James D. Scurlock’s King Larry is a fun, trashy analog to Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs. Like Jobs, Scurlock’s subject, Larry Hillblom, the founder of the express-delivery pioneer DHL, was a postwar California boy who bootstrapped his way out of his working-class background through preternatural drive and iconoclastic vision. Like Jobs, Hillblom flouted corporate convention by attending meetings in blue jeans and not giving a damn about consensus and social niceties. Also like Jobs, Hillblom had a gift for anticipating consumer needs before consumers did—and was rewarded richly for his prescience.
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