomfortable to see her name in this book if she hadn't killed herself, and Estee Lauder became a Roman Catholic........not exactly a "Great Jewish Woman".

If your idea of greatness is actresses and singers or anybody Jewish who managed to get her name in the paper than this is your book. Rosalind Franklyn and Judy Resnick constitute real greatness, while Goldie Hawn is merely famous. I would never put them in the same category.

This book makes a great graduation gift or other gift for any jewish woman, young or old. It illustrates the accomplishments of women and shows the adversity that they overcame to achieve greatness. Enjoyable for woman of any age.

There are many books about Jack Welch and all of them show and teach the corporate strategies and tactics this legendary manager implemented while at GE. Most of those titles portrait Welch as the successful business person everybody would like to be. However, I would like to warn the reader that the professional success of famous CEOs cost them their families. It's hard to believe how Welch was able to manage thousands of relations with millions of people at GE, while on the other side he failed on a relation with only one person: his wife. By the way, how many wives has he had??? Is that success??? In which planet???

Now about the book . . . it's a good title but only read it if you have never before read a title about Jack Welch or GE; if you had, it's more about the same old stuff, and I would recommend your spending your money in a smarter way.

The era globalizatation after fisnished east and west block grow the models of terrorisme. We can assumcced the prespective and the new model of terrorrisme in the world.

As a former employee of both IBM and AT&T, I lived through years of lack of leadership, innovation and bad management decisions. Lou Gerstner demonstrated that a few common sense principles (listen, customers, focus) go a long way in building a business. I enjoyed the book very much and recommended it to my co-workers.

For those outside of IBM, this is a good, first book on the company's troubles prior to Gerstner and the rebound after his arrival. IBM personnel may not find much new insight and wished for more detail about the company's/Gerstner's decisions, i.e. sale of Network Services to AT&T, and his lieutenants, both those from within and those that came in with Gerstner. The company still has a way to go to grow revenue but there are some terrific opportunities out there that IBM cannot afford to miss, i.e. E-Business.

Listen, my children, and you shall hear the incredible saga of how IBM nearly died and was revived by Lou Gerstner. Robert Slater tells the tale of IBM's turnaround after it nearly sank under the weight of institutionalized arrogance and failure to heed advancements in the industry it had dominated. Gerstner broke company tradition, fired employees who believed they had a sinecure, slashed a decade-old bureaucracy, and switched IBM's focus from products to solutions. This action portrait shows a man smart enough and tough enough to rebuild an empire. The book's lessons are artfully woven into the fabric of Gerstner's personal story and IBM's corporate history. We [...] recommend this book to any high level executive whose organization needs a revolution or to any businessperson who wants a juicy reminder of what it takes to win the war of independence.

Amazon doesn't allow zero stars - shame.This is a book about journalistic fear...and in that sense it should be recommended reading on a psychology course. According to Slater, Ovitz is a classroom whiz, a college football star, a business guru, and a true visionary in all aspects of man's struggle with the universe. Let me put it all in context for you...from some of the Author's opening pages. Ovitz gave a list of people to the Author, for research, most people on that list 'phoned Ovitz to get permission to speak! Then, Slater actually used those same people as the backbone for his writing - enough said. Ovitz may be a bad or good guy, who knows and who cares (this book was purchased for me).Basically, this is a project that the world didn't need, but Slater, having begun, made a thoroughly bad job of it. I'll admit to stopping this book after reading 80% of it - if I could get a rebate on my wasted time, I would. I'm embarrassed for Slater

This book is a shameless puff piece. Ovitz is just mister wonderful. What exemplifies the attitude of the author is when he lists clients who left other agents to go with Ovitz. He will name all the movies these clients did with the former agent, saying they were all flops, then name the movies these clients did with Ovitz, saying they were all hits. As though Ovitz had the magic wand. But if you are at all familiar with the movies listed, you know that a lot of the movies listed before a client went with Ovitz were HITS. And a lot of movies listed after a client went with Ovtiz were FLOPS. That's a shamelss distortion of the facts, to make Ovitz look perfect. And it's not the only distortion. Nonetheless, I'm not giving the book one star, because I did learn some stuff I wanted to know.

I found this book chronicling Ovitz to be entertaining and informative. My favoite part is the one when Ovitz and associates leave William Morris and strike out on their own. I suppose I'm more interested in what lessons the book has to offer, as opposed to how accurate it may be. I bought several copies for friends.

As the author readily admits, his book was rewritten when his subject, Cisco CEO John Chambers, was suddenly presiding over a shrinking, rather than expanding, company. The rewrite shows in the final product.

Robert Slater explains Cisco's fabulous rise well. The key players granted him interviews and seemed happy to discuss the company's glory days in length. The company's subsequent decline beginning in 2000 is not treated as well. I didn't learn nearly as much about Cisco's fall as the book's title would suggest I should have.

After covering business icons such as Jack Welch and George Soros, I wonder if the author was really prepared to take the critical approach necessary to cover the decline of Cisco that John Chambers oversaw.

And as if he felt the need to justify the subject matter, Slater repeatedly mentioned the fact that Cisco was the most valuable company in the world, if only for a second. The reference got annoying.

Overall, anyone who wants insight into the roots and management team at one of the world's most important tech bellwethers should read this book. There are some fascinating revelations here such as how close Cisco came to acquiring hub maker SynOptics Communications in 1993. At the same time, I was disappointed he completely omitted information about Cisco's close M&A relationship with Silicon Valley venture capital firm Sequoia Capital in the late 1990s.

While Slater's ninth chapter about Cisco's dealmaking techniques comes to the conclusion that most of its deals had little or no effect on the company, true M&A junkies might be better off reading Ed Paulson's adulatory book, Inside Cisco, to learn more about the communications equipment maker's aggressive corporate development program.