Dynasties: Fortunes and Misfortunes of the World's Great Family Businesses

The book is an incomplete book. The writer has done well to cover quite a few dynasties, their rise and withering away in detailed chronology.What has been left out is the detailed analysis of each family firm - the personalities, the individual motivations etc. Also, the writing style is confusing. The book jumps back and forth, leaving one to turn pages back and forth to correlate events with individuals.

its worthful

Why are people downvoting this book because it doesn’t go into the details of how these dynasties were built?The object of his work here was spoken of on the very first page“This is a book about family and business, success and disappointment, love and discord. My interest in dynasties began with economic history- the review and analysis of economic trends and the deeds and achievements of economic actors. As a historian I was quickly drawn into the drama of these stories and the larger than life quality of many of these competitors for wealth”or as Publishers Weekly put it“Landes's stories emphasize emotional life within these dynasties; he includes business details and general economic history only as context for family adventures and feuds. His emphasis is on how family considerations such as authority, love, trust, envy, marriage, adoption and succession determine the growth and direction of the business.”It’s obvious his goal wasn’t to write a “how-to” for building a dynasty, but rather, an economic drama focused on them instead.And that’s what makes this read all the more interesting!

It's an interesting book, very light and fast. Landes did his job very good even this time. The eBook it's tehnically-speaking, perfect.

Not as well written as I would have thought. The internet has better info

It's a nice book but a bit shallow. I expected more from the author of the Wealth and Poverty of Nations. The book is indeed full of nice anecdotes like it is advertised, but there is I think too little analysis or historical detail of for example the causes of the dynasties' rise and fall and why some got richer than others is not always clear. I even didn't read the last chapter with the last dynasty: it gets tedious as it is told.

While Landes has a good writing style for a general audience, the stories he tells are not deep enough, and the lessons he draws are thin