History of Business
Featured Items
Private Empire
Exxonmobil and American Power
Paperback
ISBN: 0143123548
From the award-winning and bestselling author of Ghost Wars and Directorate S, an "extraordinary" and "monumental" expos of Big Oil (The Washington Post) Includes a profile of current Secretary of State and former chairman and chief executive of ExxonMobil, Rex Tillerson
In this, the first hard-hitting examination of ExxonMobil--the largest and most powerful private corporation in the United States--Steve Coll reveals the true extent of its power. Private Empire pulls back the curtain, tracking the corporation's recent history and its central role on the world stage, beginning with the Exxon Valdez accident in 1989 and leading to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. The action spans the globe--featuring kidnapping cases, civil wars, and high-stakes struggles at the Kremlin--and the narrative is driven by larger-than-life characters, including corporate legend Lee "Iron Ass" Raymond, ExxonMobil's chief executive until 2005, and current chairman and chief executive Rex Tillerson, President-elect Donald Trump's nomination for Secretary of State. A penetrating, news-breaking study, Private Empire is a defining portrait of Big Oil in American politics and foreign policy.
In this, the first hard-hitting examination of ExxonMobil--the largest and most powerful private corporation in the United States--Steve Coll reveals the true extent of its power. Private Empire pulls back the curtain, tracking the corporation's recent history and its central role on the world stage, beginning with the Exxon Valdez accident in 1989 and leading to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. The action spans the globe--featuring kidnapping cases, civil wars, and high-stakes struggles at the Kremlin--and the narrative is driven by larger-than-life characters, including corporate legend Lee "Iron Ass" Raymond, ExxonMobil's chief executive until 2005, and current chairman and chief executive Rex Tillerson, President-elect Donald Trump's nomination for Secretary of State. A penetrating, news-breaking study, Private Empire is a defining portrait of Big Oil in American politics and foreign policy.
Steve Jobs
Hardcover
ISBN: 1451648537
Walter Isaacson's "enthralling" (The New Yorker) worldwide bestselling biography of Apple cofounder Steve Jobs. Based on more than forty interviews with Steve Jobs conducted over two years--as well as interviews with more than 100 family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues--Walter Isaacson has written a riveting story of the roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing. Isaacson's portrait touched millions of readers. At a time when America is seeking ways to sustain its innovative edge, Jobs stands as the ultimate icon of inventiveness and applied imagination. He knew that the best way to create value in the twenty-first century was to connect creativity with technology. He built a company where leaps of the imagination were combined with remarkable feats of engineering. Although Jobs cooperated with the author, he asked for no control over what was written. He put nothing off-limits. He encouraged the people he knew to speak honestly. He himself spoke candidly about the people he worked with and competed against. His friends, foes, and colleagues offer an unvarnished view of the passions, perfectionism, obsessions, artistry, devilry, and compulsion for control that shaped his approach to business and the innovative products that resulted. His tale is instructive and cautionary, filled with lessons about innovation, character, leadership, and values. Steve Jobs is the inspiration for the movie of the same name starring Michael Fassbender, Kate Winslet, Seth Rogen, and Jeff Daniels, directed by Danny Boyle with a screenplay by Aaron Sorkin.
The Baker's Son
My Life in Business
Hardcover
ISBN: 1617751251
At 21, Hawthorne's parents shipped him off to New York, where his older siblings had already relocated. He eventually found a job, started college, and began to build the multi-million dollar business Golden Krust, whose Jamaican patties are a New York staple. Hawthorne's story is compelling on many levels: it offers a peek into life in Jamaica, a classic immigrant narrative, and a testament to the strength of family. Hawthorne's is a Horatio Alger tale with a Caribbean flavor, which should find an appreciative audience among entrepreneurs and business aficionados.
--Library Journal
--Publishers Weekly In his memoir, The Baker's Son, Hawthorne shares how an idea inspired by his father's bakery in Border, Jamaica, grew into the 120-branch Golden Krust Caribbean Bakery and Grill. After 23 years of selling patties, pastries, sandwiches and more through Golden Krust, Hawthorne hasn't lost sight of his values.
--New York Daily News The Baker's Son is a deeply moving account that tells the story of an immigrant family from rural Jamaica that relocated to the Bronx in 1980s... the Hawthorne family has scaled the heights of success to achieve the American Dream to an unprecedented degree.
--The Philadelphia Tribune In gripping narrative that is both inspirational and instructive, Lowell Hawthorne shares how an idea infused with tenacity, intellect, and passion can become a dream realized. The Baker's Son offers a successful playbook for any entrepreneur who seeks to play on the rough-and-tumble field of business--and win."--Earl "Butch" Graves, Jr., President and CEO, Black Enterprise Lowell Hawthorne's chronicle of the development of a small Jamaican business into the highly successful Golden Krust Caribbean Bakery and Grill, an American business empire, is an invaluable guide to business success as well as an inspiring autobiographical work.--P.J. Patterson, former prime minister of Jamaica The Baker's Son is a memoir by the founder of Golden Krust Caribbean Bakery & Grill, the hugely successful Jamaican owned and run enterprise that reaches from New York to Florida with over 120 franchise locations. Starting from humble beginnings, and after weathering several major crises along the way, the Hawthorne family has scaled the heights of success to achieve the American Dream to an unprecedented degree. Today the Golden Krust brand represents the most lucrative Caribbean business ever established in America and one of the most profitable black businesses operating in the United States. Lowell Hawthorne is the president and CEO of Golden Krust Caribbean Bakery & Grill. He lives in Westchester, New York.
The Widow Clicquot
The Story of a Champagne Empire and the Woman Who Ruled It
Hardcover
ISBN: 006128856x
The Widow Clicquot is the New York Times bestselling business biography of the visionary young widow who built a champagne empire, became a legend in her tumultuous times, and showed the world how to live with style. Tilar J. Mazzeo brings to life the woman behind the label, Barbe-Nicole Clicquot Ponsardin, in this utterly intoxicating book that is as much a fascinating journey through the process of making this temperamental wine as a biography of a uniquely tempered and fascinating woman.
Garlic and Sapphires
The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise
Paperback
ISBN: 0143036610
Author of Save Me the Plums Ruth Reichl's iconic, bestselling memoir of her time as an undercover restaurant critic for The New York Times Expansive and funny. --Entertainment Weekly Ruth Reichl, world-renowned food critic and former editor in chief of Gourmet magazine, knows a thing or two about food. She also knows that as the most important food critic in the country, you need to be anonymous when reviewing some of the most high-profile establishments in the biggest restaurant town in the world--a charge she took very seriously, taking on the guise of a series of eccentric personalities. In Garlic and Sapphires, Reichl reveals the comic absurdity, artifice, and excellence to be found in the sumptuously appointed stages of the epicurean world and gives us--along with some of her favorite recipes and reviews--her remarkable reflections on how one's outer appearance can influence one's inner character, expectations, and appetites, not to mention the quality of service one receives. " A] wonderful book, which is funny--at times laugh-out-loud funny--and smart and wise." --Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post
Den of Thieves
Paperback
ISBN: 067179227x
A #1 bestseller from coast to coast, Den of Thieves tells the full story of the insider-trading scandal that nearly destroyed Wall Street, the men who pulled it off, and the chase that finally brought them to justice.
Pulitzer Prize-winner James B. Stewart shows for the first time how four of the eighties' biggest names on Wall Street--Michael Milken, Ivan Boesky, Martin Siegel, and Dennis Levine --created the greatest insider-trading ring in financial history and almost walked away with billions, until a team of downtrodden detectives triumphed over some of America's most expensive lawyers to bring this powerful quartet to justice. Based on secret grand jury transcripts, interviews, and actual trading records, and containing explosive new revelations about Michael Milken and Ivan Boesky written especially for this paperback edition, Den of Thieves weaves all the facts into an unforgettable narrative--a portrait of human nature, big business, and crime of unparalleled proportions.
The Chief
The Life of William Randolph Hearst
1st Edition Paperback
ISBN: 0618154469
Named one of the best books of the year by the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, Business Week, and GQ, THE CHIEF: THE LIFE OF WILLIAM RANDLOPH HEARST is "an absorbing and ingeniously organized biography . . . of the most powerful publisher America has ever known" (New York Times Book Review). Drawing on papers and interviews that were previously unavailable, as well as on newly released documentation of interactions with such figures as Hitler, Mussolini, Churchill, every president from Grover Cleveland to Franklin Roosevelt, and movie giants Louis B. Mayer, Jack Warner, and Irving Thalberg, David Nasaw completes the picture of this colossal American "engagingly, lucidly and fair-mindedly" (Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.).
"Outstandingly researched, elegantly but not flamboyantly written, and fair in its conclusions about Hearst's astonishing career" (Wall Street Journal), THE CHIEF "must be regarded as the definitive study . . . It's hard to imagine a more complete rendering of Hearst's life" (Business Week).
Tulipomania
The Story of the World's Most Coveted Flower & the Extraordinary Passions It Aroused
Paperback
ISBN: 060980765x
A vivid narration of the history of the tulip, from its origins on the barren, windswept steppes of central Asia to its place of honor in the lush imperial gardens of Constantinople, to its starring moment as the most coveted--and beautiful--commodity in Europe. In the 1630s, visitors to the prosperous trading cities of the Netherlands couldn't help but notice that thousands of normally sober, hardworking Dutch citizens were caught up in an extraordinary frenzy of buying and selling. The object of this unprecedented speculation was the tulip, a delicate and exotic Eastern import that had bewitched horticulturists, noblemen, and tavern owners alike. For almost a year rare bulbs changed hands for incredible and ever-increasing sums, until single flowers were being sold for more than the cost of a house. Historians would come to call it tulipomania. It was the first futures market in history, and like so many of the ones that would follow, it crashed spectacularly, plunging speculators and investors into economic ruin and despair. This colorful cast of characters includes Turkish sultans, Yugoslav soldiers, French botanists, and Dutch tavern keepers--all centuries apart historically and worlds apart culturally, but with one thing in common: tulipomania.
High Financier
The Lives and Time of Siegmund Warburg
Paperback
ISBN: 0143119400
From the bestselling author of The Ascent of Money and The Square and the Tower Prodigiously researched but also splendidly written-clear and vivid and precise. --The Wall Street Journal Drawing on more than ten thousand hitherto unavailable letters and diary entries, bestselling author Niall Ferguson tells the story of Siegmund Warburg, a complex man who was as much a psychologist, a politician, and an actor-manager as a banker. An obsessive perfectionist with an aversion to excessive risk, Warburg-and the S. G. Warburg firm-adopted a financial philosophy that was the antithesis of the debt-fueled, algorithm-driven banking of our time. In High Financier, Niall Ferguson recaptures the meticulous business methods and strict ethical code that set Warburg apart from the mere speculators and traders who inhabit today's financial world.
Hershey
Milton S. Hershey's Extraordinary Life of Wealth, Empire, and Utopian Dreams
Paperback
ISBN: 074326410x
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. Extensively researched and vividly written, Hershey is the fascinating story of this uniquely American visionary.
