Biographies Power

For the first time in American history, a significant number of mothers are heading major corporations, including General Motors, Ulta Beauty, and Best Buy. Over the past several decades, women have made gains throughout executive suites. Yet these “Power Moms” still struggle with balancing their management responsibilities with raising children. Joann S. Lublin draws on the experiences of the nation’s two generations of these successful women to measure how far we’ve come - and how far we still need to go.

Leonardo da Vinci and Niccolo da Pavia return to Florence hoping for peace and quiet. It is not to be! An unwanted gift greets Leonardo as he enters his workshop. The gift he knows comes with “strings” but not accepting it could come with dire consequences. A debt to Cesare Borgia is incurred. Meanwhile, Florence is in turmoil, religious, social and political unrest leads to violence in the streets. Most horrifying – famous paintings are discovered slashed and burned, and sculptures are reduced to rubble. Which one of the disruptive forces terrorizing the city could be responsible. ...

From its founding in 1966 to contemporary attempts to censure its history and revise its significance, the Black Panther party has aroused fear, hope, pride, vilification, and government-sponsored oppression. This is the first and only collection of the most vital, representative writings of the party. Here are Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale, Eldridge Cleaver, David Hilliard, and Fred Hampton; Kathleen Cleaver and other Panther women; the party's court battles and acquittals; its positions on black separatism, the power structure, the police, violence, education, and more.

This book is an exhilaration search-and-destroy mission on the higher slopes of our political culture. By turns comic and deeply serious, it is the most acute assessment so far of the Kennedy phenomenon.

On May 7, 1940, the House of Commons began perhaps the most crucial debate in British parliamentary history. On its outcome hung the future of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's government and also of Britain - indeed, perhaps, the world. Troublesome Young Men is Lynne Olson's fascinating account of how a small group of rebellious Tory MPs defied the Chamberlain government's defeatist policies that aimed to appease Europe's tyrants and eventually forced the prime minister's resignation.

McKinsey earns billions advising almost every major corporation as well as countless governments, including Britain's, the USA's and China's. It boasts of its ability to maximise efficiency while making the world a better place. Its millionaire partners and network of alumni go on to top jobs in the world's most powerful organisations. And yet, shielded by non-disclosure agreements, its work remains largely secret—until now. In this propulsive investigation, two prize-winning journalists reveal the reality.

One day in 1986, Laura Schroff, a busy ad sales executive, passed a small boy panhandling on the street. She stopped and offered to take him to McDonald's for lunch. Twenty years later, at Laura's 50th birthday party, Maurice Mayzik gave a toast, thanking Laura for that small act of kindness, which ended up changing the course of his life. In that toast Maurice said that when Laura stopped on that busy street corner all those years ago, God had sent him an angel.

In 2007, a short blogpost by Gawker Media outed PayPal founder and billionaire investor Peter Thiel as gay. Thiel's sexuality had been known to close friends and family, but he didn't consider himself a public figure, and believed the information was private. This post would be the casus belli for a meticulously plotted conspiracy that would end nearly a decade later with a $140 million dollar judgment against Gawker and its bankruptcy. Only later would the world learn that Gawker's demise was not incidental - it had been masterminded by Thiel.

In Mission with Prophetic Power, Evan Howard introduces us to his good friend John Woolman (1720–1772). In this autobiographical record of his life, Woolman describes his charismatic, contemplative, and evangelical spirituality as he practiced a lifestyle of fair trade (justice) and minimalism (simplicity). Encounter testimonies of the “operations of divine love” in Woolman’s record of the goodness of God.

One of the most famous and enigmatic Americans of the 20th century, Howard Hughes challenged Hollywood's conventions and packed theaters with his blockbuster films Hell's Angels, Scarface and The Outlaw. He thrilled the world with his aviation exploits, shattering air speed records, flying around the world in record time and building the world's largest aircraft. Hughes was linked with almost every major film beauty of the 1930s and '40s, making him a favorite subject of the nation's gossip columns.

In his short life, the Guyanese intellectual Walter Rodney emerged as one of the leading thinkers and activists of the anticolonial revolution, leading movements in North America, South America, the African continent, and the Caribbean. In each locale, Rodney found himself a lightning rod for working class Black Power. His deportation catalyzed 20th century Jamaica's most significant rebellion, the 1968 Rodney riots, and his scholarship trained a generation how to think politics at an international scale.

Admiral Hyman George Rickover (1899-1986) remains an almost mythical figure in the United States Navy. A brilliant engineer with a ferocious will and combative personality, he oversaw the invention of the world’s first practical nuclear power reactor. In this exciting biography, historian Marc Wortman explores the constant conflict Rickover faced and provoked, tracing how he revolutionized the navy and Cold War strategy.

Suetonius wrote his Lives of the Twelve Caesars in the reign of Vespasian around 70AD. He chronicled the extraordinary careers of Julius, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Vespasian, and Domitian and the rest in technicolour terms. They presented some high and low times at the heart of the Roman Empire. The accounts provide us with perspicacious insights into the men as much as their reigns.

The Church Mafia is a thought-provoking and tell-all audiobook inspired by the life of Makhado Sinthumule Ramabulana, who took a courageous step to reveal how God saved him from secret and occult societies. He explores themes of his life in the ministry, commercialisation of the gospel, lessons learnt from countries he travelled to in an effort to gain powers, and detail of the occult operation. After listening to the Church Mafia, you will begin to understand that most operations in churches today are influenced by secret societies.

Ebony Stone is a mess! But no one would ever know it. Beneath the polished facade of a successful Female Executive is a woman on the brink of collapse. She gracefully navigates the corporate world, adorned with accolades and achievements, but inside, she’s battling unseen demons threatening to dismantle her life—her marriage, friendships, relationships with her children, and even her physical health.

This stylish and incisive narrative presents listeners with a fresh perspective on one of the most fascinating kings in European history. Louis XIV's story has all the ingredients of a Dumas classic: legendary beginnings, beguiling women, court intrigue, a mysterious prisoner in an iron mask, lavish court entertainments, the scandal of a mistress who was immersed in the dark arts, and a central character who is handsome and romantic, but with a frighteningly dark side to his character.

In the best-selling tradition of The Presidents Club and Presidential Courage, White House history as told through the stories of the best friends and closest confidants of American presidents.

Two unsung women whose power using food as a political weapon during the civil rights movement was so great it brought the ire of government agents working against them.

Inspired by a colleague's involvement in the Mississippi Summer Project of 1964, Wall Street attorney Donald A. Jelinek traveled to the Deep South to volunteer as a civil rights lawyer during his three-week summer vacation in 1965. He stayed for three years. In White Lawyer, Black Power, Jelinek recounts the battles he fought in defense of militant civil rights activists and rural African Americans, risking his career and his life to further the struggle for racial equality.

This is a story of an African American woman working at the highest levels in STEM. Dr. Sandra K. Johnson earned a Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering from Rice University, Houston, Texas, in May 1988, the first Black woman to do so. She then became a successful global technology leader and an IBM Chief Technology Officer (CTO). The story narrates the inextricable human dimension of dealing with various personal and familial challenges that people naturally encounter—with the highs and lows, and exhilarations and disappointments.