Adventures of a Bystander

Peter F. Drucker

Nov 1999 · Transaction Publishers

About this ebook

Peter Drucker’s lively and thoughtful memoirs are now available in paperback with a new introduction by the author. He writes with wit and spirit about people he has encountered in a long and varied life, including Sigmund Freud, Henry Luce, Alfred Sloan, John L. Lewis, and Marshall McLuhan. After beginning with his childhood in Vienna during and after World War I, Drucker moves on to Europe in the 1920s and early 1930s, describing the imminent doom posed by Hitler and the Nazis. He then goes on to describe London during the 1930s, America during the New Deal era, the World War II years, and beyond. According to John Brooks of The New York Times Book Review, “Peter Drucker is at a corner cafe, delightfully regaling anyone who will listen with tales of what must be one of the more varied—and for a practitioner of such a narrow skill as that of management counseling, astonishing—of contemporary professional lives.” Dorothy Rabinowitz of the Washington Post writes, “The famous are here as well as the infamous.… All are the beneficiaries, for better or for worse, of Drucker’s unerring eye for psychological detail, his remorseless curiosity, and his imaginative sympathy.… Drucker’s book appears in a stroke to have restored the art of the memoir and of the essay.” Adventures of a Bystander reflects Drucker’s vitality, infinite curiosity, and interest in people, ideas, and the forces behind them. His book is a personal and informal account of the rich life of an independent man of letters, a life that spans eight decades and two continents. It will be of interest to scholars and professionals in the business world, historians, sociologists, and admirers of Peter Drucker.

Ratings and reviews

Peter F Drucker (PFD) was a top dog in management and has written many books to his credit. Somehow, I chose to take a stab at his autobiography rather than any of his specific works and I was delighted by my choice. During Drucker’ s life time, he seems to have interacted with eminent people like Sigmund Freud and Henry Luce and so on. For the commentary purposes, I would restrict myself to just one chapter. It is about his school teachers and it impressed me the most. I also liked his views on grandmother and Indian summer of innocence chapters very much. This work would not qualify for an autobiography in a strict sense since he talks about a handful of people, but the way he has mixed his observations and the environment details makes for a compelling read. If society is made of individuals and their stories, this work would constitute one good chapter. In this chapter “Miss Elsa and Miss Sophy”....... Please look in to the blog for more details..... regards,madhu

This book reveals the genius of Peter Drucker and decribes some of the most intriguing people imaginable. Particularly worthly are Drucker's views of Freud's Vienna, rise of Nazism and the Hemme and Genia Schwarzwald's stories. I'm reading the Czech translation dated 1996.

About the author

Peter F. Drucker (1909-2005) is known by many as the father of modern management. He was Clarke Professor of Social Science and Management at Claremont Graduate School in California and was a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He is the author of over thirty-five books, including The Ecological Vision, The Concept of the Corporation, and A Functioning Society.