Conrad Nicholson Hilton was born to wealth. His father, “Colonel” A. H. “Gus” Hilton, was the leading merchant and trader in the tiny sun-baked mining village of San Antonio, New Mexico. Young Connie wanted to become a banker, and at age thirty-one he went to Texas to...
Today, the Estée Lauder Companies have become among the most important cosmetics companies in the world—against huge odds and well-established competitors. Estée Lauder was a very real person, born to an immigrant hardware store owner and his wife in Queens, New York....
The technologies of today are built upon those of the past, and the superstars of our era would be nothing without the great leaders of the past. We often discuss our favorite “tech” entrepreneurs. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and many other names arise. Too...
From inauspicious beginnings rose one of the great entrepreneurs in American history, a man with unusual dedication and exceptionally high ideals. James Cash Penney, Jr., was born September 16, 1875, near Hamilton, Missouri, to the Reverend James C. Penney and his...
Her Westchester County neighborhood was the home of Vanderbilts, Morgans, and Astors. Jay Gould and John D. Rockefeller had assembled estates nearby. Sitting high above the Hudson River in Irvington-on-Hudson, New York, “Villa Lewaro” had views of the river and the...
It was 1912. The wiry, soft-spoken, short (five-foot five-inch) immigrant with the thick Hungarian accent waited for hours to see the powerful Jeremiah Kennedy, head of the “Edison Trust” (Motion Picture Patents Company). Adolph Zukor, like many American Originals,...