Business Adventures

The Library Essay

Wall Street, Reported Properly

John Brooks covered business for The New Yorker in its mid-century prime, and these twelve pieces, collected in 1969, apply the magazine's patience to subjects most writers rushed: the three-day market break of 1962, the Edsel, the rise of Xerox, the last true corner in Piggly Wiggly stock. Brooks cared less for numbers than for people under commercial pressure, and his stories read like short novels that happen to be true.

The book fell out of print for decades until 2014, when Bill Gates wrote that Warren Buffett had lent him his copy years before and that it remained the best business book he had read. It returned to print on the strength of that, and the pieces hold up because the situations recur; only the company names change.