Sam Walton

Opened a variety store in Newport, Arkansas, lost the lease to the landlord's son, and started again in Bentonville, which is why the largest retailer on earth is headquartered in a town of fifty thousand people.

Made in America was dictated while he was dying of cancer and finished weeks before his death in 1992. It covers the buying trips, the cost obsession, and the store visits he made in a beaten pickup truck long after he was a billionaire.

It is a founder's own account and reads like one. What it does not examine is what the model did to the towns and suppliers around it, which is the substance of every serious book written about the company since.