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Business Biographies & Autobiographies / September 2025
A biography is a written account of a person's life. For September 2025, here are 12 books from JMU’s print and electronic collections that are biographies or autobiographies of business leaders.
Find more materials about this topic by searching business AND biography in Library Search.
September 2025 Gallery
Steve Jobs
A riveting story of the roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing.
Road to Power
Beginning as a rare female electrical engineer and daughter of a General Motors die maker, Barra spent more than thirty years building her career before becoming the first woman to ever lead a global automaker.
Crassus: The First Tycoon
Marcus Licinius Crassus (115-53 BCE) was a modern man in an ancient world, a pioneer disrupter of finance and politics, and the richest man of the last years of the Roman republic. He died a humiliating desert death in search of military glory.
The Doctors Blackwell
In 1849, Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman in America to receive an M.D. She was soon joined in her iconic achievement by her younger sister, Emily, who was actually the more brilliant physician. Together, the Blackwells founded the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children, the first hospital staffed entirely by women.
T. Rowe Price : the man, the company, and the investment philosophy
In 1937, Thomas Rowe Price Jr. founded an investment company in Baltimore that would become one of the most successful in the world. Today, The T. Rowe Price Group is among the largest investment firms focused on managing mutual funds and pension accounts.
Advertising Revolutionary
Over a forty-year career, Chicagoan Tom Burrell changed the face of advertising and revolutionized the industry's approach to African Americans as human beings and consumers.
My Life in Full
The first woman of color and immigrant to run a Fortune 50 company -- and one of the foremost strategic thinkers of our time -- she transformed PepsiCo with a unique vision, a vigorous pursuit of excellence, and a deep sense of purpose.
Back to Beer... and Hockey
Since 1786, when John Molson founded his first brewery in Montreal, it has become synonymous with beer, hockey, and philanthropy. Few realize, however, how close the family came in recent years to losing control of the enterprise. This book offers intimate details of the life and work of Eric Molson, who not only saved the company, but positioned it to thrive as a global brewery into the twenty-first century.
J.C. Penney: The man, the store, and American agriculture
This book - -at once a biography of Missouri farm boy-turned-business icon James Cash Penney and the story of the company he started in 1902 -- brings to light the little-known agrarian roots of an American department store chain.
Coco Chanel
Her life was filled with trauma, romance, intrigue, and scandal, but her business acumen and groundbreaking talent (along with funding by her paramours) took her far beyond her humble beginnings.
Walk Through Fire
From humble beginnings as a schoolgirl and a young violinist in Maywood, Illinois, Sheila Johnson rose to become one of the most accomplished businesswomen in America as a cofounder of Black Entertainment Television.
Ted Mack and America's First Black-Owned Brewery
The story of Mack's purchase of Peoples Brewing Company in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Though he had carefully planned for the historic acquisition, Mack underestimated the subtle bigotry of Middle America, the corruption of the beer industry, and the failures of the federal government that plagued his ownership.