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After graduating from Mississippi State University in 1976, Di Rushing and her husband, Sam, found themselves back on their family…
farm near Merigold, Mississippi, with 350 acres and no real clue what to do. The couple decided to open the first winery in Mississippi, and with it, a successful business was born. Six years later, a small restaurant joined the Delta winery. Both businesses were thriving by 1990, with eight national award-winning wines, a beautiful vineyard, and a successful restaurant.But in March of 1990, a series of unforeseen events rocked the operation. After the Rushings discovered one of the tour guides, Ray Russell, selling drugs in the winery parking lot, they fired him. He responded with a terrorizing vengeance that persisted over the next nine months. In the early morning hours, the former guide broke into the winery, crept into the wine cellar, and released the entire inventory—nearly a quarter of a million dollars’ worth—down the drain. Fortunately, his incompetence thwarted his most destructive intention to blow up the restaurant. In his rampage, he broke all the windows, which allowed the gas from the kitchen oven to escape, sparing the premises. Though the Rushings rebuilt with the help of their community, Russell continued to stalk and threaten the young family. As his menacing behavior continued to escalate, the Rushings closed their business of fourteen years and moved to Ouray, Colorado, where they began rebuilding their lives. Culminating in the sudden, violent murders of Russell, his wife, and his father twenty-five years later, this book tells a story of both shock and resilience, charting Mississippi history in the process.Intertwined with the true crime narrative, The Delta in the Rearview Mirror: The Life and Death of Mississippi’s First Winery details author Di Rushing’s life in and out of Mississippi, including growing up in 1960s Greenville, attending university, traveling overseas, and the relationships she cultivated along the way.A Colossal Failure of Common Sense: The Inside Story of the Collapse of Lehman Brothers
By Lawrence G. McDonald, Patrick Robinson. 2009
One of the biggest questions of the financial crisis has not been answered until now: What happened at Lehman Brothers…
and why was it allowed to fail, with aftershocks that rocked the global economy? In this news-making, often astonishing book, a former Lehman Brothers Vice President gives us the straight answers—right from the belly of the beast. In A Colossal Failure of Common Sense, Larry McDonald, a Wall Street insider, reveals, the culture and unspoken rules of the game like no book has ever done. The book is couched in the very human story of Larry McDonald&’s Horatio Alger-like rise from a Massachusetts &“gateway to nowhere&” housing project to the New York headquarters of Lehman Brothers, home of one of the world&’s toughest trading floors. We get a close-up view of the participants in the Lehman collapse, especially those who saw it coming with a helpless, angry certainty. We meet the Brahmins at the top, whose reckless, pedal-to-the-floor addiction to growth finally demolished the nation&’ s oldest investment bank. The Wall Street we encounter here is a ruthless place, where brilliance, arrogance, ambition, greed, capacity for relentless toil, and other human traits combine in a potent mix that sometimes fuels prosperity but occasionally destroys it. The full significance of the dissolution of Lehman Brothers remains to be measured. But this much is certain: it was a devastating blow to America&’s—and the world&’s—financial system. And it need not have happened. This is the story of why it did.Me, the Mob, and the Music: One Helluva Ride with Tommy James & The Shondells
By Tommy James, Martin Fitzpatrick. 2011
The sensational ’60s music memoir—part rock & roll fairytale, part mob epic—that “reads like a music-industry version of Goodfellas” (The…
Denver Post).Tommy James was the 60’s pop icon behind timeless hits like “Hanky Panky,” “Mony Mony,” “I Think We’re Alone Now,” “Crimson and Clover,” and more. These songs helped define the era, and they have been covered by artists ranging from Billy Idol to Tiffany to R.E.M. But just as compelling as the music itself is the life Tommy James lived while making it.In Me, the Mob, and the Music, James reveals his complex and sometimes terrifying relationship with Roulette Records and Morris Levy, the legendary Godfather of the music business. It is a fascinating portrait of this swaggering era of rock ‘n’ roll, when concerts were wild and the hits kept coming—while, just backstage, payola schemes and mafioso tactics were the norm.Softwar: An Intimate Portrait of Larry Ellison and Oracle
By Matthew Symonds. 1948
This biography of the outspoken tech billionaire and founder of Oracle offers “a rare window on Ellison’s mind” (The New…
York Times).In a business where great risks, huge fortunes, and even bigger egos are common, Larry Ellison stood out as one of the most daring and driven leaders of the software industry. Oracle—the company he cofounded and ran—made pioneering advances, dominated the market, and turned Ellison into a Silicon Valley icon whose exploits are the stuff of legend.In Softwar, journalist Matthew Symonds gives readers exclusive and intimate insight into both Oracle and the man who made it. As well as relating the story of Oracle’s often bumpy path to success, Symonds deals with the private side of Ellison’s life. With unlimited insider access granted by Ellison himself, Symonds captures the intensity and, some would say, the recklessness that have made Ellison such a controversial figure.With a new and expanded epilogue that tells the story behind Oracle’s epic struggle to win control of PeopleSoft, Softwar is the most complete portrait undertaken of the man and his empire—a unique and gripping account of both an extraordinary life and the way the computing industry really works.The Trading Game: A Confession
By Gary Stevenson. 2024
A vivid, blistering memoir that takes readers inside the high-stakes drama and hubris of the trading floor, a rags-to-riches tale…
of Citibank&’s one-time most profitable trader, and why he gave it all up &“Darker than [Liar&’s Poker], but if anything even more of a rollicking read . . . the clearest account I&’ve ever read of how trading desks really work.&”—Felix Salmon, Axios If you were gonna rob a bank and you saw the vault door there, left open, what would you do? Would you wait around?Ever since he was a kid, kicking broken soccer balls on the run-down streets of East London, Gary Stevenson dreamed of something bigger. As luck would have it, he was good at numbers.At the London School of Economics, wearing tracksuits and sneakers, Stevenson shocked his posh classmates by winning a competition called &“The Trading Game.&” The prize?: a golden ticket to a new life, as the youngest trader at Citibank. A place where you could make more money than you&’d ever imagined. Where your colleagues are dysfunctional geniuses and insecure bullies yet start to feel like family. Where against the odds you become the bank&’s most profitable trader, closing deals worth nearly a trillion dollars. A day.Soon you are dreaming of numbers in your sleep—and then you stop sleeping at all. But what happens when winning starts to feel like losing? You&’re making a killing betting on millions of people becoming poorer—like the very people you grew up with. The economy is slipping off a precipice, and your own sanity starts slipping with it. You want to stop, but you can&’t. Because nobody ever leaves.Would you stick, or quit? Even if it meant risking everything?The Trading Game is an outrageous, unvarnished, white-knuckle journey to the dark heart of an intoxicating world—the trading floor—from someone who survived the game and then blew it all wide open.Gorilla Tactics: How to Save a Species
By Greg Cummings. 2024
Gorillas are among the most recognizable of the large charismatic mammals, but climate change and poaching has brought them to…
the brink of extinction. Greg Cummings was the executive director of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund for seventeen years. He shares his fascinating experiences as a "wildlife Robin Hood"—raising money from the rich and famous and redistributing it to endangered gorillas and their habitats. He met and enlisted the help of celebrities such as Sigourney Weaver, Arthur C. Clark, Douglas Adams, and Leonardo DiCaprio. This thirty-year worldwide journey moves from boardrooms in Manhattan and London to mountain treks in Rwanda and Congo.Gorilla Tactics is sure to enchant readers with Greg's unique experiences, while sharing insight into the work it takes to save a species from extinction.Elon Musk
By Walter Isaacson. 2023
#1 New York Times bestseller From the author of Steve Jobs and other bestselling biographies, this is the astonishingly intimate…
story of the most fascinating and controversial innovator of our era—a rule-breaking visionary who helped to lead the world into the era of electric vehicles, private space exploration, and artificial intelligence. Oh, and took over Twitter. When Elon Musk was a kid in South Africa, he was regularly beaten by bullies. One day a group pushed him down some concrete steps and kicked him until his face was a swollen ball of flesh. He was in the hospital for a week. But the physical scars were minor compared to the emotional ones inflicted by his father, an engineer, rogue, and charismatic fantasist. His father&’s impact on his psyche would linger. He developed into a tough yet vulnerable man-child, prone to abrupt Jekyll-and-Hyde mood swings, with an exceedingly high tolerance for risk, a craving for drama, an epic sense of mission, and a maniacal intensity that was callous and at times destructive. At the beginning of 2022—after a year marked by SpaceX launching thirty-one rockets into orbit, Tesla selling a million cars, and him becoming the richest man on earth—Musk spoke ruefully about his compulsion to stir up dramas. &“I need to shift my mindset away from being in crisis mode, which it has been for about fourteen years now, or arguably most of my life,&” he said. It was a wistful comment, not a New Year&’s resolution. Even as he said it, he was secretly buying up shares of Twitter, the world&’s ultimate playground. Over the years, whenever he was in a dark place, his mind went back to being bullied on the playground. Now he had the chance to own the playground. For two years, Isaacson shadowed Musk, attended his meetings, walked his factories with him, and spent hours interviewing him, his family, friends, coworkers, and adversaries. The result is the revealing inside story, filled with amazing tales of triumphs and turmoil, that addresses the question: are the demons that drive Musk also what it takes to drive innovation and progress?The Negotiator: A Memoir
By George J. Mitchell. 2015
Compelling, poignant, enlightening stories from former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell about growing up in Maine, his years in the…
Senate, working to bring peace to Northern Ireland and the Middle East, and what he’s learned about the art of negotiation during every stage of his life.It’s a classic story of the American Dream. George Mitchell grew up in a working class family in Maine, experiencing firsthand the demoralizing effects of unemployment when his father was laid off from a lifelong job. But education was always a household priority, and Mitchell embraced every opportunity that came his way, eventually becoming the ranking Democrat in the Senate during the administrations of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton.Told with wit, frankness, and a style all his own, Senator Mitchell’s memoir reveals many insights into the art of negotiation. Mitchell looks back at his adventures in law and politics—including instrumental work on clean air and water legislation, the Iran-Contra hearings, and healthcare reform—as well as life after the Senate, from leading the successful Northern Ireland peace process, to serving as chairman of The Walt Disney Company, to heading investigations into the use of steroids in baseball and unethical activity surrounding the Olympic Games. Through it all, Senator Mitchell’s incredible stories—some hilarious, others tragic, all revealing—offer invaluable insights into critical moments in the last half-century of business, law, and politics, both domestic and international.In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives
By Steven Levy. 2011
&“The most interesting book ever written about Google&” (The Washington Post) delivers the inside story behind the most successful and…
admired technology company of our time, now updated with a new Afterword.Google is arguably the most important company in the world today, with such pervasive influence that its name is a verb. The company founded by two Stanford graduate students—Larry Page and Sergey Brin—has become a tech giant known the world over. Since starting with its search engine, Google has moved into mobile phones, computer operating systems, power utilities, self-driving cars, all while remaining the most powerful company in the advertising business.Granted unprecedented access to the company, Levy disclosed that the key to Google&’s success in all these businesses lay in its engineering mindset and adoption of certain internet values such as speed, openness, experimentation, and risk-taking. Levy discloses details behind Google&’s relationship with China, including how Brin disagreed with his colleagues on the China strategy—and why its social networking initiative failed; the first time Google tried chasing a successful competitor. He examines Google&’s rocky relationship with government regulators, particularly in the EU, and how it has responded when employees left the company for smaller, nimbler start-ups.In the Plex is the &“most authoritative…and in many ways the most entertaining&” (James Gleick, The New York Book Review) account of Google to date and offers &“an instructive primer on how the minds behind the world&’s most influential internet company function&” (Richard Waters, The Wall Street Journal).One Up on Wall Street: How To Use What You Already Know To Make Money in the Market (Irresistible Miniature Editionstm Ser.)
By Peter Lynch, John Rothchild. 1989
More than one million copies have been sold of this seminal book on investing in which legendary mutual-fund manager Peter…
Lynch explains the advantages that average investors have over professionals and how they can use these advantages to achieve financial success.America&’s most successful money manager tells how average investors can beat the pros by using what they know. According to Lynch, investment opportunities are everywhere. From the supermarket to the workplace, we encounter products and services all day long. By paying attention to the best ones, we can find companies in which to invest before the professional analysts discover them. When investors get in early, they can find the &“tenbaggers,&” the stocks that appreciate tenfold from the initial investment. A few tenbaggers will turn an average stock portfolio into a star performer. Lynch offers easy-to-follow advice for sorting out the long shots from the no-shots by reviewing a company&’s financial statements and knowing which numbers really count. He offers guidelines for investing in cyclical, turnaround, and fast-growing companies. As long as you invest for the long term, Lynch says, your portfolio can reward you. This timeless advice has made One Up on Wall Street a #1 bestseller and a classic book of investment know-how.Hershey: Milton S. Hershey's Extraordinary Life of Wealth, Empire, and Utopian Dreams
By Michael D'Antonio. 2006
Extensively researched and vividly written by Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Michael D&’Antonio, Hershey is the fascinating story of the unique American…
visionary Milton S. Hershey.The name Hershey evokes many things: chocolate bars, the company town in Pennsylvania, one of America&’s most recognizable brands. But who was the man behind the name? In this compelling biography, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Michael D&’Antonio gives us the real-life rags-to-riches story of Milton S. Hershey, a largely uneducated businessman whose idealistic sense of purpose created an immense financial empire, a town, and a legacy that lasts to this day.Hershey, the son of a minister&’s daughter and an irresponsible father who deserted the family, began his career inauspiciously when the two candy shops he opened both went bankrupt. Undeterred, he started the Lancaster Caramel Company, which brought him success at last. Eventually he sold his caramel operation and went on to perfect the production process of chocolate to create a stable, consistent bar with a long shelf life...and an American icon was born.Hershey was more than a successful businessman—he was a progressive thinker who believed in capitalism as a means to higher goals. He built the world&’s largest chocolate factory and a utopian village for his workers on a large tract of land in rural Pennsylvania, and used his own fortune to keep his workers employed during the Great Depression. In addition, he secretly willed his fortune to a boys&’ school and orphanage, both of which now control a vast endowment.A Passion to Win
By Sumner Redstone, Peter Knobler. 2001
A titan of modern media, Sumner Redstone shares how he became the head of one of the world&’s great media…
empires and one of the richest men in the entertainment business.In one of the most fascinating and eye-opening business autobiographies written, Sumner Redstone shares the unvarnished story of how he overcame significant obstacles on his trek to build a vast media and entertainment engine.A Passion to Win gives a riveting look behind the scenes at the highly charged negotiations that won Redstone both Viacom and Paramount, revealing the intense business calculations and strong emotions of Redstone&’s head-to-head confrontations with adversaries such as Barry Diller and H. Wayne Huizenga.In a book that shows readers what it takes to win, Redstone shares the rollercoaster journey that led him to become the head of a wildly successful company and the mind behind the revolution of the video industry.The White Sharks of Wall Street: Thomas Mellon Evans and the Original Corporate Raiders
By Diana B. Henriques. 2000
It almost seems that Thomas Mellon Evans was a man so far ahead of his contemporaries that he had moved…
into the shadows before the full force of his business style had dawned on the rest of corporate America. At every step in his career, he was barging in where few would follow -- at first. But follow they did, at last." -- from the PrologueThe first in-depth portrait of the life and times of the trailblazing financier Thomas Mellon Evans -- the man who pursued wealth and power in the 1950s with a brash ruthlessness that forever changed the face of corporate America. Long before Michael Milken was using junk bonds to finance corporate takeovers, Thomas Mellon Evans used debt, cash, and the tax code to obtain control of more than eighty American companies. Long before investors began to lobby for "shareholder's rights," Evans was demanding that public companies be run only for their shareholders -- not for their employees, their executives, or their surrounding communities. To some, Evans's merciless style presaged much that is wrong with corporate life today. To others, he intuitively knew what was needed to keep America competitive in the wake of a global war. In The White Sharks of Wall Street, New York Times investigative reporter Diana Henriques provides the first biography of this pivotal figure in American business history. She also portrays the other pioneering corporate raiders of the postwar period, such as Robert Young and Louis Wolfson, and shows how these men learned from one another and advanced one another's takeover tactics. She relates in dramatic detail a number of important early takeover fights -- Wolfson's challenge to Montgomery Ward, Young's move on the New York Central Railroad, the fight for Follansbee Steel -- and shows how they foreshadowed the desperate battle waged by Tom Evans's son, Ned Evans, to keep the British raider Robert Maxwell away from his Macmillan publishing empire during the 1980s. Henriques also reaches beyond the business arena to tally the tragic personal cost of Evans's pursuit of success and to show how the family dynasty shattered when his sons were driven by his own stubbornness and pride to become his rivals. In the end, the battling patriarch faced his youngest son in a poignant battle for control at the Crane Company, the once-famous Chicago plumbing and valve company that Tom Evans had himself seized in a brilliant takeover coup twenty-five years earlier. The White Sharks of Wall Street is a fascinating portrait of an extraordinary man, whose career blazed across the sky and then sank into obscurity -- but not before he had provided the template for how American business would operate for the next four decades.Silent Cry: The True Story of Abuse and Betrayal of an NFL Wife
By Dorothy J. Newton. 2015
Raised near New Orleans as one of six children, Dorothy Newton was surrounded by abuse and poverty as she grew…
up. But she became the first in her family to graduate from college and moved out of poverty. She then began to live out her dreams in Dallas of a better home and life when she married celebrity superstar football player Nate Newton. She had gone from poverty to the pinnacle of success. She was married to a handsome, successful, famous professional athlete, who was a three time Super Bowl Champion and six time Pro-Bowler for the Dallas Cowboys.But all that glittered was not gold.Before long the relationship turned abusive. She found herself living in the world she thought she had escaped in her years growing up. The world did not see her suffering behind closed doors—she was betrayed, treated abusively, threatened continually. Dorothy was trapped with no one to talk to and nowhere to run. In this book Dorothy shares her experiences of pain, loss, survival, hope, recovery, and victory. A gripping story throughout, A Silent Cry is a testament to Dorothy&’s will to live and the peace that comes with hope in the God who sees and hears your tears—even when no one else does.The Negotiator: A Memoir
By George J. Mitchell. 2015
Compelling, poignant, enlightening stories from former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell about growing up in Maine, his years in the…
Senate, working to bring peace to Northern Ireland and the Middle East, and what he’s learned about the art of negotiation during every stage of his life.It’s a classic story of the American Dream. George Mitchell grew up in a working class family in Maine, experiencing firsthand the demoralizing effects of unemployment when his father was laid off from a lifelong job. But education was always a household priority, and Mitchell embraced every opportunity that came his way, eventually becoming the ranking Democrat in the Senate during the administrations of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton.Told with wit, frankness, and a style all his own, Senator Mitchell’s memoir reveals many insights into the art of negotiation. Mitchell looks back at his adventures in law and politics—including instrumental work on clean air and water legislation, the Iran-Contra hearings, and healthcare reform—as well as life after the Senate, from leading the successful Northern Ireland peace process, to serving as chairman of The Walt Disney Company, to heading investigations into the use of steroids in baseball and unethical activity surrounding the Olympic Games. Through it all, Senator Mitchell’s incredible stories—some hilarious, others tragic, all revealing—offer invaluable insights into critical moments in the last half-century of business, law, and politics, both domestic and international.Perversion of Justice: The Jeffrey Epstein Story
By Julie K. Brown. 2021
The New York Times Bestseller“A gripping journalistic procedural… Spotlight meets Erin Brockovich.” —Michelle Goldberg, The New York Times“Julie K. Brown's important…
book offers not just a definitive account of the Epstein case, but a compelling window into her own experiences as a dogged reporter at a regional newspaper, facing off against powerful interests set against her reporting.” —Ronan Farrow, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Catch and KillDauntless journalist Julie K. Brown recounts her uncompromising and risky investigation of Jeffrey Epstein's underage sex trafficking operation, and the explosive reporting for the Miami Herald that finally brought him to justice while exposing the powerful people and broken system that protected him.For many years, billionaire Jeffrey Epstein's penchant for teenage girls was an open secret in the high society of Palm Beach, Florida and Upper East Side, Manhattan. Charged in 2008 with soliciting prostitution from minors, Epstein was treated with unheard of leniency, dictating the terms of his non-prosecution. The media virtually ignored the failures of the criminal justice system, and Epstein's friends and business partners brushed the allegations aside. But when in 2017 the U.S Attorney who approved Epstein's plea deal, Alexander Acosta, was chosen by President Trump as Labor Secretary, reporter Julie K. Brown was compelled to ask questions.Despite her editor's skepticism that she could add a new dimension to a known story, Brown determined that her goal would be to track down the victims themselves. Poring over thousands of redacted court documents, traveling across the country and chasing down information in difficulty and sometimes dangerous circumstances, Brown tracked down dozens of Epstein's victims, now young women struggling to reclaim their lives after the trauma and shame they had endured.Brown's resulting three-part series in the Miami Herald was one of the most explosive news stories of the decade, revealing how Epstein ran a global sex trafficking pyramid scheme with impunity for years, targeting vulnerable teens, often from fractured homes and then turning them into recruiters. The outrage led to Epstein's arrest, the disappearance and eventual arrest of his closest accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, and the resignation of Acosta. The financier's mysterious suicide in a New York City jail cell prompted wild speculation about the secrets he took to the grave-and whether his death was intentional or the result of foul play.Tracking Epstein’s evolution from a college dropout to one of the most successful financiers in the country—whose associates included Donald Trump, Prince Andrew, and Bill Clinton—Perversion of Justice builds on Brown's original award-winning series, showing the power of truth, the value of local reportage and the tenacity of one woman in the face of the deep-seated corruption of powerful men.The Style Strategy: A Less-Is-More Approach to Staying Chic and Shopping Smart
By Nina Garcia. 2009
From Nina Garcia—fashion judge on Bravo’s hit Project Runway and the New York Times bestselling author of The One Hundred…
and The Little Black Book of Style—comes Style Strategy: a perfect primer on achieving the best fashion look possible, with a strong emphasis on saving money in the process.Wall Street Meat: My Narrow Escape from the Stock Market Grinder
By Andy Kessler. 2004
Wall Street is a funny business. All you have is your reputation. Taint it and someone else will fill your…
shoes. Longevity comes from maintaining that reputation. Ask Jack Grubman, the All-Star telecom analyst from Salomon Smith Barney; uber-banker Frank Quattrone at CS First Boston; Morgan Stanley's Mary "Queen of the Net" Meeker; or Merrill Lynch's Henry Blodget.Well, they probably won't tell you anything. But have I got some great stories for you. Successful hedge fund manager Andy Kessler looks back on his years as an analyst on Wall Street and offers this cautionary tale of the intoxicating forces loose in the world of finance that overwhelmed sober analysis.Drinking with Strangers: Music Lessons from a Teenage Bullet Belt
By Butch Walker, Matt Diehl. 2011
Rolling Stone magazine called Butch Walker one of “America’s best singer-songwriters” and voted him a “Producer of the Year.” An…
American music industry giant, Walker has worked with some of today’s hottest talent, including Weezer, Katy Perry, Dashboard Confessional, Pink, Tommy Lee, Fall Out Boy, and The Donnas to name but a few. In his riveting memoir, Drinking with Strangers, Walker tells the fascinating story of his life and remarkable career, taking readers on a breakneck ride from his Georgia roots to the Hollywood music scene, and giving us a close up insider’s view of life behind closed recording studio doors.