Jacques Peretti

The title of Jacques Peretti’s _The Deals that Made the World_, and even mores, it’s subtitle, “Reckless Ambition, Backroom Negotiations, and the Hidden Truths of Business,” promises an exciting behind the scenes look at the makings of some of the most impactful business deals in the world. Alas, it does not live up to the hype.

Peretti’s thesis is essentially that though the world focuses on politics as the driver of change and regulation of social and economic fortunes, it is more frequently businesses, and the deals made within them, that “have changed ow we spend nd think about money; the way we work; how we conceptualize wealth and risk, tax and inequality.” A strong concept that he then explores through the guise of landmark business deals relating to planned obsolescence, food, drugs, cash, work, risk, taxes, wealth, globalizations, and automation, followed by a discongrous epilog that does not seek to wrap up his argument in any coherent way, but merely predicts the next major impacts will come from small entrepreneurs (while using a big-business initiative by FaceBook to support his point).

More disappointing than the weakness of his argument, though, is that the book’s content is not reflective of its title or back matter. Far from an exciting window into how the sausage is made, most is a quasi-academic economic/social history of the impact of various business decisions. Never once are we given a slims of the reckless ambition, the backroom negotiations, or the hidden truths the subtitle promises.

Instead, we get a series of fairly dry essays about various business decisions (some of them aren’t even “deals,” as they do not involve two or more negotiating parties. They are appropriately be named “decisions.”). In fairness, these are some of the decisions with the largest socio-economic impact in the history of the industrial and post-industrial world. But few are not well known already. Thus, each chapter is essentially an essay of a level appropriate for a 500-level graduate seminar in economic history. But not much more enticing or connected than that. This makes for slow reading, as it is easy to read a chapter, then set the book aside for a month or two, and pick back up with the next one (or a random other one), having really missed nothing of the narrative.

The prose is passable, if not particularly interesting. Peretti’s journalistic background is well-revealed there. To his credit, there are some good citations in the form of Chicago Style end notes. However, these are spotty. If one were seeking to use this work as a starting point for academic research, he would find frustratingly frequent facts, statistics, and quotations that are not cited.

Disclaimer: I received a free pre-release copy in exchange for reviewing. The pre-release copy was an unedited proof, so some improvements may be made before publication. There were no restrictions or influence on the content of my review.… (plus d'informations)