Business Memoirs

Admen, Mad Men, and How Advertising Really Works is written to be easily digestible by interns, CEOS, or anyone who has ever watched a television commercial or clicked on a banner ad. Irreverent, packed with useful information, and unflinchingly honest, it is a serious business book by a seriously funny man and a must for anyone who lives, works, or plays in today's commercial culture.

Si usted cree en la reencarnación o en vidas pasadas, entonces Emilio Scotto es Marco Polo o Cristóbal Colón o David Livingstone. Porque en la tradición de los grandes exploradores, Emilio Scotto se embarcó en un viaje que nunca se había realizado, solo que en su caso se estableció alrededor de un mundo aparentemente conocido y explorado. Lo que encontró fue todo lo contrario. Su aventura fue tan aterradora y peligrosa como cualquiera realizada por aquellos grandes hombres de leyenda.

A New York Times technology and business reporter charts the dramatic rise of Bitcoin and the fascinating personalities who are striving to create a new global money for the Internet age.

The life story of Gary Gygax, godfather of all fantasy adventure games, has been told only in bits and pieces. Michael Witwer has crafted a dynamic, dramatized biography of Gygax from his childhood in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, to his untimely death in 2008. Gygax’s magnum opus, Dungeons & Dragons, would explode in popularity throughout the 1970s and ’80s and irreversibly alter the world of gaming. Gygax’s involvement in the industry lasted long after his dramatic and involuntary departure, and his footprint can be seen in the role-playing genre he is largely responsible for creating.

The daughter of slaves, Madam C.J. Walker was orphaned at seven, married at 14, and widowed at 20. She spent the better part of the next two decades laboring as a washerwoman for $1.50 a week. Then - with the discovery of a revolutionary hair care formula for Black women - everything changed. By her death in 1919, Walker managed to overcome astonishing odds: Building a storied beauty empire from the ground up that would be run by four generations of Walker women until its sale in 1985.

"Economic hit men," John Perkins writes, "are highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars. Their tools include fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex, and murder."

In Jenny Doan's new memoir, How to Stitch an American Dream, listeners will discover the behind-the-scenes success story of the Missouri Star Quilt Company and Jenny’s remarkable journey to overcome hardship, claim the abundance of family, and ignite the power of giving - all while revitalizing a small town along the way. Over the last decade, the Doan family business, the Missouri Star Quilt Company in tiny Hamilton, Missouri, has grown from Jenny’s corner shop.

“As a creature of American fiction, the successful business executive is often not a pleasant person. Sacrificing friends, family, love, and principles in his lust for success, he is depicted as outwardly brutal, inwardly empty, having killed off even his capacity for joy. Rich, powerful, alone at the top."

Chip Wilson’s part in this story comes from the learning of thousands of mistakes. He set the culture, business model, quality platform, and people development program and then got out of the way. Lululemon’s exponential growth, culture, and brand strength have few peers, and it is because of those employees who choose to be great.

A.G. Gaston, the poor grandson of slaves, was born in the Deep South in 1892. Over the course of his extraordinary life, he amassed a fortune of over $130 million and a vast business empire. The story of his remarkable life is written with eloquence and grace by his niece, an Emmy¿ Award-winning journalist and her daughter, who holds degrees from Yale and Harvard.

Descubre los principios radicales que han contribuido al éxito de Netflix. Reed Hastings, el cofundador, presidente y CEO de Netflix, desvela por primera vez la sorprendente y poco ortodoxa cultura de una de las compañías más creativas y de mayor éxito en la historia de Silicon Valley. Nunca antes ha existido una empresa como Netflix. Esta es la fascinante historia de una compañía singular y de su extraordinaria expansión por el mundo entero.

Was it a typo when the CEO mandated that the organization "institutionalize incompetents"? If not, how did the company wind up institutionalizing incompetence instead? How to Work for an Idiot is still the confessions of a recovering Idiot Boss. After decades of writing and consulting, Dr. Hoover finally realized that many of the people he kept trying to "energize" and "enlighten" were, well, idiots. More importantly, he was an idiot for thinking he could change them. This new edition is bigger and better - and filled with even more idiots - than before.

From entrepreneur and celebrity hairstylist Jen Atkin comes a smart and spirited guide to finding your voice and creating the life and career you deserve - along with a behind-the-scenes look into Jen’s own wild and wonderful road to success.

With Cutler Dawson at the helm for the last 14 years, Navy Federal Credit Union, the world's largest credit union, has quadrupled the size of the organization and made it an industry leader in customer service. It is now one of the most fiercely trusted and smoothly run financial institutions in the world ranked by Fortune magazine as a Best Place to Work for eight years. This book reveals an honest and straightforward look at Dawson's leadership philosophy and guiding principles.

Are leaders born or made? Where does ambition come from? How does adversity affect the growth of leadership? Does the man make the times or do the times make the man? In Leadership, Goodwin draws upon four of the presidents she has studied most closely - Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Lyndon B. Johnson (in civil rights) - to show how they first recognized leadership qualities within themselves, and were recognized by others as leaders.

Here is the story of Jerry Weintraub: the self-made, Brooklyn-born, Bronx-raised impresario, Hollywood producer, legendary deal maker, and friend of politicians and stars. No matter where nature has placed him - the club rooms of Brooklyn, the Mafia dives of New York's Lower East Side, the wilds of Alaska, or the hills of Hollywood - he has found a way to put on a show and sell tickets at the door.

Mention the name "Betsey Johnson" and almost every woman from the age of 15 to 75 can rapturously recall a favorite dress or outfit. They may also know her as a renegade single mom who palled around with Edie Sedgwick, Twiggy, and The Velvet Underground, or even as a celebrity contestant on Dancing with the Stars. Betsey will take the listener behind the tutu and delve deeply into what it took to go from a white picket fence childhood in Connecticut to becoming an internationally known force in a tough, competitive business.

David Mamet went to Hollywood on top—a super successful playwright summoned west in 1980 to write a vehicle for Jack Nicholson. He arrived just in time to meet the luminaries of old Hollywood and revel in the friendship of giants like Paul Newman, Mike Nichols, Bob Evans, and Sue Mengers. Over the next forty years, Mamet wrote dozens of scripts, was fired off dozens of movies, and directed eleven himself. In Everywhere an Oink Oink, he revels of the taut and gag-filled professionalism of the film set.

Join self-made billionaire David Green, founder of America's craft store giant Hobby Lobby, as he shares the key to building a powerful legacy: Generosity. In Giving It All Away...and Getting It All Back Again, Green unpacks time-tested principles that will help you reap the benefits of generosity for multiple generations to come. In 1970, David Green began making picture frames in his garage. With hard work, he and his wife, Barbara, turned that humble beginning into the world's largest privately owned arts-and-crafts retailer.

In 1988 Forbes magazine hailed Chuck Feeney as the 23rd richest American alive. No one knew until then that he was extremely wealthy. Or was he? Born during the Depression in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Feeney had made a fortune as co-founder of Duty Free Shoppers, the world's largest duty-free retail chain. How he did it is one of the great untold retail stories of modern times. The greater untold story is that Feeney had in fact given away his fortune, in its totality, to endow Atlantic Philanthropies - one of the most generous and secretive philanthropic funds in the world.