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China Bound: John Swire & Sons and Its World, 1816 - 1980
Bickers, Robert
(Hardcover)
List Price: $40.00 Sale: $12.07
An unrivaled and comprehensive look at the 200-year story of Swire, a highly diversified, global group of companies including Cathay Pacific, with a rich and colorful history.The Swire Group, started by John Swire in 1816, had its beginnings as a modest Liverpool import-export company, focused mainly on the textile trade. John Swire's sons, John Samuel (1825-1898) and William Hudson (1830-1884), took the firm overseas and it was John Samuel Swire in particular whose entrepreneurial instincts would be at the root of the firm's successes in years to come.In 1861, John Swire & Sons Limited began to trade with China. In 1866, in partnership with R.S. Butterfield, the firm of Butterfield & Swire was established in Shanghai. Four years later, a branch of Butterfield & Swire was opened in Hong Kong.In 1953, four years after the establishment of the People's Republic of China, Butterfield & Swire closed all of its China offices. In 1974, Butterfield & Swire in Hong Kong was renamed John Swire & Sons (H.K.) Ltd. Today, Swire is a highly diversified group of companies--covering shipping, airlines (including Cathay Pacific), luxury hotels and agribusiness--and continues to operate out of Hong Kong, with a formal group HQ in London.This new book provides a detailed and intimate history of the company, researched and written by Robert Bickers, a Professor of History at the University of Bristol.
No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram
Frier, Sarah
(Hardcover)
List Price: $28.00 Sale: $8.23
Award-winning reporter Sarah Frier reveals the never-before-told story of how Instagram became the most culturally defining app of the decade.
Temp: How American Work, American Business, and the American Dream Became Temporary
Hyman, Louis
(Hardcover)
List Price: $28.00 Sale: $7.83
The untold history of the surprising origins of the "gig economy" --how deliberate decisions made by consultants and CEOs in the 50s and 60s upended the stability of the workplace and the lives of millions of working men and women in postwar America.Every working person in the United States asks the same question, how secure is my job? For a generation, roughly from 1945 to 1970, business and government leaders embraced a vision of an American workforce rooted in stability. But over the last fifty years, job security has cratered as the postwar institutions that insulated us from volatility--big unions, big corporations, powerful regulators--have been swept aside by a fervent belief in "the market." Temp tracks the surprising transformation of an ethos which favored long-term investment in work (and workers) to one promoting short-term returns. A series of deliberate decisions preceded the digital revolution and upended the longstanding understanding of what a corporation, or a factory, or a shop, was meant to do.Temp tells the story of the unmaking of American work through the experiences of those on the inside: consultants and executives, temps and office workers, line workers and migrant laborers. It begins in the sixties, with economists, consultants, business and policy leaders who began to shift the corporation from a provider of goods and services to one whose sole purpose was to maximize profit--an ideology that brought with it the risk-taking entrepreneur and the shareholder revolution and changed the very definition of a corporation.With Temp, Hyman explains one of the nation's most immediate crises. Uber are not the cause of insecurity and inequality in our country, and neither is the rest of the gig economy. The answer goes deeper than apps, further back than downsizing, and contests the most essential assumptions we have about how our businesses should work.
Tim Cook: The Genius Who Took Apple to the Next Level
Kahney, Leander
(Hardcover)
List Price: $27.00 Sale: $7.83
Journalist Leander Kahney reveals how CEO Tim Cook has led Apple to astronomical success after the death of Steve Jobs in 2011.The death of Steve Jobs left a gaping void at one of the most innovative companies of all time. Jobs wasn't merely Apple's iconic founder and CEO; he was the living embodiment of a global megabrand. It was hard to imagine that anyone could fill his shoes--especially not Tim Cook, the intensely private executive who many thought of as Apple's "operations drone."But seven years later, as journalist Leander Kahney reveals in this definitive book, things at Apple couldn't be better. Its stock has nearly tripled, making it the world's first trillion dollar company. Under Cook's principled leadership, Apple is pushing hard into renewable energy, labor and environmentally-friendly supply chains, user privacy, and highly-recyclable products. From the massive growth of the iPhone to lesser-known victories like the Apple Watch, Cook is leading Apple to a new era of success.Drawing on access with several Apple insiders, Kahney tells the inspiring story of how one man attempted to replace someone irreplaceable, and--through strong, humane leadership, supply chain savvy, and a commitment to his values--succeeded more than anyone had thought possible.
The Golden Passport: Harvard Business School, the Limits of Capitalism, and the Moral Failure of the MBA Elite
McDonald, Duff
(Paperback)
List Price: $22.99 Sale: $7.56
A riveting and timely intellectual history of one of our most important capitalist institutions, Harvard Business School, from the bestselling author of The Firm. With The Firm, financial journalist Duff McDonald pulled back the curtain on consulting giant McKinsey & Company. In The Golden Passport, he reveals the inner workings of a singular nexus of power, ambition, and influence: Harvard Business School.Harvard University occupies a unique place in the public’s imagination, but HBS has arguably eclipsed its parent in terms of its influence on modern society. A Harvard degree guarantees respect. An HBS degree is, as the New York Times proclaimed in 1978, "the golden passport to life in the upper class." Those holding Harvard MBAs are near-guaranteed entrance into Western capitalism’s most powerful realm - the corner office.Most people have a vague knowledge of the power of the HBS network, but few understand the dynamics that have made HBS an indestructible and powerful force for almost a century. As McDonald explores these dynamics, he also reveals how, despite HBS’s enormous success, it has failed with respect to the stated goal of its founders: "the multiplication of men who will handle their current business problems in socially constructive ways." While HBS graduates tend to be very good at whatever they do, that is rarely the doing of good.In addition to teasing out the essence of this exclusive, if not necessarily "secret" club, McDonald explores two important questions: Has the school failed at reaching the goals it set for itself? And is HBS therefore complicit in the moral failings of Western capitalism? At a time of pronounced economic disparity and political unrest, this hard-hitting yet fair portrait offers a much-needed look at an institution that has a profound influence on the shape of our society and all our lives.
The End of Loyalty: The Rise and Fall of Good Jobs in America
Wartzman, Rick
(Hardcover)
List Price: $30.00 Sale: $7.27
Having a good, stable job used to be the bedrock of the American Dream. Not anymore.In this richly detailed and eye-opening book, Rick Wartzman chronicles the erosion of the relationship between American companies and their workers. Through the stories of four major employers--General Motors, General Electric, Kodak, and Coca-Cola--he shows how big businesses once took responsibility for providing their workers and retirees with an array of social benefits. At the height of the post-World War II economy, these companies also believed that worker pay needed to be kept high in order to preserve morale and keep the economy humming. Productivity boomed.But the corporate social contract didn't last. By tracing the ups and downs of these four corporate icons over seventy years, Wartzman illustrates just how much has been lost: job security and steadily rising pay, guaranteed pensions, robust health benefits, and much more. Charting the Golden Age of the '50s and '60s; the turbulent years of the '70s and '80s; and the growth of downsizing, outsourcing, and instability in the modern era, Wartzman's narrative is a biography of the American Dream gone sideways.Deeply researched and compelling, The End of Loyalty will make you rethink how Americans can begin to resurrect the middle class.
The Upstarts: How Uber, Airbnb, and the Killer Companies of the New Silicon Valley Are Changing the World
Stone, Brad
(Hardcover)
List Price: $30.00 Sale: $6.95
Ten years ago, the idea of getting into a stranger's car, or a walking into a stranger's home, would have seemed bizarre and dangerous, but today it's as common as ordering a book online. Uber and Airbnb have ushered in a new era: redefining neighborhoods, challenging the way governments regulate business, and changing the way we travel.In the spirit of iconic Silicon Valley renegades like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, another generation of entrepreneurs is using technology to upend convention and disrupt entire industries. These are the upstarts, idiosyncratic founders with limitless drive and an abundance of self-confidence. Led by such visionaries as Travis Kalanick of Uber and Brian Chesky of Airbnb, they are rewriting the rules of business and often sidestepping serious ethical and legal obstacles in the process.The Upstarts is the definitive story of two new titans of business and a dawning age of tenacity, conflict and wealth. In Brad Stone's riveting account of the most radical companies of the new Silicon Valley, we discover how it all happened and what it took to change the world.
The Deals That Made the World: Reckless Ambition, Backroom Negotiations, and the Hidden Truths of Business
Peretti, Jacques
(Paperback)
List Price: $17.99 Sale: $6.47
An award-winning investigative journalist takes us inside the ten business deals that have transformed the modern worldWe tend to think of our world as controlled by forces we basically understand, primarily the politicians we elect. But in The Deals That Made the World, Jacques Peretti makes a provocative and quite different argument: much of the world around us - from the food we eat to the products we buy to the medications we take - is shaped by private negotiations and business deals few of us know about.The Deals That Made the World takes us inside the sphere of these powerful players, examining ten groundbreaking business deals that have transformed our modern economy. Peretti reveals how corporate executives engineered an entire diet industry built on failure; how PayPal conquered online payments (and the specific behavioral science that underpins its success); and how pharmaceutical executives concocted a plan to successfully market medications to healthy people.For twenty years, Peretti has interviewed the people behind the decisions that have altered our world, from the CEOs of multinational corporations to politicians, economists, and scientists. Drawing on his vast knowledge, Peretti reveals a host of fascinating and startling connections, from how Wall Street's actions on food commodities helped spark the Arab Spring to the link between the AIDS epidemic in 1980s San Francisco and the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008. Touching upon tech, finance, artificial intelligence, and the other levers of power in a postglobalization environment, Peretti offers a compelling way to understand the last hundred years - and a suggestion of what the next hundred might hold.An essential book for anyone seeking to understand the hidden forces that shape our modern economy, The Deals That Made the World is illuminating and surprising - and an immensely fun read.
The Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes
Burrough, Bryan
(Paperback)
List Price: $18.00 Sale: $6.36
Phenomenal reviews and sales greeted the hardcover publication of The Big Rich, New York Times bestselling author Bryan Burrough's spellbinding chronicle of Texas oil. Weaving together the multigenerational sagas of the industry's four wealthiest families, Burrough brings to life the men known in their day as the Big Four: Roy Cullen, H. L. Hunt, Clint Murchison, and Sid Richardson, all swaggering Texas oil tycoons who owned sprawling ranches and mingled with presidents and Hollywood stars. Seamlessly charting their collective rise and fall, The Big Rich is a hugely entertaining account that only a writer with Burrough's abilities - and Texas upbringing - could have written.
Leadership (Harper Perennial Political Classics)
Burns, James M.
(Paperback)
List Price: $17.99 Sale: $6.36
Pulitzer Prize-winning historian James MacGregor Burns has devoted his legendary career to the study of leadership in all its aspects - from politics to business. Leadership, Burns's pioneering study, introduces the highly influential theory of "transformational leadership," stating that the best leaders are those who inspire others to come together toward the achievement of higher aims. Featuring fascinating case studies drawn from history, Leadership is the classic text for anyone seeking to understand executive decision-making, the dynamics of influence, and moral leadership.
The Wal-Mart Effect: How the World's Most Powerful Company Really Works--And How It's Transforming the American Economy
Fishman, Charles
(Paperback)
List Price: $18.00 Sale: $6.36
An award-winning journalist breaks through the wall of secrecy to reveal the many astonishing ways Wal-Mart's power affects our lives and reaches all around the world.
Business Stripped Bare: Adventures of a Global Entrepreneur
Branson, Richard
(Softcover)
List Price: $16.00 Sale: $6.23
"The brave may not live forever-but the cautious do not live at all!" -Sir Richard Branson Richard Branson is an iconic entrepreneur and the founder of Virgin Airways, Virgin Records, and many other Virgin businesses around the world. Now he shares the inside track on his life in business and reveals the incredible truth about his most risky, brilliant, and audacious deals. Combining invaluable advice with remarkable, and candid stories of Virgin's greatest achievements, as well as some of its setbacks, this is a dynamic, inspirational, and truly original guide. Whether you are an executive, an entrepreneur, or are just starting out, Branson strips business down to show how you can succeed and make a difference.
The Watson Dynasty
Tedlow, Richard S.
(Softcover)
List Price: $15.95 Sale: $6.23
For an extraordinary fifty-seven-year period, one of the nations' largest and fastest-growing companies was run by two men who were flesh and blood. The chief executives of the International Business Machines Corporation from 1914 until 1971 were Thomas J. Watson and Thomas J. Watson, father and son. That great corporation bears the imprint of both men - their ambitions and their strengths - but it also bears the consequences of a family that was in near-constant conflict. Sometimes wrong but never in doubt, both Watsons had clear - and farsighted - visions of what their company could become. They also had volcanic tempers. Their fights with each other combined with their commitment to leadership and excellence made IBM one of the most rewarding, yet gut-clutching firms to work for in the history of American business. This book explores the interplay between the personalities of these two extraordinary men and the firm they created. Both Watsons had deeply held beliefs about what a corporation is and should be. These ideas helped make "Big Blue" the bluest of blue-chip stocks during the Watsons' tenure. These very beliefs, however, also sowed the seeds for IBM's disasters in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the company had lost sight of the original meaning behind many of the practices each man put into place.
Temp: The Real Story of What Happened to Your Salary, Benefits, and Job Security
Hyman, Louis
(Paperback)
List Price: $17.00 Sale: $6.07
The untold history of the surprising origins of the "gig economy"--how deliberate decisions made by consultants and CEOs in the 50s and 60s upended the stability of the workplace and the lives of millions of working men and women in postwar America.Over the last fifty years, job security has cratered as the institutions that insulated us from volatility have been swept aside by a fervent belief in the market. Now every working person in America today asks the same question: how secure is my job? In Temp, Louis Hyman explains how we got to this precarious position and traces the real origins of the gig economy: it was created not by accident, but by choice through a series of deliberate decisions by consultants and CEOs--long before the digital revolution.Uber is not the cause of insecurity and inequality in our country, and neither is the rest of the gig economy. The answer to our growing problems goes deeper than apps, further back than outsourcing and downsizing, and contests the most essential assumptions we have about how our businesses should work. As we make choices about the future, we need to understand our past.
Transaction Man: The Rise of the Deal and the Decline of the American Dream
Lemann, Nicholas
(Hardcover)
List Price: $28.00 Sale: $6.07
Over the last generation, the United States has undergone seismic changes. Stable institutions have given way to frictionless transactions, which are celebrated no matter what collateral damage they generate. The concentration of great wealth has coincided with the fraying of social ties and the rise of inequality. How did all this come about?In Transaction Man, Nicholas Lemann explains the United States’ - and the world’s - great transformation by examining three remarkable individuals who epitomized and helped create their eras. Adolf Berle, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s chief theorist of the economy, imagined a society dominated by large corporations, which a newly powerful federal government had forced to become benign and stable institutions, contributing to the public good by offering stable employment and generous pensions. By the 1970s, the corporations’ large stockholders grew restive under this regime, and their chief theoretician, Harvard Business School’s Michael Jensen, insisted that firms should maximize shareholder value, whatever the consequences. Today, Silicon Valley titans such as the LinkedIn cofounder and venture capitalist Reid Hoffman hope “networks” can reknit our social fabric.Lemann interweaves these fresh and vivid profiles with a history of the Morgan Stanley investment bank from the 1930s through the financial crisis of 2008, while also tracking the rise and fall of a working-class Chicago neighborhood and the family-run car dealerships at its heart. Incisive and sweeping, Transaction Man is the definitive account of the reengineering of America and the enormous impact it has had on us all.
Who Says Elephants Can't Dance?: Leading a Great Enterprise Though Dramatic Change
Gerstner, Louis V.
(Softcover)
List Price: $16.99 Sale: $5.88
In 1990, IBM had its most profitable year ever. By 1993, the computer industry had changed so rapidly the company was on its way to losing $16 billion and IBM was on a watch list for extinction. Then Lou Gerstner was brought in to run IBM. Almost everyone watching the rapid demise of this American icon presumed Gerstner had joined IBM to preside over its continued dissolution into a confederation of autonomous business units. This strategy, well underway when he arrived, would have effectively eliminated the corporation that had invented many of the industry's most important technologies. Instead, Gerstner took hold of the company and demanded the managers work together to re-establish IBM's mission as a customer-focused provider of computing solutions. Moving ahead of his critics, Gerstner made the hold decision to keep the company together, slash prices on his core product to keep the company competitive, and almost defiantly announced, "The last thing IBM needs right now is a vision." Who Says Elephants Can't Dance? tells the story of IBM's competitive and cultural transformation. In his own words, Gerstner offers a blow-by-blow account of his arrival at the company and his campaign to rebuild the leadership team and give the workforce a renewed sense of purpose. In the process, Gerstner defined a strategy for the computing giant and remade the ossified culture bred by the company's own success.
Frenemies: The Epic Disruption of the Ad Business (and Everything Else)
Auletta, Ken
(Paperback)
List Price: $17.00 Sale: $5.67
An intimate and profound reckoning with the changes buffeting the $2 trillion global advertising and marketing business from the perspective of its most powerful players, by the bestselling author of Googled.Advertising and marketing touches on every corner of our lives, and is the invisible fuel powering almost all media. Complain about it though we might, without it the world would be a darker place. And of all the industries wracked by change in the digital age, few have been turned on its head as dramatically as this one has. We are a long way from the days of Don Draper; as Mad Men is turned into Math Men (and women--though too few), as an instinctual art is transformed into a science, the old lions and their kingdoms are feeling real fear, however bravely they might roar.Frenemies is Ken Auletta's reckoning with an industry under existential assault. He enters the rooms of the ad world's most important players, some of them business partners, some adversaries, many "frenemies," a term whose ubiquitous use in this industry reveals the level of anxiety, as former allies become competitors, and accusations of kickbacks and corruption swirl. We meet the old guard, including Sir Martin Sorrell, the legendary former head of WPP, the world's largest ad agency holding company; while others play nice with Facebook and Google, he rants, some say Lear-like, out on the heath. There is Irwin Gotlieb, maestro of the media agency GroupM, the most powerful media agency, but like all media agencies it is staring into the headlights as ad buying is more and more done by machine in the age of Oracle and IBM. We see the world from the vantage of its new powers, like Carolyn Everson, Facebook's head of Sales, and other brash and scrappy creatives who are driving change, as millennials and others who disdain ads as an interruption employ technology to zap them. We also peer into the future, looking at what is replacing traditional advertising. And throughout we follow the industry's peerless matchmaker, Michael Kassan, whose company, MediaLink, connects all these players together, serving as the industry's foremost power broker, a position which feasts on times of fear and change.Frenemies is essential reading, not simply because of what it says about this world, but because of the potential consequences: the survival of media as we know it depends on the money generated by advertising and marketing--revenue that is in peril in the face of technological changes and the fraying trust between the industry's key players.
Soap Opera
Swasy, Alecia
(Paperback)
List Price: $19.00 Sale: $5.67
Behind Procter & Gamble's wholesome image is a control-obsessed company so paranoid that Wall Street analysts, employees, and the chairman himself refer to it as "the Kremlin." P&G's wealth and power ensure that it gets what it wants, from tax breaks to the eager services of Washington lobbyists. In this explosive exposé, Wall Street Journal reporter Alecia Swasy tells the chilling story of life within P&G. Wonderfully readable, impeccably researched, Soap Opera is a sobering look at the price of success in American business.
Breaking Rockefeller: The Incredible Story of the Ambitious Rivals Who Toppled an Oil Empire
Doran, Peter B.
(Paperback)
List Price: $18.00 Sale: $5.43
Marcus Samuel, Jr, is a Jewish merchant trader. Henri Deterding is a take-no-prisoners oilman. In 1889, John D. Rockefeller is at the peak of his power. Having annihilated all competition and possessing near-total domination of the market, even the U.S. government is wary of challenging the great "anaconda" of Standard Oil. The Standard never loses - that is until Samuel and Deterding team up to form Royal Dutch Shell.A riveting account of ambition, oil, and greed, Breaking Rockefeller traces Samuel's rise from outsider to the heights of British aristocracy, Deterding's conquest of America, and the collapse of Rockefeller's monopoly. The result is a richly detailed, fresh perspective on how two rivals beat the world's richest man at his own game.
The Facebook Effect
Kirkpatrick, David
(Paperback)
List Price: $17.00 Sale: $5.43
In little more than five years, Facebook has gone from a dorm-room novelty to a company with 500 million users. It is one of the fastest growing companies in history, an essential part of the social life not only of teenagers but hundreds of millions of adults worldwide. As Facebook spreads around the globe, it creates surprising effects - even becoming instrumental in political protests from Colombia to Iran. Veteran technology reporter David Kirkpatrick had the full cooperation of Facebook’s key executives in researching this fascinating history of the company and its impact on our lives. Kirkpatrick tells us how Facebook was created, why it has flourished, and where it is going next. He chronicles its successes and missteps, and gives readers the most complete assessment anywhere of founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the central figure in the company’s remarkable ascent. This is the Facebook story that can be found nowhere else.
Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Products
Kahney, Leander
(Paperback)
List Price: $17.00 Sale: $5.43
“An adulating biography of Apple’s left-brained wunderkind, whose work continues to revolutionize modern technology.” —Kirkus Reviews In 1997, Steve Jobs discovered a scruffy British designer toiling away at Apple’s headquarters, surrounded by hundreds of sketches and prototypes. Jony Ive’s collaboration with Jobs would produce some of the world’s most iconic technology products, including the iMac, iPod, iPad, and iPhone. Ive’s work helped reverse Apple’s long decline, overturned entire industries, and created a huge global fan base. Yet little is known about the shy, soft-spoken whiz whom Jobs referred to as his “spiritual partner.” Leander Kahney offers a detailed portrait of the English art school student with dyslexia who became the most acclaimed tech designer of his generation. Drawing on interviews with Ive’s former colleagues and Apple insiders, Kahney “takes us inside the creation of these memorable objects.” (The Wall Street Journal)
The Upstarts: Uber, Airbnb, and the Battle for the New Silicon Valley
Stone, Brad
(Paperback)
List Price: $17.99 Sale: $5.43
Ten years ago, the idea of getting into a stranger's car, or walking into a stranger's home, would have seemed bizarre and dangerous--yet today it is as common as ordering a book online. Companies like Uber and Airbnb have redefined the way we live. And while they have become pervasive in our day-to-day lives, they are not universally celebrated. They are the result of a generation of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who used technology to upend convention and disrupt entire industries. Led by Travis Kalanick of Uber and Brian Chesky of Airbnb, these are the upstarts, founders with an overabundance of self-confidence and a limitless drive that pushed them to rewrite the rules, better and sometimes for worse.Now with a new epilogue and updated throughout, The Upstarts takes us deep into the origins--and controversy--of these new titans of business.
The Great Beanie Baby Bubble: The Amazing Story of How America Lost Its Mind Over a Plush Toy--and the Eccentric Genius Behind It
Bissonnette, Zac
(Paperback)
List Price: $17.00 Sale: $5.19
Zac Bissonnette explores what happened when a stuffed animal took over America and turned a college dropout into a billionaire. Beanie Babies drove millions of people into a greed-fuelled frenzy as they chased the rarest Beanie Babies, whose values escalated weekly in the late 1990s. The Great Beanie Baby Bubble tells the inspiring yet tragic story of Ty Warner, creator of Beanie Babies and one of America's most enigmatic self-made tycoons. Sometimes called the 'Steve Jobs of plush' by his employees, he obsessed over every detail of every animal.
Hit Refresh: The Quest to Rediscover Microsoft's Soul and Imagine a Better Future for Everyone
Nadella, Satya
(Paperback)
List Price: $17.99 Sale: $5.19
Microsoft's CEO tells the inside story of the company's continuing transformation, while tracing his own journey from a childhood in India to leading some of the most significant changes of the digital era and offering his vision for the coming wave of intelligent technologies.
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