"Celebration of Fools begins more than 100 years ago in Evanston, Wyoming, where one James Cash Penney - talented and indefatigable, but secretly haunted by the prospect of failure - is a clerk at the local Golden Rule store. The owners, impressed by this young dynamo, offer him a partnership and a management role at a new location. By 1914, having long since bought out his partners, Penney owned 36 stores. By 1925, there would be 674." "This book chronicles the unprecedented rise and tragic fall of this uniquely American icon. The people who tell the story - from author and veteran JCPenney speechwriter Bill Hare to the dozens of former executives and employees he interviewed - are people who know it best, because they were there."--BOOK JACKET.