The Outsiders
Profiles of eight unconventional CEOs who dramatically outperformed the S&P 500 through superior capital allocation: Buffett, Singleton at Teledyne, Malone at TCI, Katharine Graham at the Washington Post, and others. What they shared wasn't industry expertise — it was decentralized operations, rational capital allocation, and total indifference to consensus. The CEO as investor, not operator.
Thorndike chose his eight CEOs after the returns were in, which makes the method's track record less than astonishing: select the winners, then call what they did a system. Buybacks and debt look like genius across a forty-year bull market and like something else when the cycle turns. Each chapter follows the same template; by the fourth iconoclast you can recite it.
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
