PORTABLE PROFESSOR™ is a series of exciting and informative lectures recorded by some of today's most renowned university and college professors. Each course introduces listeners to fascinating, and sometimes startling, insights into the intellectual forces that shape our understanding of the world. Each package includes 14 riveting lectures presented by notable professors as well as a book-length course guide.

The formal creation of the United States involved the explicit guarantee of individual and market freedoms, both of which are at the core of American economic philosophy. In this fascinating set of lectures, award-winning historian H.W. Brands shows how these core principles set the stage for some of the nation's most gifted financial visionaries and traces the historical arc of the American businessperson, from John Jacob Astor to Bill Gates.

COURSE LECTURES

The Business of AmericaJohn Jacob Astor: From Furs to Real EstateCyrus McCormick and the Business of AgricultureCornelius Vanderbilt and Jay Gould: Speculating on AmericaAndrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller: An Obsession for EfficiencyJ.P. Morgan: The Triumph of the Money ManHenry Ford and Alfred P. Sloan: Capturing the DreamWalt Disney: The Business of FantasyRobert Woodruff: As American as CokeRay Kroc: The Industrialization of EatingSam Walton: Will the Real Uncle Sam Please Stand Up?Mary Kay Ash: What Do Women Want?Andre Grove and Bill Gates: Intel (and Microsoft) InsideThe Past and Future of American Business
An expert chronicler of the American experience, H.W. Brands is Distinguished Professor of History at Texas A&M University. Among other topics, he has written books about the California gold rush, America in the 1890s, President Woodrow Wilson, and the Cold War. His biographies of Teddy Roosevelt, T.R.: The Last Romantic, and Benjamin Franklin, The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin (a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize), both won widespread critical acclaim and were best-sellers.