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The Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie
By Andrew Carnegie. 2011
Andrew Carnegie, the great steel-baron-turned-philanthropist, was an industrialist unlike any other. His famous dictum, that he who dies rich dies…
disgraced, has inspired a generation of twenty-first-century philanthropists to follow in his footsteps and put their money towards philanthropic causes. He had an unwavering belief in distributing wealth for good, and systematically and deliberately gave away the bulk of his riches throughout his lifetime. Born in 1835, he emigrated with his family to the United States from Scotland at a young age. His first job was in a cotton factory, and he later worked as an errand boy. The industrial age brought great opportunities for Mr. Carnegie. With drive and hard work, he amassed a fortune as a steel tycoon, and by adulthood the errand boy was one of the richest and most generous men in the United States. A strong dedication to giving back guided him throughout his life and career. During his own lifetime, he put his ideas into action by creating a family of organizations that continue to work toward improving the human condition, advancing international peace, strengthening democracy, and creating social progress that benefits men, women and children both in the United States and around the globe. Here, in the reissue of the classic autobiography that has inspired generations, is the rags-to-riches tale of the life and philosophies of one of the most celebrated industrialists and philanthropists in history. From his humble beginnings as a poor Scottish immigrant to his immense success in business, Andrew Carnegie outlines the principles that he lived by and that today serve as the pillars of modern philanthropy.Murdoch's World: The Last of the Old Media Empires
By David Folkenflik. 2013
Rupert Murdoch is the most significant media tycoon the English-speaking world has ever known. No one before him has trafficked…
in media influence across those nations so effectively, nor has anyone else so singularly redefined the culture of news and the rules of journalism. In a stretch spanning six decades, he built News Corp from a small paper in Adelaide, Australia into a multimedia empire capable of challenging national broadcasters, rolling governments, and swatting aside commercial rivals. Then, over two years, a series of scandals threatened to unravel his entire creation. MurdochOCOs defenders questioned how much he could have known about the bribery and phone hacking undertaken by his journalists in London. But to an exceptional degree, News Corp was an institution cast in the image of a single man. The companyOCOs culture was deeply rooted in an Australian buccaneering spirit, a brawling British populism, and an outsized American libertarian sensibility?at least when it suited MurdochOCOs interests. David Folkenflik, the media correspondent for NPR News, explains how the man behind BritainOCOs take-no-prisoners tabloids, who reinvigorated Roger Ailes by backing his vision for Fox News, who gave a new swagger to the "New York Post" and a new style to the "Wall Street Journal," survived the scandals?and the true cost of this survival. He summarily ended his marriage, alienated much of his family, and split his corporation asunder to protect the source of his vast wealth (on the one side), and the source of his identity (on the other). There were moments when the global news chief panicked. But as long as Rupert Murdoch remains the person at the top, "MurdochOCOs World" will be making news. "The Sins of the Father: Joseph P. Kennedy and the Dynasty He Founded
By Ronald Kessler. 1996
Thisfirst serious volume focusing exclusively on Joseph Patrick Kennedy --Ronald Kessler recreates the life and times of this ambitious, powerful,…
masterfully manipulative man. Utilizing extensive research and interviews with Kennedy family members and their intimates, speaking on record for the first time, Kessler reveals stunning details of JPK's enormous accomplishments and the terrible personal losses he suffered.Things a Little Bird Told Me: Confessions of the Creative Mind
By Biz Stone. 2014
Biz Stone, the co-founder of Twitter, discusses the power of creativity and how to harness it, through stories from his…
remarkable life and career.THINGS A LITTLE BIRD TOLD MEFrom GQ's "Nerd of the Year" to one of Time's most influential people in the world, Biz Stone represents different things to different people. But he is known to all as the creative, effervescent, funny, charmingly positive and remarkably savvy co-founder of Twitter-the social media platform that singlehandedly changed the way the world works. Now, Biz tells fascinating, pivotal, and personal stories from his early life and his careers at Google and Twitter, sharing his knowledge about the nature and importance of ingenuity today. In Biz's world:-Opportunity can be manufactured-Great work comes from abandoning a linear way of thinking-Creativity never runs out -Asking questions is free-Empathy is core to personal and global success In this book, Biz also addresses failure, the value of vulnerability, ambition, and corporate culture. Whether seeking behind-the-scenes stories, advice, or wisdom and principles from one of the most successful businessmen of the new century, THINGS A LITTLE BIRD TOLD ME will satisfy every reader.The epic battle of the fascinating, flawed figures behind America’s deal culture and their fight over who controls and who…
benefits from the immense wealth of American corporations. Bloodsport is the story of how the mania for corporate deals and mergers all began. The riveting tale of how power lawyers Joe Flom and Marty Lipton, major Wall Street players Felix Rohatyn and Bruce Wasserstein, prominent jurists, and shrewd ideologues in academic garb provided the intellectual firepower, creativity, and energy that drove the corporate elite into a less cozy, Hobbesian world. With total dollar volume in the trillions, the zeal for the deal continues unabated to this day. Underpinning this explosion in mergers and acquisitions--including hostile takeovers--are four questions that radically disrupted corporate ownership in the 1970s, whose force remains undiminished: Are shareholders the sole "owners” of corporations and the legitimate source of power? Should control be exercised by autonomous CEOs or is their assumption of power illegitimate and inefficient? Is the primary purpose of the corporation to generate jobs and create prosperity for the masses and the nation? Or is it simply to maximize the wealth of shareholders? This battle of ideas became the "bloodsport” of American business. It set in motion the deal-making culture that led to the financialization of the economy and it is the backstory to ongoing debates over competitiveness, job losses, inequality, stratospheric executive pay, and who "owns” America’s corporations.In Car Wars, G. Wayne Miller, author of Toy Wars: The Epic Struggle Between G. I. Joe, Barbie, and the…
Companies That Make Them and Men and Speed: A Wild Ride through NASCAR’s Breakout Season, takes readers back to the wild and wooly years of the early automobile era--from 1893, when the first U. S. -built auto was introduced, through 1908, when General Motors was founded and Ford’s Model T went on the market. The motorcar was new, paved roads few, and devotees of this exciting and unregulated technology battled with citizens who thought the car a dangerous scourge of the wealthy which was shattering a more peaceful way of life. As the machine transformed American culture for better and worse, early corporate battles for survival and market share transform the economic landscape. Among the pioneering competitors are: Ransom E. Olds, founder of Olds Motor Works, inventor of the assembly line (Henry Ford copied him), and creator of a new company called REO; Frederic L Smith, cutthroat businessman who became CEO of Olds Motor Works after Olds was ousted in a corporate power play; William C. "Billy” Durant of Buick Motor Company (who would soon create General Motors), and genius inventor Henry Ford. The fiercest fight pits Henry Ford against Frederic Smith of Olds. Olds was the early winner in the race for dominance, but now the Olds empire is in trouble, its once-industry leading market share shrinking, its cash dwindling. Ford is just revving up. But this is Ford’s third attempt at a successful auto company--and if this one fails, quite possibly his last. So Smith fights Ford with the weapons he knows best: lawyers, blackmail, intimidation, and a vicious advertising smear campaign that ultimately backfires. Increasingly desperate, in need of dazzling PR that will help lure customers to his showrooms, Smith stages the most outrageous stunt of the era: the first car race across the continental United States, with two of his Olds cars. The race pits the dashing writer Percy Megargel, a wealthy New Yorker, against Everyman mechanic Dwight B. Huss, a sturdy Midwesterner--men who share a passion for adventure and the new machine. Covered breathlessly by the press and witnessed by thousands in the communities they pass through, Megargel and Huss encounter marvel, mishap, conflict, and danger on their wild 3,500-mile race from Manhattan to Portland, Oregon, most of it through regions lacking paved roads--or any roads at all. . . Meanwhile, the Ford/Smith battle develops in the newspapers and courtroom dramas. Its outcome will shape the American car industry for a century to come. Car Wars is a page-turning story of popular culture, business, and sport at the dawn of the twentieth century, filled with compelling, larger-than-life characters, each an American originalMy Father's Business: The Small-Town Values That Built Dollar General into a Billion-Dollar Company
By Cal Turner, Rob Simbeck. 2018
"This classic story told through the eyes of my friend Cal Jr. is instructive in almost every area of life.…
I simply could not put it down. Must-read!"-Dave Ramsey, bestselling author and nationally syndicated radio show hostThe first-person account of the family that changed the American retail landscape. Longtime Dollar General CEO Cal Turner, Jr. shares his extraordinary life as heir to the company founded by his father, Cal Turner, Sr., and his grandfather, a dirt farmer turned Depression-era entrepreneur. Cal's narrative is at its heart a father-son story, from his childhood in Scottsville, Kentucky, where business and family were one, to the triumph of reaching the Fortune 300--at the cost of risking that very father/son relationship. Cal shares how the small-town values with which he was raised helped him guide Dollar General from family enterprise to national powerhouse. Chronicling three generations of a successful family with very different leadership styles, Cal Jr. shares a wealth of wisdom from a lifetime on the entrepreneurial front lines. He shows how his grandfather turned a third-grade education into an asset for success. He reveals how his driven father hatched the game-changing dollar price point strategy and why it worked. And he explains how he found his own leadership style when he took his place at the helm--values-based, people-oriented, and pragmatic. Cal's story provides a riveting look at the family love and drama behind Dollar General's spectacular rise, pays homage to the working-class people whose no-frills needs helped determine its rock-bottom prices, and shares the life and lessons of one of America's most compelling business leaders.The Space Barons: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos
By Christian Davenport. 2018
The historic quest to rekindle the human exploration and colonization of space led by two rivals and their vast fortunes,…
egos, and visions of space as the next entrepreneurial frontier. The Space Barons is the story of a group of billionaire entrepreneurs who are pouring their fortunes into the epic resurrection of the American space program. Nearly a half-century after Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, these Space Barons-most notably Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, along with Richard Branson and Paul Allen-are using Silicon Valley-style innovation to dramatically lower the cost of space travel, and send humans even further than NASA has gone. These entrepreneurs have founded some of the biggest brands in the world-Amazon, Microsoft, Virgin, Tesla, PayPal-and upended industry after industry. Now they are pursuing the biggest disruption of all: space. Based on years of reporting and exclusive interviews with all four billionaires, this authoritative account is a dramatic tale of risk and high adventure, the birth of a new Space Age, fueled by some of the world's richest men as they struggle to end governments' monopoly on the cosmos. The Space Barons is also a story of rivalry-hard-charging startups warring with established contractors, and the personal clashes of the leaders of this new space movement, particularly Musk and Bezos, as they aim for the moon and Mars and beyond.Winner Takes All: How Casino Mogul Steve Wynn Wonand Lostthe High Stakes Gamble to Own Las Vegas
By Christina Binkley. 2009
From Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and culture critic Christina Binkley comes an updated edition of her New York Times bestselling account…
of sex, drugs, and the rise of Las Vegas. With a new prologue on the rise and fall of Steve Wynn.The Strip. Home to some of the world's grandest, flashiest, and most lucrative casino resorts, Las Vegas, with its multitude of attractions, draws millions of tourists from around the world every year. But Sin City hasn't always been booming: modern Vegas exists largely thanks to the extraordinary vision, and remarkable hubris, of three competing business moguls: Kirk Kerkorian, Dr. Gary Loveman, and Steve Wynn. And in the wake of #MeToo revelations, not all empires survive.Having had personal access to all three tycoons, Binkley explains how their audacious efforts to reach the top-and to top one another-shaped the city as it stands. She takes us inside their grandest schemes, their riskiest deals, and the personalities that drove them to their greatest successes, and their most painful defeats. In this updated edition, she reveals the inside story of how Steve Wynn, the winner who took all, ultimately lost everything-twice. Sharp, insightful, and revealing, Winner Takes All is the gripping story of how billions of dollars and the unparalleled drive for power turned dreams into larger-than-life reality."It's a great drama on the greatest stage. . . Wynn, Kerkorian, and Loveman represent three opposing business personalities, three styles of achieving success. On the Vegas Strip, they're pitted against one another like gladiators, and we've got front-row seats. Kapow!" - bestselling author Po BronsonThe Richest Man in the World: The Story of Adnan Khashoggi
By Ronald Kessler. 1986
New York Times bestselling author and award-winning reporter Ronald Kessler goes inside the infamously lavish life of billionaire Adnan Khashoggi,…
once the richest man in the world.He made more money - and more quickly - than anyone in history. And he spent it at a dizzying clip of $330,000 a day, every day of the year. He was Adnan Mohamed Khashoggi, a Saudi Arabian middleman who started out with nothing and in twenty-five years parlayed his connections to the Saudi royal family and genius at dealing with people into a fortune of colossal proportions. Khashoggi's American Express bill often exceeded $1 million. When he felt like having spaghetti, he flew to Venice for dinner on one of his three commercial-size airplanes. One of his luxury yachts, the 282-foot Nabila, was considered the most opulent modern yacht afloat and was borrowed for a James Bond movie. This remarkable book is a rare glimpse into a life of opulence beyond most people's wildest imaginings - a compelling closeup of a complex and driven man who has explored the outer reaches of success, power, and all that money can buy.LeBron, Inc.: The Making of a Billion-Dollar Athlete
By Brian Windhorst. 2019
From the New York Times bestselling author of Return of the King comes the story of LeBron James's incredible transformation…
from basketball star to sports and business mogul. p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica} p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px} With eight straight trips to the NBA Finals, LeBron James has proven himself one of the greatest basketball players of all time. And like Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan before him, LeBron has also become a global brand and businessman who has altered the way professional athletes think about their value, maximize their leverage, and use their voice. LEBRON, INC tells the story of James's journey down the path to becoming a billionaire sports icon -- his successes, his failures, and the lessons both have taught him along the way. With plenty of newsmaking tidbits about his rollercoaster last season in Cleveland and high-profile move to the Lakers, LEBRON, INC. shows how James has changed the way most elite athletes manage their careers, and how he launched a movement among his peers that may last decades beyond his playing days.Before the robber barons there were Civil War barons--a remarkable yet largely unknown group of men whose contributions won the…
war and shaped America's future.The Civil War woke a sleeping giant in America, creating unprecedented industrial growth that not only supported the struggle but reshaped the nation.Energized by the country's dormant potential and wealth of natural resources, individuals of vision, organizational talent, and capital took advantage of the opportunity that war provided. Their innovations sustained Union troops, affected military strategy and tactics, and made the killing fields even deadlier. Their ranks included men such as:John Deere, whose plows helped feed large armiesGail Borden, whose condensed milk nourished the Union armyThe Studebaker Brothers, whose wagons moved war supplies from home front to war frontRobert Parrott, whose rifled cannon was deployed on countless battlefieldsand many others.Individually, these men came to dominate industry and amass great wealth and power; collectively, they helped save the Union and refashion the economic fabric of a nation.Utilizing extensive research in manuscript collections, company records, and contemporary newspapers, historian Jeffry D. Wert casts a revealing light on the individuals most responsible for bringing the United States into the modern age.When the Wolves Bite: Two Billionaires, One Company, and an Epic Wall Street Battle
By Scott Wapner. 2018
The inside story of the clash of two of Wall Street's biggest, richest, toughest, most aggressive players--Carl Icahn and Bill…
Ackman--and Herbalife, the company caught in the middleWith their billions of dollars and their business savvy, activist investors Carl Icahn and Bill Ackman have the ability to move markets with the flick of a wrist. But what happens when they run into the one thing in business they can't control: each other?This fast-paced book tells the story of the clash of these two titans over Herbalife, a nutritional supplement company whose business model Ackman questioned. Icahn decided to vouch for them, and the dispute became a years-long feud, complete with secret backroom deals, public accusations, billions of dollars in stock trades, and one dramatic insult war on live television. Wapner, who hosted that memorable TV show, has gained unprecedented access to all the players and unravels this remarkable war of egos, showing the extreme measures the participants were willing to take.When the Wolves Bite is both a rollicking, entertaining read--a great business story of money and power and pride.At the age of nineteen, high school diploma in hand, Leonard Gentine knew two things: he wanted to own a…
family business that would pass from generation to generation, and he wanted to spend the rest of his life with Dolores Becker, a girl he'd met on a blind date.For Leonard, life didn't prove that simple.This biography, told from the viewpoint of four generations of the Gentine family, places the reader in Leonard's shoes as he advances from young man to old age and discovers life's foundational lessons. Along the way, he endures outstanding debts, disappointments, and a collection of small businesses, all with Dolores at his side. It's an inspirational story of perseverance, personal integrity, and a mind-set of always doing the right thing-as painful as that may be in the short term.TREATED LIKE FAMILY details the development of Sargento-a nationally recognized cheese company and household name. At the same time, it's a timeless story that showcases the importance of the individual and how a family united in a single purpose within the right culture is unstoppable.Tom Faley invites the reader into the lives of the Gentine family and the men and women they hired, deftly weaving a story grounded in over 180 interviews-the collective voices of the company's employees, retirees, and friends.TREATED LIKE FAMILY offers a rare glimpse into the creative mind of an innovator and entrepreneur and underscores the rewards for all of us when we maintain our humanity toward one another: When one person motivates others to pull together, at times facing unspeakable odds, he is able not only to change their lives but to alter history.Boom: Mad Money, Mega Dealers, and the Rise of Contemporary Art
By Michael Shnayerson. 2019
The meteoric rise of the largest unregulated financial market in the world-for contemporary art-is driven by a few passionate, guileful,…
and very hard-nosed dealers. They can make and break careers and fortunes. The contemporary art market is an international juggernaut, throwing off multimillion-dollar deals as wealthy buyers move from fair to fair, auction to auction, party to glittering party. But none of it would happen without the dealers-the tastemakers who back emerging artists and steer them to success, often to see them picked off by a rival. Dealers operate within a private world of handshake agreements, negotiating for the highest commissions. Michael Shnayerson, a longtime contributing editor to Vanity Fair, writes the first ever definitive history of their activities. He has spoken to all of today's so-called mega dealers-Larry Gagosian, David Zwirner, Arne and Marc Glimcher, and Iwan Wirth-along with dozens of other dealers-from Irving Blum to Gavin Brown-who worked with the greatest artists of their times: Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, Cy Twombly, and more. This kaleidoscopic history begins in the mid-1940s in genteel poverty with a scattering of galleries in midtown Manhattan, takes us through the ramshackle 1950s studios of Coenties Slip, the hipster locations in SoHo and Chelsea, London's Bond Street, and across the terraces of Art Basel until today. Now, dealers and auctioneers are seeking the first billion-dollar painting. It hasn't happened yet, but they are confident they can push the price there soon.The Dream Architects: Adventures in the Video Game Industry
By David Polfeldt. 2020
The inside story of the booming video game industry from the late 1990s to the present, as told by the…
Managing Director of Ubisoft's Massive Entertainment (The Division, Far Cry 3, Assassin's Creed: Revelations).At Massive Entertainment, a Ubisoft studio, a key division of one of the largest, most influential companies in gaming, Managing Director Polfeldt has had a hand in some of the biggest video game franchises of today, from Assassin's Creed to Far Cry to Tom Clancy's The Division, the fastest-selling new series this generation which revitalized the Clancy brand in gaming.In The Dream Architects, Polfeldt charts his course through a charmed, idiosyncratic career which began at the dawn of the Sony PlayStation and Microsoft Xbox era -- from successfully pitching an Avatar game to James Cameron that will digitally create all of Pandora to enduring a week-long survivalist camp in the Scandinavian forest to better understand the post-apocalyptic future of The Division.Along the way, Polfeldt ruminates on how the video game industry has grown and changed, how and when games became art, and the medium's expanding artistic and storytelling potential. He shares what it's like to manage a creative process that has ballooned from a low-six-figure expense with a team of a half dozen people to a transatlantic production of five hundred employees on a single project with a production budget of over a hundred million dollars.A rare firsthand account of the golden age of game development told in vivid detail, The Dream Architects is a seminal work about the biggest entertainment medium of today.The Classical School: The Birth of Economics in 20 Enlightened Lives
By Callum Williams. 2020
A fascinating chronicle of the lives of 20 economists who played major roles in the evolution of global economic thought.What…
was Adam Smith really talking about when he mentioned the "invisible hand"? Did Karl Marx really predict the end of capitalism? Did Thomas Malthus (from whose name the word "Malthusian" derives) really believe that famines were desirable?In The Classical School, Callum Williams debunks popular myths about these great economists, and explains the significance of their ideas in an engaging way. After reading this book, you will know much more about the very famous (Smith, Ricardo, Mill) and the not-quite-so-famous (Bernard de Mandeville, Friedrich Engels, Jean-Baptiste Say). The book offers an assessment of what they wrote, the impact it had, and the worthiness of their ideas. It's far from the final word on any of these people, but a useful way of understanding what they were all about, at a time when understanding these economic giants is perhaps more important than ever.I'm Not Really a Waitress: How One Woman Took Over the Beauty Industry One Color at a Time
By Suzi Weiss-Fischmann. 2019
Inspiring women to pursue their own colorful dreams, I'm Not Really a Waitress tells the story of how Suzi Weiss-Fischmann…
transformed a small dental supply company into a #1 beauty brand around the world Today, OPI is known as a global beauty brand, famous for its trend-setting colors, unforgettable shade names, and celebrity collaborations with the biggest stars from film, television, music, and sports. But behind all the glamour is the little-known tale of OPI's unlikely origins-an intimate and inspiring story of a timid schoolgirl who arrives in this country with little money and no English and becomes the business leader and industry game-changer known worldwide as "Suzi, the First Lady of Nails." In I'm Not Really a Waitress--titled after OPI's top-selling nail color--Suzi reveals the events that led her family to flee Communist Hungary and eventually come to New York City in pursuit of the American dream. She shares how those early experiences gave rise to OPI's revolutionary vision of freedom and empowerment, and how Suzi transformed an industry by celebrating the power of color-and of women themselves.Flamin' Hot: The Incredible True Story of One Man's Rise from Janitor to Top Executive
By Richard Montanez. 2021
Read the story everyone is talking about: how a janitor struggling to put food on the table invented Flamin&’ Hot…
Cheetos in a secret test kitchen, breaking barriers and becoming the first Latino frontline worker promoted to executive at Frito-Lay.Richard Montañez is a man who made a science out of walking through closed doors, and his success story is an empowerment manual for anyone stuck in a dead-end job or facing a system stacked against them. Having taken a job mopping floors at Frito-Lay's California factory to support his family, Montañez took his future into his own hands and created the world&’s hottest snack food: Flamin&’ Hot Cheetos. This bold move not only disrupted the food industry with some much-needed spice, but also shook up a corporate culture in which everyone stayed in their lane. When a top food scientist at Frito-Lay sent out a memo telling sales and marketing to kill the new product before it made it to the store shelves—jealous that someone with no formal education beyond the sixth grade could do his job—Montañez was forced to go rogue once again to save his idea. Through creative thinking, community building, and a few powerful mindset shifts, he outsmarted the naysayers who tried to get in his way. Flamin' Hot proves that you can break out of your career rut and that your present circumstances don't have to dictate your future.