“Industry is a necessary but not sufficient quality for achievement,” Lloyd Handwerker writes in his lovely book about his grandfather, Famous Nathan: A Family Saga of Coney Island, the American Dream, and the Search for the Perfect Hot Dog. “An additional element is needed — something ineffable, random, and hard to pin down. Call it luck, or label it being in the right place at the right time.”
This year, the narratives among the best business books all explored that ineffable something that makes the difference between dreams that are realized and those that are broken — from the prosaic (Nathan Handwerker’s quest to build a thriving, exacting hot dog business) to the utilitarian (revolutionary pamphleteer Tom Paine’s plans for an iron bridge) to the literally cosmic (Iridium’s futuristic scheme for satellite phones).
