Harvey N. Gillis has created a powerful and insightful book that will enable you, through proven strategies and combative pursuit, to ramp up your company’s profits, thwart your competition, and advance your career. This business analysis and strategy novel explains insightful analytic methods and innovative maneuvers that you have probably never experienced. Through intriguing and entertaining escapades Gillis covers what it takes to succeed at business and your career. If you are a business student, entrepreneur, strategist, analyst, investor or executive, this suspenseful, provocative book will improve your game and provide a clear framework of the steps required to achieve corporate success. His exploits and nuanced gaming will captivate you. Gillis, a successful investment entrepreneur who is no stranger to boardroom bargaining, has won many high-level negotiating and competitive forays. In his book he offers up sound, direct examples of less obvious techniques that will help move companies from losses or mediocre profits to unparalleled performance and gains. This is not just a book about business acumen, but a mini-manual outlining numerous gambits on how to achieve goals and avoid adversarial pitfalls. Gillis outlines precise points with entertaining wit and real life anecdotes that also reveal an underlying admirable code of conduct. His corporate adventures include Memorex, Activision, Microsoft, Bank of America, Starbucks, Amazon, ATL Ultrasound, and Mosaix. If you read one book this year about parlaying situations to your advantage while minimizing risks, “Backstreet to Boardroom” should be it. A seasoned corporate executive shares his story to showcase key principles of business success. Raised in a steel-mill community near Pittsburgh, Gillis (Backgammon for Life’s Challenges, 2011, etc.) got the business bug early. By the age of 9, he was working at the family’s furniture and appliance store, learning much from his dad but also suggesting that he revamp his incentive structure. Starting in grade school and continuing through college, Gillis ran a variety of enterprises, including selling flowers in school colors for sporting events. “Sixteen ventures and gambits; and every single one made money,” Gillis proudly notes before going on to recount his impressive professional career. After earning an MBA from Stanford in 1970, Gillis landed financial and planning positions at a series of banks and technology companies in Seattle, Silicon Valley and other areas. He took early retirement in 1998, at age 52, to run his own venture capital firm. He also moved around quite a bit, tackling a rather dizzying array of challenges and turnaround successes. He tells some fascinating tales here, including his near-miss opportunity to help launch Starbucks, his savvy offloading of aging inventory at a video game company and his dealings with bureaucrats at Bank of America. Gillis effectively uses his stories to underscore what he believes works in business (active listening and planning) and what doesn’t (office politics and micromanaging). Although he occasionally deploys rather lofty language, as in the book’s subtitle, he ultimately provides a road-tested roundup of helpful business and career advice. A compelling, if at times digressive, business autobiography and strategy guide.