Editor’s Note: This was the first book I read by Drucker. It is billed as a memoir but feels more like a collection of essays on people he met from the ‘30s through the ‘60s, some of them huge names like Freud, Luce, Sloan and McLuhan. He also recall the fast rise of the Nazis in Germany, his homeland which he fled. Terrific historical perspectives, psychological commentary on key figures of history as well as his thinking on business and culture. The book feels much like sitting at a coffee shop with a great man who knew many great, and not so great leaders and was willing to regale me with anecdotes that make important points from his experiences.
Excerpt: 'Freud was deeply hurt by any hint that his theory was poetry and not science ... [yet] Freud was a very great artist, probably the greatest writer of German prose in this century.'