Self-made wealth in America Robber barons and silicon sultans Today’s tech billionaires have a lot in common with a previous generation of capitalist titans—perhaps too much for their own good Jan 3rd 2015  |  From the print edition   Economist IN THE 50 years between the end of the American civil war in 1865 and the outbreak of the first world war in 1914 , a group of entrepreneurs spearheaded America’s transformation from an agricultural into an industrial society, built gigantic business empires and amassed huge fortunes. In 1848 John J. Astor, a merchant trader, was America’s richest man with $20m (now $545m). By the time the United States entered the first world war, John D. Rockefeller had become its first billionaire. In the 50 years since Data General introduced the first mini-computers in the late 1960s, a group of entrepreneurs have spearheaded the transformation of an industrial age into an information society, built giga...

You can always improve your cognitive skills and abilities, said experts at BT MindRush. Goutam Das     Bussiness Today    Edition: January 18, 2015 P Murali Doraiswamy, Professor and Director, Mental Fitness Lab, Duke University (Photo: Shekhar Ghosh) The lanky P. Murali Doraiswamy, the Professor and Director of Mental Fitness Lab at Duke University,  walked up to the stage at Business Today's annual conclave, MindRush and " said "One of the things I am going to do is challenge one of the earlier speakers, Peter [Docker]. And tell you why some of the things he said was wrong," he said. Docker is a former British Royal Air Force officer and a pilot - he flew Margaret Thatcher, the late British Prime Minister. He has now metamorphosed into an eloquent motivational speaker who takes forward his friend and author Simon Sinek's theory of The Golden Circle. So, what did Docker say that needled Doraiswamy into a "friendly" ch...