What is happiness? The feeling that power increases – that resistance is being overcome.” David Olive cites that line from Friedrich Nietzsche as the epigraph of his new book. The quotation is a signal that readers will find no angst-driven examination of the capitalist imperative in No Guts, No Glory. Clearly, that’s not Olive’s business here: instead, he encapsulates the careers of 10 successful Canadian business moguls – all men – who have combined dreams and daring to create their empires.

The book’s purpose, Olive tells us in his introduction, is to examine the lives of “highly successful leaders in business, people who helped create the foundation of a dynamic Canadian economy that is blessed with unlimited potential for growth at the dawn of the 21st century.” Each profile, while not prescriptive, shows what problem-solving decisions each man made in order to enhance the business’s profile and profits.

Because the book is both accessible and scholarly, it will likely be eagerly read by MBA students and lay capitalists alike. Certainly, young entrepreneurs reading this book will learn whether they have the potential “right stuff” to succeed by measuring themselves against the careers of Isadore Sharp of The Four Seasons hotel chain or Galen and Garfield Weston of Loblaw fame.

Olive, a senior writer at the National Post and former editor of the Globe and Mail’s Report on Business magazine, is a compelling writer and certainly knows his subject. The book includes 42 pages of appendixes and notes to support each of its eight chapters. And the men Olive deems “Canada’s Greatest CEOs” came to power from different avenues: Max Ward built his airline from scratch, while Laurent Beaudoin of Bombardier married into a business. What all men have in common, according to Olive, is six leadership strategies that shaped their successes. Each possesses the audacity to pursue “a big idea”; the ability to focus; a willingness to “reinvent the company”; an ability to build a team culture in which authority is delegated and shared; the readiness to think globally; and the strength to embrace adversity.

Olive admires these men because none of them “can be accused of exhibiting a dismissive regard for the riches they piled up. The distinction is that they have seen wealth as a means of perpetuating their enterprises.” And, according to the no-guts-no-glory credo, “that’s a good thing.”