After Chrysler boss Lee Iacocca published his autobiography in 1984, it seemed every CEO had a story to tell. While most of these aggrandizing treatments offered readers little more than a recipe for success or a personal report card, the best ones probed the psyches of their subjects, taking measure of their influences, their motivations, and their dreams.

In Can’t Buy Me Love, business journalist Rod McQueen sets out to tell two stories: the biography of Martha Billes, one of Canada’s wealthiest businesswomen, and how, despite having been excluded from the family business by her father and two brothers, she managed to wrest control of Canadian Tire from her siblings. The tale has all the trappings of a classic study of squabbling families and sibling rivalries, but it’s also a vivid portrait of the emotional life, motivations, and business acumen of Martha Billes.

McQueen won a National Business Book Award for Who Killed Confederation Life, and scored a national bestseller with The Eatons, a gripping read about the downfall of the Eaton family. Can’t Buy Me Love is as well researched as McQueen’s earlier works; the main problem here is his subject. While the Eatons were eccentric and self-important, providing heaps of material for a would-be biographer, Canadian Tire’s founders are by contrast quietly prosaic.

Wisely, McQueen avoids a rehash of Ian Brown’s irreverent and witty Free Wheeling, a history of Canadian Tire published a decade ago. He only briefly covers the company’s roots, and moves quickly to Martha’s childhood. Much of the book covers her battles with Canadian Tire dealers, quest for control of the company, and legal proceedings against Paul McAteer, a former lover whose company Martha foolishly funded.

As a child of the 1950s, Martha was groomed to marry well and play a supporting role in her husband’s success. Like so many women of her generation, she was underestimated by her male peers. In Martha’s case, this made her takeover of the family business all the more dramatic. The Billes brothers were stunned when their glacial sister eventually took control of the company. Ironically, according to McQueen, after watching from the sidelines all her life, Martha proved to be a loyal and dedicated heir.

McQueen delivers a lively account of Martha Billes’s story, but seems dazzled at times by her wealth and power. At one point, in an all-too-common example of hyperbole, McQueen likens Martha to Cher, then later compares her to Joan Crawford’s character in the film Mildred Pierce: “As with Mildred, Martha possesses both money and moxie, but she never knows if a man loves her for her fortune or for herself.”

Journalist and former economist Larry MacDonald’s The Bombardier Story begins with a mechanic, Joseph-Armand Bombardier, who likes to tinker in his garage during long Quebec winters. His invention of the snowmobile, in 1937, launched a company that went on to manufacture subway cars and jet airplanes worldwide.

MacDonald ably demonstrates that Bombardier was more than a technically canny businessman and inventor. An ethical man who believed in family ties in business, Bombardier also presciently decided to diversify the company’s products. His successor and son-in-law, Laurent Beaudoin, was equally astute, leading the company to expand internationally. Much of Bombardier’s success MacDonald credits to the company’s guiding principle of adapting established technologies to its own market – rather than taking the more costly route of developing them itself.

Book-length corporate histories tend to be uncritical studies of business success stories. But The Bombardier Story is no whitewash. MacDonald criticizes Bombardier’s appeal to government largesse, for example. In particular, he questions Ottawa’s offer of preferred financing on the purchase of Bombardier subway cars by the city of New York, while at the same time withholding funds for much-needed improvements to VIA Rail.

As so often happens with book publishing and world events, MacDonald’s predictions for Bombardier were caught in the backdraft of Sept. 11. The aerospace division is now suffering huge losses and faces a greater challenge than even the retirement of pro-Bombardier Prime Minister, Jean Chrétien. Still, MacDonald proves he is an accomplished and knowledgeable new voice in the world of business books.