The Disruptors: 50 People Who Changed the World

by Alan Axelrod

“Biography lovers may find this a great start in understanding the long-term impacts that individuals can have on culture, society, and history and be interested in seeking further information about Axelrod's fascinating subjects. — Booklist

Meet 50 women and men who broke the rules . . . and changed the world.

What does Charles Darwin have in common with Johannes Gutenberg—or with Jackson Pollock, Martin Luther, Betty Friedan, Steve Jobs, and DJ Kool Herc? They were the disruptors, upending cultural, technical, spiritual, or scientific paradigms and altering the way we live forever. Bestselling author Alan Axelrod presents engaging profiles, accompanied by original line drawings, of 50 visionaries who rewrote the rules. Their innovations range from the printing press (Gutenberg) to the fight for women’s equality (Friedan), from the smartphone (Jobs) to the invention of hip-hop (Herc).

Genres: History

288 pages, Hardcover

Published September 4, 2018

About the author

Alan Axelrod, Ph.D., is a prolific author of history, business and management books. As of October 2018, he had written more than 150 books, as noted in an online introduction by Lynn Ware Peek before an interview with Axelrod on the National Public Radio station KPCW. Axelrod resides in Atlanta, Georgia.

Reviews

[Oznasia · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have mixed feelings about this book. The concept seemed to be an interesting one so I initially engaged with it enthusiastically.

The book comprises 50 brief biographies (average about five pages) of people who have disrupted things on this planet. In reality I would describe most of these people as free-thinking innovators who found (usually) better ways of doing things. The list of people included is very broad and personally I have to say that many of them do not interest me. Therefore I chose to not read the whole book but read the chapters that looked more interesting to me. Some of these are great, however, is there really anything in this book that can’t be found in Wikipedia?

[Dalin · Rating 2 out of 5]

It’s like a book compiled by informations from Wikipedia or some other sources that you can obtain from your search engine. It disappoints me that I actually “paid” for something that I can look up for free on the internet.

[Yoric · Rating 5 out of 5]

The introduction is both fascinating and beautiful, for how solid the analysis and how wide it spreads its wings.
Just try to read it and not read further if you can...
it's like watching your best humorous show and trying not to laugh.

Judge by yourself if you can resist this or not:

"Each of us who learns to walk learns an act of disruption."
"The disruption that is two-legged upright walking takes you from place to place. The kind of disruption created by history’s great disruptors takes all of humanity from place to place."

Reading the first "biography" about Confucius, it's not as polished, but still a good read.
You can hardly get nothing out of the greatest human beings in history, right?

"His belief was that frustration was indispensable to learning. Once sufficiently frustrated, a student would be ready to accept a prompt from the teacher"

To be continued...

[Cherie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice, small, easy to read bios on 50 people over the last 500 or so years that have changed the course of how some things were done or thought about in the world. Some obvious choices and a couple that you probably never thought about as game changers.

[B · Rating 5 out of 5]

Super interesting read, and I gained a lot of insight from it too about the creative process

[Nuyuryna · Rating 4 out of 5]

"We all need distruption"

The very exciting and inspiring book. All the bio had been written in short and full of information. It is really easy to understand.