Review: Be My Guest

Be My Guest by Conrad N. Hilton
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Overall, this is a fascinating life of a man that went from a humble if ambitious tradesman in the southwest territories to become a global entrepreneur that could hold the world's attention. As a mathematics teacher, I was intrigued by Hilton's "math story" and an angle I am sure I will share with my students:

I'm not out to convince anyone that calculus, or even algebra and geometry, are necessities in the hotel business. But I will argue long and loud that they are not useless ornaments pinned onto an average man's education. For me, at any rate, the ability to formulate quickly, to resolve any problem into its simplest, clearest form, has been exceedingly useful. It is true that you do not use algebraic formulae but in those three small brick buildings at Socorro I found higher mathematics the best possible exercise for developing the mental muscles necessary to this process.


In later years I was to be faced with large financial problems, enormous business deals with as many ramifications as an octopus has arms, where bankers, lawyers, consultants, all threw in their particular bit of information. It is always necessary to listen carefully to the powwow, but in the end someone has to put them all together, see the actual problem for what it is, and make a decision---come up with an answer. A thorough training in the mental disciplines of mathematics precludes any tendency to be fuzzy, to be misled by red herrings, and I can only believe that my two years at the School of Mines helped me to see quickly what the actual problem was---and where the problem is, the answer is. Any time you have two times two and know it, you are bound to have four.

Despite revealing the granular details of raising funds in the nick of time for, what feels like, every significant business move, a life of "flirting" with choice hotels that universally get a female personification like "dowager" or "dame" while left much less explored is why his own marriages -- one after multiple children -- seemed to fade away into divorce with little reflection.

Perhaps wisdom comes in the end. For Hilton this appeared to boil down to the notion that prayer was a vital force in what he called the “Battle for Freedom" and this seemed to resonate with a world weary from WW II in the final years covered by the book.

In those final pages, Hilton also pondered the hotel of the future, or really hotel chain as he saw it. One of his ideas was the need for a "portable library". I can just imagine a care of books rolling down the corridor more like what we see in prison movies. I would actually like that!


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