1,000 Dollars and an Idea: Entrepreneur to Billionaire

Country boy makes good in this down-home tale of self-made multimillionaire Wyly. In his humble post-Depression Louisiana roots, Wyly learned his first business lessons from football strategy, his father’s tiny newspaper business and his mother’s bargaining skills. A lucky meeting propelled him to the University of Michigan’s Business School and his first corporate job at IBM, where he had to work fast to keep from succumbing to culture shock as he discovered “there ain’t no Bubbas in Michigan.” Energetic and restless, he soon left IBM for Honeywell and then created his own technology companies, rescuing failing businesses, founding Green Mountain Energy and devoting himself to environmentalism. Citing Sam Walton as a hero and Ross Perot as a personal friend, Wyly stresses the power and privilege of self-creation and speaks honestly about what he’s learned: that failure is crucial to achieving success, independent thought is imperative, luck serendipitous and power useless unless it is wielded for good. Though the message is a good one, the meandering storytelling and not well-known author might make this book a hard sell to a trade audience. (Sept.)