The audiobook “Autodidact Successes – Kings of Big Business” contains fifty biographies of extraordinary people – autodidact entrepreneurs who, often despite difficult conditions, poverty and lack of school education, achieved great success in life, significantly influencing the world.
Each of us is unique and exceptional. We are all born with a natural curiosity about the world, a desire to discover, learn, and create. How is it that this uniqueness, creativity, joy, and freedom of expression are lost during adolescence and the school years that follow? Do common education systems, based on the Enlightenment belief that we all come into this world as a “blank slate” ready to be written on, support our development and develop our abilities, or is it quite the opposite? Is school, which attempts to mold us according to the system’s imposed model and strives to fit us into the framework of social expectations, truly a prerequisite for success and a fulfilled life? This is not confirmed by the examples of people who managed to break free from this system and follow their own path. These are self-taught individuals—those who, despite lacking formal, systematic education, achieve success in various fields and industries, creating, inventing, modernizing, and often even revolutionizing their own lives and the lives of their contemporaries, making them better and easier.
In the audiobook you will find the following characters: Karl Albrecht, Isak Andić, Giorgio Armani, Mary Kay Ash, Tomasz Bata, Albert-René Biotteau, Jean-Claude Bourrelier, Richard Charles Nicholas Branson, Ettore Bugatti, Andrew Carnegie, Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel, Natan Darty, Jean-Claude Decaux, John Paul DeJoria, Walt Disney (Walter Elias Disney), Jack Dorsey, Henry Ford, Amancio Ortega Gaona, William (Bill) Henry Gates III, Amadeo Peter Giannini, Hyman Golden, William Thomas Grant, David Green, Joyce Clyde Hall, Keneth A. Ken Hendricks, Milton Snavely Hershey, Sōichirō Honda, Steve Jobs, Henry John Kaiser, Ingvar Kamprad, Kerkor “Kirk” Kerkorian, Raymond Albert (Ray) Kroc, Carl Lindner Jr, Marcus Loew, Konosuke Matsushita, Werner Arthur Arnold Otto, Wolfgang Puck, Yves Rocher, John Davison Rockefeller, Anita Roddick, Henry Royce, Helena Rubinstein, Sonia Rykiel, Vidal Sassoon, Richard M. Schulze, Rex David “Dave” Thomas, Hans Otto Wilhelm Wilsdorf, Charles Kemmons Wilson, Anna Wintour and Reinhold Wurth.
