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&“Concentrating on personal finance don&’ts is a clever idea . . . an intriguing reminder of what not to do when investing your…
money.&” —The New York Times Brilliant investors and top businesspeople make mistakes, too—very expensive ones. Drawing on his twenty-plus years of experience at some of Wall Street&’s most prestigious firms, as well as original research and interviews with these legendary investors, Stephen Weiss offers fascinating narrative accounts of their billion-dollar blunders. Here, such prominent figures as Kirk Kerkorian, Bill Ackman, David Bonderman, Aubrey McClendon, and Leon Cooperman discuss the most significant trade or investment that went against them, the magnitude of the loss, its effect on their businesses—and on their personal lives. The book skillfully examines the causal relationship between the quirks of each investor&’s personality and the mistakes they have committed—as well as the lessons learned. While some investors made errors of judgment, others made errors of perception. But no matter how many zeros were attached to these particular losses, investors at any level can profit from the wisdom gained—and avoid the same missteps. &“When a great investor flubs it, everyone can learn a lesson. With that in mind, author Stephen Weiss delves into the biggest mistakes of such Wall Street luminaries as Bill Ackman, Leon Cooperman and Richard Pzena.&” —Barron&’sSad Men
By Dave Roberts. 2014
All Dave Roberts ever wanted to do (apart from collect football programmes) was to work in advertising. More specifically, to…
work for the world's best advertising agency, Saatchi and Saatchi. There was just one problem. Even when he managed to persuade someone to employ him, Dave's copywriting assignments were mainly for second hand car dealers and double glazing companies. And Leeds, Manchester and, bizarrely, New Zealand were a long way from Charlotte Street and Madison Avenue. This was the world of the Sad Men.In his sparkling new memoir, Dave tells the story of a life shaped by his love of adverts, from seeing the PG Tips chimps at the age of three to writing infamous ads such as the Westpac Rap and having David Jason plug a family restaurant. Bursting with brilliant ideas - and some pretty daft ones - it is the cautionary tale of a quest for advertising glory... and not quite ever getting there.Rosamond Lehmann: A Life
By Selina Hastings. 2002
The life of Rosamond Lehmann was as romantic and harrowing as that of any of her fictional heroines. Her first…
novel, the shocking Dusty Answer, became wildly successful launching her career as a novelist and, just as her novels depicted the tempestuous lives of her heroines, Rosamond's personal life would be full of heartbreaking affairs and lost loves. Escaping from a disastrous early marriage Rosamond moved right into the heart of Bloomsbury society with Wogan Philipps. Later on she would embark on the most important love affair of her life, with the poet Cecil Day Lewis; nine years later he abandoned her for a young actress - a betrayal from which she would never recover. Selina Hastings masterfully creates a portrait of a woman whose dramatic life, work and relationships criss-crossed the cultural, literary and political landscape of England in the middle of the twentieth century.Romain Gary: A Tall Story
By David Bellos. 1950
Airman, war hero, immigrant, law student, diplomat, novelist and celebrity spouse, Romain Gary had several lives thrust upon him by…
the history of the twentieth century, but he also aspired to lead many more. He wrote more than two dozen books and a score of short stories under several different names in two languages, English and French, neither of which was his mother tongue. Gary had a gift for narrative that endeared him to ordinary readers, but won him little respect among critics far more intellectual than he could ever be. His varied and entertaining writing career tells a different story about the making of modern literary culture from the one we are accustomed to hearing.Born Roman Kacew in Vilna (now Lithuania) in 1914 and raised by only his mother after his father left them, Gary rose to become French Consul General in Los Angeles and the only man ever to win the Goncourt Prize twice.This biography follows the many threads that lead from Gary's wartime adventures and early literary career to his years in Hollywood and his marriage to the actress Jean Seberg. It illuminates his works in all their incarnations, and culminates in the tale of his most brilliant deception: the fabrication of a complex identity for his most successful nom de plume, Émile Ajar.In his new portrait of Gary, David Bellos brings biographical research together with literary and cultural analysis to make sense of the many lives of Romain Gary - a hero fit for our times, as well as his own.The Roads to Sata: A 2000-mile walk through Japan
By Alan Booth. 1985
'A memorable, oddly beautiful book' Wall Street Journal'A marvellous glimpse of the Japan that rarely peeks through the country's public…
image' Washington PostOne sunny spring morning in the 1970s, an unlikely Englishman set out on a pilgrimage that would take him across the entire length of Japan. Travelling only along small back roads, Alan Booth travelled on foot from Soya, the country's northernmost tip, to Sata in the extreme south, traversing three islands and some 2,000 miles of rural Japan. His mission: 'to come to grips with the business of living here,' after having spent most of his adult life in Tokyo.The Roads to Sata is a wry, witty, inimitable account of that prodigious trek, vividly revealing the reality of life in off-the-tourist-track Japan. Journeying alongside Booth, we encounter the wide variety of people who inhabit the Japanese countryside - from fishermen and soldiers, to bar hostesses and school teachers, to hermits, drunks and the homeless. We glimpse vast stretches of coastline and rambling townscapes, mountains and motorways; watch baseball games and sunrises; sample trout and Kilamanjaro beer, hear folklore, poems and smutty jokes. Throughout, we enjoy the wit and insight of a uniquely perceptive guide, and more importantly, discover a new face of an often-misunderstood nation.Riding the Storm
By Duncan Bannatyne. 2013
Can money buy you happiness?A few years ago Duncan Bannatyne might have said so. He was happily married and his…
businesses were thriving. Life was good. He couldn't have known that a storm was brewing on the horizon and that he would soon face immense personal and professional struggles, including the strain of a divorce and the impact of the recession on his business empire. Riding the Storm is the inspirational account of how Duncan overcame these setbacks. It's a survival story, full of insights into how he adapted his businesses and his life to new financial realities. In it, Duncan explains exactly how a working-class boy from Clydebank built himself a multimillion-pound business empire, and talks with incredible frankness about the current strategies, goals and finances of his companies. He reveals the true nature of his feuds and friendships with the other Dragons and uses his experiences from Dragons' Den to offer advice to start-up entrepreneurs in today's market. He speaks openly about the terrible pain of his divorce and how his children's love gave him the strength to get through it. He discusses the opportunities that success has given him, from learning to dance for Sport Relief to trekking up Kilimanjaro with his daughter. And finally he explains why, in spite of having just gone through the toughest years of his life, he feels positive about the future - and why you should too.Book 9 in Ved Mehta's Continents of Exile series. Nearly 50 years in the making, Continents of Exile is one…
of the great works of twentieth-century autobiography: the epic chronicle of an Indian family in the twentieth century. From 1930s India to 1950s Oxford and literary New York in the 1960s-80s, this is the story of the post-colonial twentieth century, as uniquely experienced and vividly recounted by Ved Mehta.In Remembering Mr. Shawn's New Yorker, Ved Mehta provides an unparalleled glimpse into the inner workings of the one of world's most famous magazines. He portrays in detail the strange, nurturing atmosphere at the New Yorker, and he recounts the earthquakes that shook the magazine as it moved into the hands of more commercial ownership. At once a tribute to William Shawn - one of the longest serving editors in the New Yorker's history - Mehta's memoir is also a joyful tribute to the intricately linked arts of editing, writing, and reading.The Red Letters: Continents of Exile: 12 (Penguin Modern Classics)
By Ved Mehta. 2005
The last volume of Ved Mehta's Continents of Exile series. Nearly 50 years in the making, Continents of Exile is…
one of the great works of twentieth-century autobiography: the epic chronicle of an Indian family in the twentieth century. From 1930s India to 1950s Oxford and literary New York in the 1960s-80s, this is the story of the post-colonial twentieth century, as uniquely experienced and vividly recounted by Ved Mehta.During the clamour of a New York dinner party, Mehta is startled to find his father crying on his mother's shoulders. This episode begins a painful and revealing voyage into his father's personal history. In stark prose, Mehta unravels a passionate, clandestine affair that bore quiet yet extraordinary consequences for himself and his family. Red Letters also serves as a brilliant exploration and a recreation of British India: its sights and sounds, its injustices and its secrecy.The Real Deal: The Autobiography of Britain’s Most Controversial Media Mogul
By Richard Desmond. 2015
From the age of five, when he helped his deaf father negotiate advertising contracts, Richard Desmond has always had an…
eye for business. In The Real Deal he offers a no-holds-barred account of an extraordinary career that has taken him from cloakroom attendant at a north London club to billionaire media owner. En route he tells of his early life as a rock and roll drummer, his first steps in the world of magazine publishing as a purveyor of leisure and top-shelf titles, and finally, after decades of paying his dues building smaller brands, his arrival in the big league with the launch of OK! magazine and the acquisition of Express Newspapers, his purchase and sale of Channel 5, and his £80 million investment in the Health Lottery, combining business innovation with help for good causes. Along the way, he imparts many of the secrets of his astounding success, as well as giving his forthright opinion (and he always has one) on such diverse subjects as politicians, religion, and the similarities between being a rock and roll drummer and running a business – as well as his views on a cast of characters ranging from Alan Sugar to Victoria Beckham and from Simon Cowell to Jennifer Aniston.Often controversial, frequently revelatory, always entertaining, The Real Deal is the brilliantly frank account of a life spent at the sharp end.The Real Deal: My Story from Brick Lane to Dragons' Den
By James Caan. 2008
After dropping out of school at just sixteen, James Caan started his business life in a broom cupboard with no…
qualifications and two pieces of fatherly wisdom: 'observe the masses and do the opposite' and 'always look for opportunities where both parties benefit'. Armed with this advice, natural charm and the Yellow Pages, he built a market-leading business with a turnover of £130 million and swiftly became one of Britain's most successful entrepreneurs.From Caan's childhood as a Pakistani immigrant to the phenomenal success of his first company and beyond, The Real Deal traces both his financial and personal achievements. It offers a frank account of what success at thirty really signifies and brings us right up to the present, including his impact on Dragons' Den and what his charity work, from saving a hospital in London to building a school in Lahore, means to him. Ultimately, it is a story of learning what money is really worth, told by one the country's most insightful businessmen.The key to rising to the top of your company lies in a simple message and philosophy. The ultimate inspirational…
story for ambitious innovators, market-disruptors, and global business entrepreneurs. Celebrating DHL’s fiftieth anniversary as a world-leading delivery company, global CEO Ken Allen tells the unique story of his journey to the top of the industry. In this business memoir, he shares the strategies and skills he has developed throughout his career, drawing on both his core values and extensive experience. This book is an inimitable guide to succeeding in any business, focusing on strategy and practical advice while revealing the simple lessons you need to learn to excel in life and work. It is an accessible read for entrepreneurs and managers at any stage of their career, packed with motivational material and no-nonsense tips. This simple and honest book is a must-have for anyone looking to reach the top of their field.The Quest for Corvo: An Experiment in Biography (Penguin Modern Classics)
By A. J. Symons. 1955
'What had happened to the lost manuscripts, what train of chances took Rolfe to his death in Venice? The Quest…
continued'One summer afternoon A.J.A. Symons is handed a peculiar, eccentric novel that he cannot forget and, captivated by this unknown masterpiece, determines to learn everything he can about its mysterious author. The object of his search is Frederick Rolfe, self-titled Baron Corvo - artist, rejected candidate for priesthood and author of serially autobiographical fictions - and its story is told in this 'experiment in biography': a beguiling portrait of an insoluble tangle of talents, frustrated ambitions and self-destruction.Portrait of India (Penguin Modern Classics)
By Ved Mehta. 1970
Returning to 1960s' India after decades beyond its borders, Ved Mehta explores his native country with two sets of eyes:…
those of the man educated in the West, and those of the child raised under the Raj. Travelling from the Himalayas in the east to Kerala in the west, Ved Mehta's observations and insights into India and some of its most interesting figures - including Indira Gandhi, Jaya Prakash Narayan and Satyajit Ray - create one of the twentieth century's most thought-provoking travel memoirs.The Poetry Of Edward Thomas
By Andrew Motion. 1936
When Edward Thomas died at Arras in 1917 few people thought of him as a poet. Yet in the two…
years before his death, after a lifetime writing prose, Thomas wrote some of the most enduring poems of his day: poems of war, nature, friendship, despair and exultation. Andrew Motion's pioneering study of Thomas' life and achievement is scholarly yet utterly absorbing, combining an account of his struggles as a writer with perceptive readings of individual poems.Andrew Motion's books include a biography, The Lamberts, George, Constant and Kil, and several prize-winning collections of poetry, the most recent of which is Love in a Life. He is currently writing the authorized biography of Philip Larkin.A Pocketful of Holes and Dreams
By Jeff Pearce. 2010
The poor boy who made his fortune . . . not just once but twice.Little Jeff Pearce grew up in…
a post-war Liverpool slum. His father lived the life of an affluent gentleman whilst his mother was forced to steal bread to feed her starving children. Life was tough and from the moment Jeff could walk he learned to go door to door, begging rags from the rich, which he sold down the markets. Leaving school at the age of fourteen, he embarked on an extraordinary journey, and found himself, before the age of thirty, a millionaire.Then, after a cruel twist of fate left him penniless, he, his wife and children were forced out of their beautiful home . . .With nothing but holes in his pockets, Jeff had no alternative but to go back down the markets and start all over again. Did he still have what it took? Could he really get back everything he had lost?A Pocketful of Holes and Dreams is the heartwarming true story of a little boy who had nothing but gained everything and proof that, sometimes, rags can be turned into riches . . .______________'An inspirational tale of hard work and determination' 5* Reader review 'I just loved this book from the first chapter - I was gripped' 5* Reader reviewOver Hill and Dale
By Gervase Phinn. 2000
Over Hill and Dale is the second volume in Gervase Phinn's bestselling Dales series.'Miss, who's that funny man at the…
back of the classroom?So begins school-inspector Gervase Phinn's second year among the frankly spoken pupils and teachers of North Yorkshire - the sight of Gervase with his notebook and pen provokes unexpected reactions from the children and adults alike.But Gervase is far from daunted - he is ready to brave the steely glare of the officious Mrs Savage, and even feels up to helping Dr Gore organize a gathering of the Feofees - just as soon as someone tells him what they are! He is still in pursuit of the lovely headteacher Christine Bentley, but will she feel the same?This is a delectable second helping of hilarious tales from the man who has been dubbed 'the James Herriot of schools'. In Over Hill and Dale, Gervase Phinn will have you laughing out loud.'Gervase Phinn's memoirs have made him a hero in school staff-rooms' Daily TelegraphGervase Phinn is an author and educator from Rotherham who, after teaching for fourteen years in a variety of schools, moved to North Yorkshire to be a school inspector. He has written autobiographies, novels, plays, collections of poetry and stories, as well as a number of books about education. He holds five fellowships, honorary doctorates from Hull, Leicester and Sheffield Hallam universities, and is a patron of a number of children's charities and organizations. He is married with four adult children. His books include The Other Side of the Dale, Over Hill and Dale, Head Over Heels in the Dales,The Heart of the Dales, Up and Down in the Dales and Trouble at the Little Village School.Out of the Desert: My Journey From Nomadic Bedouin to the Heart of Global Oil
By Ali Al-Naimi. 2016
The extraordinary memoir of global oil's former central bankerAli Al-Naimi is the former Saudi oil minister - and OPEC kingpin…
- a position he held for the two decades between August 1995 and May 2016. In this time, Al-Naimi's briefest utterances moved markets. But it wasn't always that way.Al-Naimi was born into abject poverty as a nomadic Bedouin in the 1930s, just as US companies were discovering vast quantities of oil under the baking Arabian deserts. From his first job as a shepherd boy, aged four, to his appointment to one of the most powerful political and economic jobs in the world, Out of the Desert charts Al-Naimi's extraordinary rise to power. Described by Alan Greenspan as 'the most powerful man you've never heard of', Al-Naimi's incredible journey proves that anyone can make it - even a poor Bedouin shepherd boy. This is his exclusive inside story of power, politics and oil.His Excellency Ali Ibrahim Al-Naimi is the former Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. One of the most powerful economic and political jobs in the world, he held this post from August 1995 to May 2016.Prior to that he held a wide range of leadership positions in the Kingdom's national oil company, Saudi Aramco. He was the first Saudi national to be named President of the company in 1984 and became the first Saudi CEO in 1988. Al-Naimi joined the company, then called Aramco, as an office boy in 1947. A Bedouin, he was born in the deserts of eastern Arabia in 1935.The Olivetti Chronicles
By John Peel. 2008
John Peel is best known for his four decades of radio broadcasting. His Radio 1 shows shaped the taste of…
successive generations of music lovers. His Radio 4 show, Home Truths, became required listening for millions. But all the while, Peel was also tapping away on his beloved Olivetti typewriter, creating copy for an array of patient editors. He wrote articles, columns and reviews for newspapers and magazines as diverse as The Listener, Oz, Gandalf's Garden, Sounds, the Observer, the Independent and Radio Times.Now for the first time, the best of these writings have been brought together - selected by his wife, Sheila, and his four children. Music, of course, is a central and recurring theme, and he writes on music in all its forms, from Tubular Bells to Berlin punk to Madonna. Here you can read John Peel on everything from the perils of shaving to the embarrassments of virginity, and from the strange joy of Eurovision to the horror of being sick in trains. At every stage, the writing is laced with John's brilliantly acute observations on the minutiae of everyday life.This endlessly entertaining book is essential reading for Peel fans and a reminder of just why he remains a truly great Briton.Odd Boy Out: The ‘hilarious, eye-popping, unforgettable’ Sunday Times bestseller 2021
By Gyles Brandreth. 2021
The compelling, witty and remarkably honest autobiography from beloved star of Just a Minute, QI, Have I Got News For…
You and Celebrity GoggleboxTHE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER'Hilarious, ribald, eye-popping, unforgettable, will make you laugh out loud' DAILY MAIL'Warm, witty, charming. A moving and very affectionate family history. An enthusiast for life' THE TIMES________Enter the world of Gyles Brandreth - broadcaster, actor, writer, former politician - as he takes us on an extraordinary journey into his past.From growing up in an apparently well-to-do but strapped-for-cash middle-class English family to his adventures in swinging London, Gyles encounters princes, presidents, pop stars and prime ministers, gets involved in everything from setting up Scrabble championships to examining Danish sex shops, and thrills us with countless tales of family, friends and acquaintances, both famous and infamous.Filled with incredible and sometimes shocking stories, Odd Boy Out is the story of Gyles Brandreth's fascinating life told with his unique wit and charm.________'Staggeringly brilliant, funny and touching, I loved it' JOANNA LUMLEY 'Light-hearted and dark events alike are described with his customary jaunty style, making them funny, moving an sometimes deeply shocking ' Sheila HancockNikolaus Pevsner: The Life
By Susie Harries. 2011
Born Nikolai Pewsner into a Russian-Jewish family in Leipzig in 1902, Nikolaus Pevsner was a dedicated scholar who pursued a…
promising career as an academic in Dresden and Göttingen. When, in 1933 Jews were no longer permitted to teach in German universities, he lost his job and looked for employment in England. Here, over a long and amazingly industrious career, he made himself an authority on the exploration and enjoyment of English art and architecture, so much so that his magisterial county-by-county series of 46 books on The Buildings of England (first published 1951 - 74) is usually referred to simply as 'Pevsner'. As a critic, academic and champion of Modernism, Pevsner became a central figure in the architectural consensus that accompanied post-war reconstruction; as a 'general practitioner' of architectural history, he covered an astonishing range, from Gothic cathedrals and Georgian coffee houses to the Festival of Britain and Brutalist tower blocks.Susie Harries explores the truth about Nikolaus Pevsner's reported sympathies with elements of Nazi ideology, his internment in England as an enemy alien and his sometimes painful assimilation into his country of exile. His Heftchen - secret diaries he kept from the age of 14 for another sixty years - reveal hidden aspirations and anxieties, as do his numerous letters (he wrote to his wife, Lola, every day that they were apart).Harries is the first biographer to have read Pevsner's private papers and, through them, to have seen into the workings of his mind.Her definitive biography is not only rich in context and far-ranging, but is also brought to life by quotations from Pevsner himself. He was born a Jew but converted to Lutheranism; trained in the rigour of German scholarship, he became an Everyman in his copious commissions, publications, broadcasts and lectures on art, architecture, design, education, town planning, social housing, conservation, Mannerism, the Bauhaus, the Victorians, Zeitgeist, Englishness and how a nation's character may, or must, be reflected in its art. His life - as an outsider yet an insider at the heart of English art history - illuminates both the predicament and the prowess of the continental émigrés who did so much to shape British culture after 1945.