I may have read to many business autobiographies, but this one was better than average. It continues the theme of learning history through biography, an emerging trend in my fifty books effort.

Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul by Howard Schultz
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

While this is one of the better business leader retrospectives, its rating shows the limit of the genre. At worst, the grizzled veteran of business can show literally no self-awareness. See Mark Cuban and Jack Welch for examples of these insufferable, ghost-written books.

Howard Schultz is much better, mostly because he avoids the cardinal sin: he doesn't believe every action of his was divinely inspired, and even presents a few choices he made that didn't work. He steered the good ship Starbucks through some hard times, and his approach certainly fixed things. This book was entertaining, because while he's running a retailer largely dependent on commodity prices and consumer sentiment, he thinks he's changing the world.