What You Do is Who You Are

I have a soft spot for Horowitz’s writing — I love his fascination with often abnormal (at least for “business” books) historical examples. This was no different; he draws from samurai culture, Toussaint Louverture of the Haitian slave revolt, Shaka Senghor, and Genghis Khan, in the pursuit of applying a far broader swath of examples for business culture. Critics of the book argue that Horowitz was far too relaxed with generalizations from his examples and too heavily romanticized the idea of likening business culture to war — and there was some truth to that here. But even so, there is quite a lot of substance here, and Horowitz comes off as refreshingly transparent.