Beyond Tallulah, the illustrated biography of Sam Wyly, the most
versatile big-company entrepreneur in American history, tells one of the
most compelling untold business stories of our time. Wyly has built 10
companies in nine different industries with 500 million- or
billion-dollar valuations. He's the reason that Bonanza Steakhouse,
Michaels Arts & Crafts and Green Mountain Energy are household names
today. And his achievements serve as a valuable point of reference for
today's generation of recession-fighting Start-up Whiz Kids.
After a mercurial rise through the early computer industry in Texas,
Wyly founded a data transmission company (DATRAN) with the dream of
building a network of microwave towers that would enable computers to
talk to each other wirelessly--20 years before the World Wide Web
existed. What happened next is a case study of high-wire business
dealings that speaks to the core values of American enterprise. Wyly's
dealings with entrenched interests foreshadow the tough questions faced
by today's readership about the proper roles of government and business
in rebuilding the country. As Wyly struggled to recover from disastrous
setbacks, he never stopped asking, "What's next?"
With exclusive access to Wyly and original interviews of more than one
hundred of his colleagues and family members, biographer Dennis Hamilton
draws an energetic and fast-paced portrait of a business career that
soared high, courted disaster and carved a memorable path through five
decades. In the end, this story of an American titan of industry is made
distinctive--and memorable--through the details readers learn about
Wyly's deft, sure-handed approach to deal making and a seeming sixth
sense for the ebbs and flows of the financial market.
In Beyond Tallulah, we watch Wyly journey from small-town high school
football in the South to IBM in its Information Age heyday, from the
takeover wars of the 1980s to adventures in big-scale national
retailing, from the Alaska pipeline to a new generation of clean energy.
Wyly's life promises to fascinate and inspire readers, while also
serving as a blueprint for aspiring entrepreneurs. Illustrated with more
than two hundred color and black-and-white photos, Beyond Tallulah
preserves Wyly's wholly original American journey--from his dirt poor
Great Depression childhood in rural Louisiana to his triumph as a
self-made billionaire . . . six times.
Born in 1934, Sam Wyly was raised in rural Louisiana. In 1957, he
received his MBA from the University of Michigan's Business School and
began his career as a salesman for IBM and then for Honeywell. Six years
later, at the age of 28, Wyly was out on his own, creating his first
company, University Computing, which offered computer services to local
businesses. Over the course of the next 50 years, he founded or grew
successful companies in computing, computer software products, oil
refining, insurance, steakhouse franchising, arts-and-crafts retailing,
hedge fund investing, environmentally friendly electricity, and carbon
offsets.
In addition to being an entrepreneur, Wyly invests his time in
educational institutions and has served as a trustee of Southern
Methodist University, as vice chairman of the Princeton Parents
Association, and on the board of PBS. One of Wyly's proudest endeavors
was providing the start-up capital for the Dallas PBS station to create
a high-quality news program in 1968. The show was called Newsroom, which
evolved into what's known today as NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, one of the
most trusted news sources for millions nationwide.
Over his storied career, Wyly has received many accolades and awards.
Forbes named him one of its 10 greenest billionaires in 2010. In 2003,
Wyly received the Murphy Award for Lifetime Achievement in
Entrepreneurship from the University of North Texas Murphy Enterprise
Center; in 1997, the Woodrow Wilson Award for Corporate Citizenship a
