7 timeless lessons from Bill Gates' favorite business book

Two years ago, Gates had his favorite business book, 1969's "Business Adventures" by John Brooks, pulled out of obscurity and put back into print. With the force of Gates' passionate recommendation behind it, it became a bestseller.

He continues to publicly vouch for it, most recently last month in an interview with the New York Times Style Magazine.

On his personal blog, Gates said that he fell in love with the book, a collection of Brooks' New Yorker articles detailing some of the most important events in corporate America in the mid-20th century, back in 1991, when he was still CEO of Microsoft. He had asked Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett what his favorite business book was, and Buffett responded by sending Gates his personal copy of "Business Adventures."

"Brooks's work is a great reminder that the rules for running a strong business and creating value haven't changed," Gates wrote in his post.

We've gone through "Business Adventures" and highlighted some of its key lessons that are still applicable today: