Sam Wyly's Upcoming Memoir Wins Advance Praise

Newmarket Press

Summer 2008

Set for publication on September 2 from Newmarket Press, Sam Wyly's book 1,000 Dollars and an Idea is already garnering advance praise from early reviewers and readers.

Walter Isaacson, CEO of The Aspen Institute and author of the bestselling biography Einstein: His Life and Universe, writes that Sam's book is "a joy to read" and that "[his] book captures the magic of the American dream."  Literary trade review publication Kirkus Reviews calls the book "a business pep talk wrapped in a memoir" and "[an] audacious story."  Ross Perot, George H.W. Bush, Reverend Sally Bingham, John Mackey, Michael Milken, and Publishers Weekly also applaud the book. Their comments can be found on the book's official website at www.1000DollarsAndAnIdea.com.

"My work is to create companies and build them," Sam Wyly writes in his memoir, where he discusses how he established and expanded companies on the leading edge of advancements in technology, energy, retail, and investments over the last forty-five years. A natural storyteller, Wyly relates the process, relationships, struggles and strategies that have made him one of the 1,000 wealthiest people in the world.

From the hardships his parents faced trying to hold on to the family cotton farm during the Depression to the coaching he received on the high-school football field, Sam Wyly describes how his early years in Louisiana prepared him for what lay ahead. His sales experience with IBM and Honeywell in Dallas in the early 1960s gave him the idea to start the first "computer utility." Risking $1,000 of his savings, he founded University Computing in 1963 and took it public two years later, becoming a millionaire at the age of thirty.

His later business successes included taking on the mammoth AT&T monopoly, expanding the small chains of Michaels Stores and Bonanza Steakhouses to over a thousand locations nationwide, co-founding the Maverick Capital and Ranger Capital hedge funds, and fouding Green Mountain Energy, the largest provider of cleaner energy in America today.

Part autobiography and part inspirational business guide, 1,000 Dollars and an Idea is full of refreshing insights and homespun lessons about what it takes to create, grow, and build successful companies.