Business Memoirs

In this candid and riveting memoir, for the first time ever, Nike founder and CEO Phil Knight shares the inside story of the company's early days as an intrepid start-up and its evolution into one of the world's most iconic, game-changing, and profitable brands.

Living Better is Alastair Campbell's honest, moving and life-affirming account of his lifelong struggle with depression. It is an autobiographical, psychological and psychiatric study, which explores his own childhood, family and other relationships and examines the impact of his professional and political life on himself and those around him. But it also lays bare his relentless quest to understand depression not just through his own life but through different treatments.

Few entrepreneurs can claim to have radically changed the way we live, and Ray Kroc is one of them. His revolutions in food-service automation, franchising, shared national training, and advertising have earned him a place beside the men and women who have founded not only businesses, but entire empires. But even more interesting than Ray Kroc the business man is Ray Kroc the man. Not your typical self-made tycoon, Kroc was 52 years old when he opened his first franchise.

In this collection of Jeff Bezos' writings - his unique and strikingly original annual shareholder letters, plus numerous speeches and interviews that provide insight into his background, his work, and the evolution of his ideas - you'll gain an insider's view of the why and how of his success. Spanning a range of topics across business and public policy, from innovation and customer obsession to climate change and outer space, this book provides a rare glimpse into how Bezos thinks about the world and where the future might take us.

His good friend Mark Twain dubbed him "St. Andrew." British Prime Minister William Gladstone called him an "example" for the wealthy. Such terms seldom apply to multimillionaires. But Andrew Carnegie was no run-of-the-mill steel magnate. At age 13 and full of dreams, he sailed from his native Dunfermline, Scotland, to America. Here, in one volume, are two impressive works by Andrew Carnegie himself: his autobiography and The Gospel of Wealth, a groundbreaking manifesto on the duty of the wealthy to give back to society all of their fortunes.

In the early 80s, Mark Fleischman reopened Studio 54, the world's most glamorous and notorious nightclub, after it was closed down by the State of New York. Ten thousand people showed up that night, ready to restart the party that abruptly ended after the raid in 1978 landed its former owners in jail. Inside Studio 54 invites you to revisit the happening scenes of the 1960s, '70s, and '80s, the post-Pill, pre-AIDS era of free love, consequence-free sex, and seemingly endless partying. Following Fleischman as he built connections that lead him to Studio 54.

The success of Starbucks is one of the most remarkable business stories in decades. Since 1987, the coffee merchant has grown from a single retail store on Seattle's waterfront to a company with more than 1,000 stores nationwide and a new one opening somewhere every business day. According to Fortune magazine, Starbucks "has changed everything...from our tastes to our language to the face of Main Street."

Professor Dick Hobbs is a leading commentator on the culture of crime and criminality. East End born and bred, he is a fascinating dichotomy of the criminal and the intellectual world, allowing him a unique insight into a subject that holds fascination for so many. When he was growing up, the East End was rocking with dock strikes, thievery and the kind of family values practiced by the Krays the Tibbs and a few dozen other outlaw clans. Violence was everywhere. Crime was an unavoidable fact of life.

A must-listen biography from the author of the best-selling Warren Buffett Speaks.

From the hero whistleblower of the infamous Theranos scam, Thicker than Water is a look at never-before-revealed details behind closed doors at the company, revealing a cautionary tale of corporate bullying, gaslighting, ego, and wealth running amok in Silicon Valley. Tyler Shultz had been in the workforce for less than a year when he emailed Elizabeth Holmes, his employer and the CEO and founder of Theranos, with concerns that the company’s lab practices were faulty, ignored quality control, and were potentially dangerous to patients.

In this dramatic portrait of legendary and, until now, secretive financier Carl Icahn, best-selling business writer Mark Stevens takes us behind the scenes of some of the biggest deals in U.S. corporate history. A fascinating tale with a cast of characters that includes Michael Milken, Ivan Boesky, T. Boone Pickens, Dennis Levine, and most of the other key players of the '70s and '80s takeover era, King Icahn is the first biography of the business buccaneer who changed the course of corporate America.

In this audiobook, you'll discover everything you need to know about how, exactly, many of America's most famous (and infamous) millionaires and billionaires acquired their fortunes. The big surprise is that all of the super-wealthy it profiles got where they are today by taking one of just 10 possible roads - including starting a business, buying real estate, investing wisely, and marrying extremely well. Whether you aspire to shameful wealth or just a demure fortune, best-selling author and self-made billionaire Ken Fisher will show you how to walk in the footsteps of tycoons.

In the late 1930s, legendary financier, philanthropist, and society figure Alfred Lee Loomis gathered the most visionary scientific minds of the 20th century at his state-of-the-art laboratory in Tuxedo Park, New York. He established a top-secret defense laboratory at MIT and personally bankrolled pioneering research into new, high-powered radar detection systems that helped defeat the German Air Force and U-boats. With Ernest Lawrence, he pushed Franklin Delano Roosevelt to fund research in nuclear fission, which led to the development of the atomic bomb.

As an awkward Pretoria schoolboy who loved comics and science fiction, Elon Musk's early years and singular family background were crucial in forming his stellar ambitions. Journalist and author Michael Vlismas, who attended the same high school as Musk, knows well the environment that shaped him and offers new insights into Musk's development, including his troubled relationship with his father. Tracing his remarkable life—this is the revealing new story of a man driven to preserve the optimism he sees in humanity and find a future for humans "out there among the stars".

Once a barista in a small cafe making $6.50 an hour, Andrew Wilkinson built a business valued at over a billion dollars by the time he was 36—and yet, his path to success was anything but a straight line. In Never Enough, Wilkinson pulls back the curtain on the lives of the ultra-rich, sharing insights into building a successful business that has been called a “Berkshire Hathaway, but for internet companies,” and a surprising first-person account of what it's actually like to become a billionaire.

Nice women never wore makeup. Even the word was taboo in polite society—until Max Factor entered the scene. Born in Poland in 1877, Factor worked as a beautician for the Russian royal family, the Romanovs. In 1904, he fled to America, where he opened a cosmetics store in Los Angeles. Creating makeup originally for silent films, then the talkies, and, ultimately, color motion pictures, Factor designed looks for Katharine Hepburn, Rita Hayworth, Bette Davis, and countless other beauties of the day. Soon women everywhere wanted to look like their favorite glamorous stars, and Factor was there to help, bringing his innovative cosmetics to the general public.

John Malone, hailed as one of the great unsung heroes of our age by some and reviled by others as a ruthless robber baron, is revealed as a bit of both in Cable Cowboy. For more than 25 years, Malone has dominated the cable television industry, shaping the world of entertainment and communications, first with his cable company, TCI, and later with Liberty Media. Written with Malone's unprecedented cooperation, the engaging narrative brings this controversial capitalist and businessman to life.

"Probably in the life of everyone there comes a time when he is inclined to go over again the events, great and small, which have made up the incidents of his work and pleasure, and I am tempted to become a garrulous old man, and tell some stories of men and things which have happened in an active life. In some measure I have been associated with the most interesting people our country has produced, especially in business - men who have helped largely to build up the commerce of the United States...."

Unorthodox success principles from a billionaire entrepreneur and philanthropist.

Eli Broad's embrace of "unreasonable thinking" has helped him build two Fortune 500 companies, amass personal billions, and use his wealth to create a new approach to philanthropy. He has helped to fund scientific research institutes, K-12 education reform, and some of the world's greatest contemporary art museums. By contrast, "reasonable" people come up with all the reasons something new and different can't be done, because, after all, no one else has done it that way.

The definitive biography of the king of the rock 'n' roll business, Ahmet Ertegun, the founder of Atlantic Records.