The Entrepreneurs: An American Adventure

Written as a companion volume to a TV series of the same name to be aired in the fall, this overview at business history is lively and informative. Hofstra professor and syndicated columnist Sobel, and Sicilia, a doctoral candidate at Brandeis, present profiles of some three-dozen significant names in the development of American business and industry, arrangedsometimes arbitrarilyby category. Included are business titans Carnegie, Ford, J. P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller, and a number of important but less-remembered figures, such as Juan Terry Trippe of Pan Am, Charles B. Darrow, the inventor of ""Monopoly,'' John H. Johnson of Ebony magazine fame and Lydia E. Pinkham, whose ``vegetable compound'' was a U.S. staple for 75 years. Photos. (October 10)