Adventure of a Bystander by Peter Drucker

Proluge: A Bystander Is Born

Report From Atlantis

• Grandmother And The Twentieth Century

• Hemme And Genia

• Miss Elsa And Miss Sophy

• Fruedian Myths And Fruedian Realities

• Count Traun-Trauneck And The Actress Maria Mueller

Young Man In An Old World

• The Polanyis

• The Man Who Invented Kissinger

• The Monster And The Lamb

• Noel Brailsford—The Last Of The Dissenters

• Ernest Freeberg's World

• The Bankers And The Courtesan

The Indian Summer Of Innocence

• Henry Luce And Time-Life-Fortune

• The Prophets: Buckminster Fuller And Marshall Mcluhan

• The Professional: Alfred Sloan

• The Indian Summer Of Innocence

Quotes from Amazon.com book page

An amazing pageant of characters, both famous and otherwise, springs from these pages, illuminating and defining one of the most tumultuous periods in world history. Along with bankers and courtesans, artists, aristocrats, prophets, and empire-builders, we meet members of Drucker's own family and close circle of friends, among them such prominent figures as Sigmund Freud, Henry Luce, Alfred Sloan, John Lewis, and Buckminster Fuller. Playing to perfection their roles as those who "reflect and refract" the customs, beliefs, and attitudes of the times, these singular personalities lend Adventures of a Bystander a striking "you-are-there" feel.

---

I laughed and I cried as I read Adventures of a Bystander. I have always had enormous respect for Professor Drucker, but this book has taken my respect and awe of him to another plateau. To learn how and what Professor Drucker thought as a child and how many momentous decisions he made by the time he was fourteen helps us understand him as a person and the environment from which all of his other works come. My grandmother also grew up in Austria and the "Grandmother stories" brought back very precious memories. Once again, even as a youngster, we see Professor Drucker uncannily knowing what will happen by studying (by living) the events of the times. One cannot really understand and appreciate Professor Drucker and his other works without reading this book, and yet, reading many of his other works first, made me appreciate Adventures of a Bystander even more.