Good spirits

the long version

"There was never any doubt in my mind as to what my life's work would be. I started with Seagram the day I was born." It wasn't the easiest thing imaginable to work for a famously irascible father and with a sometimes disputatious extended family of siblings, cousins, in-laws, and later, sons, but not only did Edgar M. Bronfman survive, he triumphed, to help build one of the most distinguished companies in the world. Good Spirits is filled with anecdotes about the making of a businessman and the making of a business, as Bronfman learned Seagram from the ground up, and discovered, sometimes the hard way, just what worked and what didn't. With wisdom and humor, he distills a lifetime of business lessons into a highly readable memoir, and furnishes us with stories both illuminating and cautionary about how to recognize opportunity, delegate wisely, analyze properly, keep cool in a crisis, and gain credibility (both inside and outside the company), and especially, how to achieve balance - in one's business and in one's life.