Valuentum's subscriber base enjoys reading the latest and greatest investing books. As a result, Valuentum requests and receives business and investing books before they are officially released. Our editorial staff took a look at the following book, and here's what we thought after reading it:

28 Business Thinkers Who Changed the World: the Management Gurus and Mavericks Who Changed the Way We Think about Business
By Rhymer Rigby. Kogan Page, 2011. 232 p. ISBN 978-0-7494-6239-0.
Book Release Date: June 28, 2011

British journalist Rhymer Rigby tackles the lives of the most influential business thinkers in his latest work. Rigby (freelance journalist and contributor for the Financial Times) takes a journalistic approach, reporting on the lives and businesses of these 28 gurus without offering additional analysis. Each of the 28 chapters is devoted to a different business thinker, ranging from the more traditional, including Peter Drucker and Jack Welch, to the more modern and technologically focused, such as Mark Zuckerberg and the Google duo of Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Rigby claims there are no particular attributes that will determine success, as demonstrated by the wide range of business people profiled, and says that the “secret of someone’s success is that there is no secret.” Therefore he focuses these short chapters, less than ten pages each, on the background of these business thinkers and attempts to show what these people have done differently that enabled them to succeed.

Valuentum’s Take: This promising title falls short in its execution. The final result is a compilation of short bios on the background and careers of some of the biggest influences on today’s business world.  Rigby, while he does write a business column, also does freelance writing on travel and lifestyle, so he isn’t an expert on business per se. Where he does succeed, however, is in his balanced coverage and the fact that he doesn’t gloss over the negative qualities of these people while extolling their virtues.

Come back to Valuentum to check out the review on our next business and investing book!