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Empire: The Life, Legend, and Madness of Howard Hughes

Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele

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Founder connections

  • Elon MuskReported reading
    Inc./Business Insider reported on October 22, 2015 that Musk had just finished Barlett and Steele’s Howard Hughes biography in a CNN interview. It is the same work later retitled from Empire; his exact edition is not known.
    Source

Summary

Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele trace Howard Hughes’s rise from the Hughes Tool Company into filmmaking, aviation, airlines, and defense contracting. Their investigative biography also follows his later isolation and the growing control of his businesses by managers, examining the distance between his public image and private life.

  • SourceEmpire / Howard Hughes: His Life and Madness — authors’ description · Books: first published as Empire; biography description
  • SourceEmpire — licensed Norton record · 1979 Norton edition, exact ISBN 9780393075137; publisher description

Why read it Our view

Read it to examine what happens to a large group of businesses when the founder becomes distant from daily work. Hughes’s later years prompt questions about who holds practical control and how a company can function when its leader withdraws.

Written about

  • Howard HughesBiography subject
    Howard Hughes is the subject of Barlett and Steele’s investigative biography, first published as Empire in 1979.
    Source