Daniel Alef: 59 books

New Enhanced Digital EditionRay Kroc's remarkable rise to the top of the food chain--fast foods that is--began at a later age than most successful entrepreneurs at age 52. The former salesman of Multimixer milkshake machines heard about the McDonald brothers' restaurant in Southern California...

Biographical profile of Conrad Hilton one of the greatest hoteliers of all time. He acquired his first hotel more by accident than by design the Mobley in Cisco Texas. Seeking to increase his profits by maximizing space sometimes taking drastic action to do so he developed a system he called "mining...

Biographical profile of Steve Jobs the founder of Apple Computers and the man who led an evolution in American technology and culture. He ushered in the world of personal computing with the Apple and Mac line of computers changed the way we buy and listen to music with the iPod iTunes and the iTunes...

Executive jets and yachts are the quintessential tableau of today's tycoons. A century or more ago it was Pullman Palace Cars and yachts. The Palace Cars were ornate, featured extravagant pomp, from crystal chandeliers and marble baths to sumptuous bedrooms, libraries and living rooms walled in...

Sergey Brin once described the Internet as the repository of all our knowledge and the company he and Larry Page founded a mere decade ago Google Inc. provides access to the Internet for a majority of the Western world. Google has altered the world we live in with a profound impact on just about everything...

William Randolph Hearst was a man of mythical proportions and staggering contradictions. And he was a fascinating character so much so that he appears in various fictional works from John Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath" and F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Last Tycoon" to Orson Welles' "Citizen...

Microsoft founder Bill Gates writes: "Genuine pioneers don't stop after just one discovery or innovation. They are driven to build on their accomplishments and to follow them into new frontiers." He was speaking about Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com which ushered in the brave new world of...

Joseph P. Day, the great salesman, sold about a third of the Bronx, a third of Queens and large swaths of Brooklyn during his lifetime. In one 12-hour auction he sold 1,574 properties. Day was the quintessential New Yorker. Day's story is a text-book lesson on what it takes to become a great salesman, and his 10 rules for success a menu on the qualities and characteristics he espoused.

A biographical profile of Charles Lindbergh, the American Lone Eagle. Lindbergh was not ready for stardom, and therein lies the story, like a quintessential Greek tragedy where the hero suffers a serious misfortune which is connected to his actions, demonstrating humankind's vulnerability to suffering...

Biographical profile of EstéeLauder who combined charm, gall and a ferocious ambition to create one of the great empires in cosmetics and perfumes. Estéee was never able to shed her roots in Queens, NY, and perhaps this is what made her such a successful entrepreneur, one who mingled and rubbed elbows...

Henry Goldman is arguably the founder of investment banking as we know it today. In 1906 he began diverting his fathers company from a bank specializing in commercial paper into a Wall Street firm that helped enterprises expand operations by raising the capital they needed through the sale of their shares...

The great American automotive pioneers were entrepreneurial inventors and visionaries who changed the American landscape and brought us a new national culture. These pioneers lifted the veil of isolation that enveloped most pre-twentieth century Americans and made it possible for the average person to...

New Enhanced Digital EditionAlthough Margaret "The Unsinkable Molly" Brown is well known for her heroic efforts in surviving the Titanic disaster that historic event doesn't begin to reveal the full measure of who she was or what she accomplished during her fascinating life. And Margaretthe name...

New Enhanced Digital EditionHenry Ford an American folk hero to many was a man with several faces. He was a genius who revolutionized the automobile industry irrevocably altered American culture and commerce developed mass production and helped the middle class emerge in America. He was also an anti-Semitic...