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Broken Code: Inside Facebook and the Fight to Expose Its Harmful Secrets
By Jeff Horwitz. 2023
By an award-winning technology reporter for The Wall Street Journal, a behind-the-scenes look at the manipulative tactics Facebook used to grow…
its business, how it distorted the way we connect online, and the company insiders who found the courage to speak out"Broken Code fillets Facebook&’s strategic failures to address its part in the spread of disinformation, political fracturing and even genocide. The book is stuffed with eye-popping, sometimes Orwellian statistics and anecdotes that could have come only from the inside." —New York Times Book ReviewOnce the unrivaled titan of social media, Facebook held a singular place in culture and politics. Along with its sister platforms Instagram and WhatsApp, it was a daily destination for billions of users around the world. Inside and outside the company, Facebook extolled its products as bringing people closer together and giving them voice.But in the wake of the 2016 election, even some of the company&’s own senior executives came to consider those claims pollyannaish and simplistic. As a succession of scandals rocked Facebook, they—and the world—had to ask whether the company could control, or even understood, its own platforms.Facebook employees set to work in pursuit of answers. They discovered problems that ran far deeper than politics. Facebook was peddling and amplifying anger, looking the other way at human trafficking, enabling drug cartels and authoritarians, allowing VIP users to break the platform&’s supposedly inviolable rules. They even raised concerns about whether the product was safe for teens. Facebook was distorting behavior in ways no one inside or outside the company understood. Enduring personal trauma and professional setbacks, employees successfully identified the root causes of Facebook's viral harms and drew up concrete plans to address them. But the costs of fixing the platform—often measured in tenths of a percent of user engagement—were higher than Facebook's leadership was willing to pay. With their work consistently delayed, watered down, or stifled, those who best understood Facebook&’s damaging effect on users were left with a choice: to keep silent or go against their employer.Broken Code tells the story of these employees and their explosive discoveries. Expanding on &“The Facebook Files,&” his blockbuster, award-winning series for The Wall Street Journal, reporter Jeff Horwitz lays out in sobering detail not just the architecture of Facebook&’s failures, but what the company knew (and often disregarded) about its societal impact. In 2021, the company would rebrand itself Meta, promoting a techno-utopian wonderland. But as Broken Code shows, the problems spawned around the globe by social media can&’t be resolved by strapping on a headset.The Messy Truth: How I Sold My Business for Millions but Almost Lost Myself
By Alli Webb. 2023
Alli Webb, co-founder of Drybar, had it all--until she didn't.When Drybar and its world-famous blowouts took off seemingly overnight, she…
found herself surrounded by celebrity clients like Zooey Deschanel, Jennifer Garner, Gwyneth Paltrow, Julia Roberts, Maria Shriver, and others. She was named to multiple prestigious lists by Fast Company, Fortune, Marie Claire, and Inc. She published a New York Times bestselling book--all before she turned forty.But it wasn't until her marriage fell apart, her teenage son entered rehab unexpectedly, and she no longer found meaning in the wildly successful business she had built that Alli realized she was spiraling into deep depression. She'd lost sight of what made her happy in favor of an aimless push to succeed above all. Something had to give.Piece by piece, Alli began to reinvent her personal and professional life with the goal of accepting her messy truth. She learned how to embrace the honest in lieu of the perfect and realized that most of life happens somewhere in the middle, between the laughter and the tears.In The Messy Truth, Webb invites readers into her world as an entrepreneur, a mother, and a partner, examining with startling humor and wisdom the truths and fictions we tell ourselves and others as we learn to embrace the mess of life.A Bold Return to Giving a Damn: One Farm, Six Generations, and the Future of Food
By Will Harris. 2023
"If I could have one wish it is that every eater in America would read this book." —Ruth ReichlFrom a…
pioneer of the regenerative agriculture movement, a memoir-meets-manifesto on betting the farm on a better future for our food, animals, land, local communities, and our climateRaised as a fourth-generation farmer, when Will Harris inherited White Oak Pastures he was a full-time commodity cowboy who played hard and fast with every tool the system offered – chemicals, antibiotics, steroids, and more. His ancestors had built a highly profitable, conventionally-run machine, but over time he found himself disgusted with the excess, cruelty, and smalltown devastation this system entailed. So he bet the farm on forging a different way of doing things. One that works with nature not against it, and bridges the quickly widening delta between consumers and their food. Armed with tenacity, conviction and an outsized tolerance for risk, Harris called his approach &“radical traditional&” and it made him the pioneer of regenerative agriculture long before the phrase existed.At once an intimate, multi-generational memoir and a microcosm of American agriculture at large, A BOLD RETURN TO GIVING A DAMN offers a pathway back to producing food the right way. At a time when food supply chains are straining, climate-induced catastrophes are playing havoc with harvests, and concern around who owns America&’s farmland are more prescient than ever, Will Harris urges us to consider where the food we eat really comes from, and to re-connect to the places and people who raise what we eat each day. With keen storytelling, a good dose of irreverence, and an unflinching willingness to speak truth to power, Harris shows us why it&’s never been more important to know your farmer than now.Featured in Food and Country directed by Laura Gabbert and Ruth ReichlThe accomplishments and initiatives, both social and economic, of Edward Watkin are almost too many to relate. Though generally known…
for his large-scale railway projects, becoming chairman of nine different British railway companies as well as developing railways in Canada, the USA, Greece, India and the Belgian Congo, he was also responsible for a stream of remarkable projects in the nineteenth century which helped shape people’s lives inside and outside Britain. As well as holding senior positions with the London and North Western Railway, the Worcester and Hereford Railway and the Manchester, Sheffield & Lincolnshire Railway, Watkin became president of the Grand Trunk Railway of Canada. He was also director of the New York, Lake Erie and Western Railways, as well as the Athens–Piraeus Railway. Watkin was also the driving force in the creation of the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway’s ‘London Extension’ – the Great Central Main Line down to Marylebone in London. This, though, was only one part of his great ambition to have a high-speed rail link from Manchester to Paris and ultimately to India. This, of course, involved the construction of a Channel tunnel. Work on this began on both sides of the Channel in 1880 but had to be abandoned due to the fear of invasion from the Continent. He also purchased an area of Wembley Park, serviced by an extension of his Metropolitan Railway. He developed the park into a pleasure and events destination for urban Londoners, which later became the site of Wembley Stadium. It was also the site of another of Watkin’s enterprises, the ‘Great Tower in London’ which was designed to be higher than the Eiffel Tower but was never completed. Little, though, is known about Watkin’s personal life, which is explored here through the surviving diaries he kept. The author, who is the chair of The Watkin Society, which aims to promote Watkin’s life and achievements, has delved into the mind of one of the nineteenth century’s outstanding individuals.Courage to Act: A Memoir Of A Crisis And Its Aftermath
By Ben S. Bernanke. 2016
From the winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Economics A New York Times Bestseller “A fascinating account of the…
effort to save the world from another [Great Depression]. . . . Humanity should be grateful.”—Financial Times In 2006, Ben S. Bernanke was appointed chair of the Federal Reserve, the unexpected apex of a personal journey from small-town South Carolina to prestigious academic appointments and finally public service in Washington’s halls of power. There would be no time to celebrate. The bursting of a housing bubble in 2007 exposed the hidden vulnerabilities of the global financial system, bringing it to the brink of meltdown. From the implosion of the investment bank Bear Stearns to the unprecedented bailout of insurance giant AIG, efforts to arrest the financial contagion consumed Bernanke and his team at the Fed. Around the clock, they fought the crisis with every tool at their disposal to keep the United States and world economies afloat. Working with two U.S. presidents, and under fire from a fractious Congress and a public incensed by behavior on Wall Street, the Fed—alongside colleagues in the Treasury Department—successfully stabilized a teetering financial system. With creativity and decisiveness, they prevented an economic collapse of unimaginable scale and went on to craft the unorthodox programs that would help revive the U.S. economy and become the model for other countries. Rich with detail of the decision-making process in Washington and indelible portraits of the major players, The Courage to Act recounts and explains the worst financial crisis and economic slump in America since the Great Depression, providing an insider’s account of the policy response.Startup Story: An Entrepreneur's Journey from Idea to Exit
By Martin Warner. 2023
A founder's wild memoir of startup success, told from hot tub inception to $50 million exit with the humor of…
a comic and the perspective of an educator. In The Startup Story: An Entrepreneur&’s Journey from Idea to Exit, renowned serial entrepreneur Martin Warner takes a fledgling company all the way from zero to hero, selling it for $50 million after a mere 17 months. It&’s a memoir of whirlwind entrepreneurial success, a nonfiction narrative that puts the reader in the CEO&’s seat, giving the feel of what it&’s really like to steer a company around the toughest of tracks and come out with a massive payday. A mix of Wolf of Wall Street, The Big Short, and The Apprentice, The Startup Story reads like a novel but is strictly a true story packed with entrepreneurial insights. It is a rollercoaster ride through the heaven and hell of the tech business world, populated by geeks, pirates, conmen, tycoons, geniuses, and fools. Forced to do everything at warp speed, Warner chucks all the accumulated wisdom of his own Entrepreneur Seminar out of the window on his way to a holy grail exit. Along the way, readers piece together an entrepreneurial how-to (and how-not-to) manual, with each chapter traversing the highs and the lows of founding a growing company. It shows the reader how to build a tech company out of pure desire and dogged willpower, combined with some timely expertise. The short, hilarious, and hair-raising history of Warner and his company, botObjects, provides a parable of the quintessential business experience packed with entrepreneurial insights and lessons to be learned.Jimmy Buffett: A Good Life All the Way
By Ryan White. 2017
A candid, compelling, and rollicking portrait of the legendary pirate captain of Margaritaville—Jimmy Buffett.In Jimmy Buffett: A Good Life All…
the Way, acclaimed music critic Ryan White has crafted the definitive account of Buffett&’s rise from singing songs for beer to his becoming a tropical icon and inspiration behind the Margaritaville industrial complex, a vast network of merchandise, chain restaurants, resorts, and lifestyle products all inspired by his sunny but disillusioned hit &“Margaritaville.&” Filled with interviews from friends, musicians, Coral Reefer Band members, and business partners who were there, this book is a top-down joyride with plenty of side trips and meanderings from Mobile and Pascagoula to New Orleans, Key West, down into the islands aboard the Euphoria and the Euphoria II, and into the studios and onto the stages where the foundation of Buffett&’s reputation was laid. Buffett wasn&’t always the pied piper of beaches, bars, and laid-back living. Born on the Gulf Coast, the son of a son of a sailing ship captain, Buffett scuffed around New Orleans in the late sixties, flunked out of Nashville (and a marriage) in 1971, and found refuge among the artists, dopers, shrimpers, and genuine characters who&’d collected at the end of the road in Key West. And it was there, in those waning outlaw days at the last American exit, where Buffett, like Hemingway before him, found his voice and eventually brought to life the song that would launch Parrot Head nation. And just where is Margaritaville? It&’s wherever it&’s five o&’clock; it&’s wherever there&’s a breeze and salt in the air; and it&’s wherever Buffett set his bare feet, smiled, and sang his songs.The Fall: The End of the Murdoch Empire
By Michael Wolff. 2023
THE BOOK THAT BROUGHT DOWN RUPERT MURDOCH - AND A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERMeet the Murdochs and the disastrously dysfunctional…
family of Fox News. Until recently, they formed the most powerful media and political force in America. Now their empire is cracking up and crashing down. In his irresistible trilogy on the chaotic Trump presidency - Fire and Fury, Siege, and Landslide - the journalist Michael Wolff led readers deep into the twisted corridors of the White House. Drawing on years of unprecedented access to the Murdoch family and key players, he plunges us behind the scenes of another empire of influence, and the result is astonishing and unforgettable. Here is Rupert Murdoch, the ninety-two-year-old billionaire - concerned about his legacy, but more concerned about profits. Here are his contentious children, jockeying to take over when the old man is gone. Here is star anchor Tucker Carlson considering a run for the presidency while his bosses have other plans for him. Sean Hannity, the richest man in television, has his own plans: to put Trump back in office. While presenter Laura Ingraham is just trying to survive in a man's world. As the fallout from the 2020 election and the Dominion lawsuit pummels the reputation of the network, the battling Murdoch heirs position themselves for the final act in this riveting drama."Michael Wolff's books were my foundation and port of entry for working on Succession." Jeremy Strong ("Kendall Roy")Praise for Fire and Fury:#1 New York Times bestseller, a Book of the Year in the Guardian, Sunday Times, Observer, Financial Times'The pages of Wolff's book are littered with insults and intrigue, backstabbing and dysfunction' Washington Post'What makes the book significant is its sly, hilarious portrait of a hollow man, into the black hole of whose needy, greedy ego the whole world has virtually vanished' GuardianPeppercorn, His Life & Locomotives
By Tim Hillier-Graves. 2021
Arthur Peppercorn, a vicar's son from Herefordshire, was the last L N E R Chief Mechanical Engineer. He managed his…
department for a very short time before it was swept away in the wholesale changes that followed Nationalisation of British Railways in 1948.Although a disciple and follower of Sir Nigel Gresley, he was his own man and developed his talent for production engineering that fully complimented the design skills of his greatly respected leader. He then became a worthy deputy to Edward Thompson during a war that demanded great personal sacrifices from both men. When he finally became C M E in 1946 he used his wide talents and experience to lead in developing two successful pacific classes of locomotives, that many rate as being among the best locomotives of this type ever to appear in Britain. This book, which is the first detailed biography of Peppercorn, tells his fascinating story and describes the influences on his life and career, illustrating his many achievements along the way.Hershey: Milton S. Hershey's extraordinary life of wealth, empire, and utopian dreams
By Michael D'Antonio. 2006
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist examines the life and career of Milton Snavely Hershey (1857-1945), whose name is synonymous with chocolate. Discusses…
Hershey's business success, the model community around the Pennsylvania factory, and the 2002 controversy over the school trust. Presents the corporate titan's flaws as well as his ideals. 2006Camp
By Michael Eisner. 2005
Disney CEO relates his childhood camping experiences at Camp Keewaydin in Salisbury, Vermont. He explains how summer camp prepares youngsters…
for adulthood by helping them acquire the tools to fend off life's hard times and disappointments--for example, his own ability to stay calm when shareholders demanded his ouster. 2005The house of Mondavi: the rise and fall of an American wine dynasty
By Julia Flynn Siler. 2007
Traces the history of an Italian immigrant family from their arrival on Ellis Island in 1906 to their creation of…
a wine empire in Napa Valley, California. Chronicles the feuds, scandals, and the bad business decisions that forced the descendants to sell the company. 2007How Starbucks saved my life: a son of privilege learns to live like everyone else
By Michael Gill. 2007
White sixtysomething Gill describes his despair over being let go from his high-powered New York advertising job. He explains how…
gratitude for an unexpected employment offer he received at a Starbucks led him to job satisfaction as a barista and coffee master alongside younger black coworkers. Some strong language. 2007Rocky Mountain High: A Tale Of Boom And Bust In The New Wild West
By Finn Murphy. 2023
The best-selling author of The Long Haul returns with the story of ditching his truck to seek his fortune… in…
hemp. After decades as a long-haul trucker, Finn Murphy left the road and settled in Boulder County, Colorado. Before long he noticed that many of his neighbors were captivated by the prospect of vast riches in “the Hemp Space.” When hemp was legalized, after eighty years in federal exile, Colorado became the center of a hemp growing and processing boom. Figuring he’d harvest some of that easy money, Murphy bought a thirty-six-acre farm. What could go wrong? Well, pretty much everything… Rocky Mountain High is the comic chronicle of a wild year as Murphy follows his Great American Dream, gradually losing his shirt but not his spirit. Pivoting away from growing hemp himself, he decides to make himself a middleman. He builds drying sheds the size of football fields. He battles with freezing temperatures and even colder bankers. And he assembles an eclectic crew of workers, including the wry and vastly talented Manuel, the business savvy Pierce, and a scruffy army of “trimmigrants”—specialized farm laborers who roam the country pursuing (or not) their own American Dreams. Pretty soon, Murphy is pitting his dwindling cash against the mercurial buyers who inhabit the Wild West of the hemp market. Told with Murphy’s trademark wit, keen eye for character, and sharp insights into the hardscrabble society around him, Rocky Mountain High is an inside look at the alluring world of the hemp boom and a masterful tale of one entrepreneur’s misadventures.Lawrie Bond, Microcar Man: An Illustrated History of Bond Cars
By Nick Wotherspoon. 2017
Once a common sight on Britain's roads, few people today seem to have heard of the Bond Minicar not a…
diminutive, gadget laden conveyance for the fictional 007 character, but a popular, practical, motorcycle-engined, three-wheeler that in the post-war austerity period, gave tens of thousands of people affordable personal transport at a time when conventional vehicles were beyond the reach of the average household. Yet whilst the later, mostly imported, 'Bubble cars' have remained in the public eye, it is largely forgotten that the first of the postwar 'Microcars' to go into significant production was the British designed and built Bond. Equally enigmatic seems to be the designer of this vehicle, Lawrence 'Lawrie' Bond a prolific automotive design genius, with a penchant for weight-saving construction techniques. He was responsible for a wide range of two, three and four wheel vehicles; from ultra-lightweight motorcycles and scooters, such as the Minibyke, Lilliput and Gazelle, as well as his other Microcars the stylish Berkeley and perhaps less-than-pretty Opperman Unicar and finally to his later work, including the innovative, but troubled Bond 875 and styling the Equipe GT sportscar.Here the story is told in full, covering all Lawrie's innovative designs and the various vehicles that bore his name, all in prolifically illustrated detail, together with his passion for motor racing, which resulted in a number of technically acclaimed racing cars, some of which can still be seen competing is historic racing events today.Lady Charlotte Guest: The Exceptional Life of a Female Industrialist (Trailblazing Women)
By Victoria Owens. 2020
The remarkable biography of a mother of ten who stepped up to run her late husband’s ironworks in Victorian Wales.When…
impoverished aristocrat Lady Charlotte Bertie married wealthy Welsh ironmaster John Guest of Dowlais in 1833, her relatives looked on with dismay. Yet despite their vast difference of background and age, over their nineteen-year long marriage husband and wife enjoyed great happiness and much adventure. There would be ten children, and while John built up an immense commercial empire, Charlotte championed Welsh culture.Crucially, she taught herself John’s business from the inside. Over the years, she made the keenest observation of iron production, the fluctuations of the trade, and the engineering innovations. When John died in 1852, she was therefore uniquely placed to succeed him as head of the works—a remarkable position for a Victorian woman. She endeavored to introduce reforms, but also—rather to her dismay—had to weather a potentially destructive strike.But success came at a price. With her star seemingly in the ascendant, Lady Charlotte suddenly chose to abandon all, leave Wales, and marry her sons’ tutor. This book traces the ardent, creative years of her first marriage, explores her determination to preserve John’s legacy as a widow, and observes her growing devotion to the scholarly Charles Schreiber.Creating a world without poverty: social business and the future of capitalism
By Muhammad Yunus. 2009
Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Peace Prize winner and founder of Bangladesh's Grameen Bank, explains "social business" as enterprise created to serve…
the poor. Proposes using capitalism to tackle poverty, pollution, and inadequate health care and education in developing countries. Advocates access to global television and news services for impoverished populations. 2007George & Robert Stephenson: Pioneer Inventors and Engineers
By Anthony Burton. 2020
A dual biography of the father and son railroad engineers who revolutionized Victorian transportation and reshaped modern British life.Engineer and…
inventor George Stephenson is known as the Father of Railways. Together with his son Robert, he built the first steam locomotive to carry passengers on a public line. They also developed much of Britain’s early railway map. In George and Robert Stephenson, industrial historian Anthony Burton examines the lives of these two giants of the late Georgian and early Victorian ages.With new research, Burton offers a fresh look at the achievements of Robert Stephenson and Company Limited, the first engineering firm devoted to railway engines. Above all, he underscores the ability of both men to overcome some of the most pressing engineering problems of their time.Il volo del Rondone racconta una storia caratterizzata dall&’ascesa &“dalle stalle alle stelle&” che il New York Times ha indicato…
come &“merita gli schermi televisivi&”. L&’autore, che non si è neanche diplomato, è soprannominato &“U carnveil&” (il circo camminante) per il suo spirito e la sua natura bizzarra. Patrick Girondi inizia la sua carriera lucidando scarpe per strada, rubando pezzi d&’auto e fuggendo da situazioni pericolose ingannando anche la polizia di Chicago. La sua storia vincente diventa così famosa da essere raccontata al &“The Oprah Winfrey Show&”. Il suo destino si trasforma velocemente quando suo figlio, Santino, venne diagnosticato con una malattia del sangue. Girondi, alla ricerca di una cura, attraversa tragedie e sconfinate implicazioni nel mondo della terapia genica. Girondi scrive: &“Sono stato strangolato, sparato, fuggito da più di venti arresti e dileguato da tre cacce alle streghe dell&’FBI; sono passato dal lavorare ai porti, alla Borsa di Chicago. Vedrò mio figlio curato. Quanto può essere difficile?&” Dopo decenni di lotte, è riuscito a portare alla luce il primo lotto commerciale di un vettore impiegato nel campo della terapia genica con alte potenzialità di curare l&’anemia falciforme e la talassemia. Ancora, la riuscita della cura – edel destino del figlio – èin pericolo a causa dei camici bianchi, morti misteriose e banchieri di Wall Street spietati. Questa è una storia di amore, una sfida contro le probabilità o, come dice Girondi, pura fortuna. È un racconto crudo e reale con una piccola considerazione del bon ton.Metal Men: Marc Rich and the $10 Billion Scam
By A. Craig Copetas. 1985
This true story of the multibillionaire who fled to Switzerland &“reads like a mystery novel&” (USA Today). How did…
Marc Rich make over ten billion dollars while paying hardly any taxes? Journalist A. Craig Copetas infiltrated the inner circle of the commodities market and Rich&’s associates to show not only how the metals and minerals trader pulled off the scam, becoming one of America&’s most wanted criminals, but also how other traders have used the same model to evade taxes as well. A continuing figure of controversy even after his death, Rich, a hedge fund manager and the founder of Glencore, was wanted for evading almost ninety million dollars in taxes and if caught, could have spent life in prison. From a former staff reporter at The Wall Street Journal, Metal Men is a story of international intrigue spanning the globe, from the inside of the White House to the Kremlin, a brilliantly researched work that exposes the inner workings of one of country&’s largest scams. &“Mr. Copetas is at his best evoking the high-stakes, fast-paced life of the commodities traders: the greed and corruption that consume them are the stuff of high drama.&” —The New York Times Book Review