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Rating: 
Summary: Revelations alone worth the price
Review: I have to say that I loved it. Tanous' interview style is terrific; he doesn't just ask a series of preplanned questions, he gets into debates with his interviewees and draws a great deal from them. The people in Visionaries comprise an amazing set of financiers, investors, and, well, visionaries, who are responsible for the formation of the some of the most amazing technology companies in the worked. Makes you wonder why someone else hasn't done this before, but apparently Tanous has been around for a while and developed the contacts you would need to get to these people. One small criticism is that I could easily think of some other great founders of great companies he could have picked but didn't; Steve Jobs comes to mind especially since he interviewed Arthur Rock who put up the money to start Apple. But despite that and a few other nitpicks, this book will thrill anyone who is interested in how some great companies got started, what these people see in our future, and the author even provides a handy list of stocks that these visionaries recommend.
Rating: 
Summary: Fascinating
Review: I read this book on the recommendation of a broker. I thought I would just read one or two interviews that interested me (I was particularly interested in developments in new medical procedures) but once I started, I read them all! The author's interviewing style is so easy and non-confrontational that I suspect his subjects lowered their guard and told more than they probably intended to. I found the subject matter fascinating. Here is a living history of some of the greatest investment decisions of all time told by the people who made those decisions. The venture capitalists the author interviewed on Sand Hill Road in California were particularly fascinating to me as they talked about their decisions to invest in legendary companies like Apple and Intel. That led me to wonder what these people like today that I can invest in! Fortunately, the author asks most of the visionaries for ideas and stocks they like now. He lists them all in an appendix while hammering home the point (and he does it a bit too much) that we should remember that these are risky stocks and we shouldn't go overboard. Overall, I found this book fascinating from an historical point of view, and useful in pointing the way new technologies will help us in the near future and maybe make us some money!
Rating:
Summary: Another great effort by Tanous
Review: Like his previous book Investment Gurus, Investment Visionaries is another great series of interviews with money managers and pioneers. While the methodologies of venture capitalists and technology investors are more difficult to distill and systematize than the value and growth investors that Tanous profiled in his last book, there is value nonetheless in this book, particularly in the interviews with Don Valentine, William Haseltine and Gregg Powers. Valentine shares and expands on his well-known preference for defined markets over talented entrepreneurial managers, Haseltine describes the genesis of Humane Genome Sciences' innovative drug development platform, and Powers reveals a wonderfully simple and useful way to search for value in annuity business models within the technology sector. Most imporantly, Tanous is a great interviewer and listener, and he draws out great insights from his subjects without making himself the center of the interviews. Based on his interviews with Gregg Powers in this book and Bruce Sherman in his previous book, I would urge Mr. Tanous to consider writing his next book exclusively about their investment firm, Private Capital Management.
Rating:
Summary: Revelations alone worth the price
Review: This book amazed me for the wrong reasons. I read it as an investment book but I was blown away by the revelations that these brilliant minds see in our not-so-distant future, like moving objects with our brain (which apparently can be done now) a life expectancy of 120 years, and a bunch of medical breakthroughs just around the corner. Made me forget it was an investment book. I guess I'll have to read it again.
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