THE YOUNG MILLIONAIRES.

By LawrenceA. Armour '56. Chicago: A Playboy PressBook, 1973. Foreword by James J. Ling.Afterword by Nick J. Mileti. Distributed bySimon & Schuster, Inc., New York. 265 pp.$7.95.

In the last five years Leonard N. Stern, only 35 years old, has amassed from $500 million to $700 million in foods, accessories, and real estate. A Fortune article points up that within the last five years 39 self-made millionaires have earned from at least $5O million to $700 million. Five are more than 70 years old, and 26 are 50 or over. Mr. Armour is interested only in the super-young superrich like Dan Lasater, aged 29, who in 1972 retired from active business (Ponderosa Steak House Chain) with $30 million. The Armour favorites are specialists in making not only a fast buck but also a lightning fast buck in enterprises expanding almost overnight and controlled with their own velvet-iron hands or by even harder naked steel hands of underlings.

The son of immigrant parents from Sicily, Nick Mileti tells how easy it is. A lawyer, he owns a major Cleveland radio station and is president of the Cleveland Indians, Cleveland Cavaliers, and Cleveland Crusaders. 1. Have an objective, be solution-oriented, and never take no for an answer. 2. Be willing to risk everything time and time again. 3. Be tough-minded in the face of public ridicule, financial disaster, and personal embarrassment. Summary: "The person with drive, determination, and vision can become a millionaire."

Samples: 1. John Y. Brown Jr., "one of those natural-born salesmen who could unload raincoats in the Sahara, peddle pork chops at a barmizvah, or sell Howard Hughes a Dale Carnegie course." In 1964 he invested a borrowed $160,000 in Kentucky Fried Chicken Corporation and five years later his stock was worth $60 million. His secretary invested $5,000 and made $3 million. At one time he had 21 millionaries reporting for work at 8:00 each morning, a real headache.

2. From the sick company, Underwood, Saul P. Steinberg, who believes that slow money is immoral and therefore bad and that fast money is moral and therefore good, moved into Leasco with assets on the far side of $1 billion. Aged 29, he owns a home with 29 rooms, a tennis court, two saunas, six or seven servants, a couple of chauffeurs, and pictures by "Picasso, Kandinsky, everybody." Incredibly enough, he has learned to live with them.

3. "King of the Mountain," Mark Fleischman, aged 31, "runs the Coney Island of the Ski World" and "made a mountain out of a molehill." His Vermont Mount Snow, the largest ski area in the world, has an appraised value of $12 million with a clientele of "hippies and bankers, swinging singles and conservative married folks, toddlers and golden agers."

This book consists of articles reprinted from various magazines and newspapers. Associate editor of Barron's, Mr. Armour is author of the first four, Ling, Steinberg, Riklis ("a sort of Jewish Horatio Alger"), and Brown, reprinted from Newsweek, New York Magazine, Forbes, and The National Observer. He writes introductions for the remaining articles by others. A final chapter entitled "For the Money: How-to-do-it Thoughts from Five Men Who Made It" shows how five "zillionaires" answer the question: "What would you do if you were 22, had only $5,000 capital, and 'really want to go'?"

Nick Mileti advises law school and quotes an old Sicilian saying: "You know how to eat an elephant? One bite at a time." You may prefer a new American saying by Mr. Mileti: "Between every dream and reality there are 200,000 nuts and bolts."