Career Memoirs

CEO of Hint, Inc., and author Kara Goldin turned her unsweetened flavored water into one of the most successful beverage businesses of our time. As she started to achieve her goals, Kara found herself being called “fearless”, “confident” and even “unstoppable”, but nothing could be further from the truth. In Undaunted, she shares real stories about her own fears and doubts, the challenges she encountered and what she did to overcome them to eventually build a great business and a life she loves.

When Michael Woodford was made president of Olympus - the company to which he had dedicated thirty years of his career - he became the first Westerner ever to climb the ranks of one of Japan’s corporate giants. Some wondered at the appointment - how could a gaijin who didn’t even speak Japanese understand how to run a Japanese company? But within months Woodford had gained the confidence of most of his colleagues and shareholders.

As Alexis Ohanian learned when he helped to co-found the immensely popular reddit.com, the internet is the most powerful and democratic tool for disseminating information in human history. And when that power is harnessed to create new communities, technologies, businesses or charities, the results can be absolutely stunning. In this audiobook, Alexis will share his ideas, tips and even his own doodles about harnessing the power of the web for good, and along the way, he will share his philosophy with young entrepreneurs all over the globe.

From the acclaimed Vanity Fair and GQ journalist–an unprecedented, in-depth portrait of the man whose return to Apple precipitated one of the biggest turnarounds in business history. With a new epilogue on Apple’s future survival in today’s roller-coaster economy, here is the revealing biography that blew away the critics and stirred controversy within industry and media circles around the country.

For the larger-than-life personalities now staking their fortunes on the development of rocket ships, the new race to explore space could be a dead end, a lucrative opportunity - or the key to humanity's salvation. Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos take center stage in this fast-paced narrative as they attempt to disrupt the space economy, feed their own egos, and maybe even save the world.

Gunsmiths in early 19th-century America were helped along by noted artisans from Germany, Switzerland, and other European powers, but despite advances made in the European and American musket, the requirement of an exterior spark and percussion to ignite powder for a single-shot discharge remained the paradigm. Similarly, the era was unable to move past the cumbersome weapon that required at least half a minute to reload. The military compensation for such an ungainly and vulnerable process was the alternation of troop lines, in which one fired while the other reloaded from behind.

Here is a bold new history of economics, the dramatic story of how the great economic thinkers built a rigorous social science without peer.

Banking on It is the firsthand account of one woman's quest to rebuild Britain's broken banking system. After a lengthy career at the top of some of Britain's leading banks, Anne Boden had become disillusioned with the status quo - the financial crash had broken trust in the whole sector, but there seemed to be little appetite to make the most of emerging technologies to revolutionise customer experience. Increasingly frustrated with the inertia within the industry, she decided to shake things up herself by doing something totally radical - setting up her own bank.

In Liftoff, Eric Berger takes listeners inside the wild early days that made SpaceX. Focusing on the company’s first four launches of the Falcon 1 rocket, he charts the bumpy journey from scrappy underdog to aerospace pioneer, drawing upon exclusive interviews with dozens of former and current engineers, designers, mechanics and executives, including Elon Musk. The enigmatic Musk, who founded the company with the dream of one day settling Mars, is the fuel that propels the book, with his daring vision for the future of space.

You would have to live under a rock not to know who Alan Greenspan is. But that's probably about as much as you know. Leave it to investigative reporter Bob Woodward to uncover the story of Greenspan and the power he wields as head of the Federal Reserve.

Born in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, Mandy Rennehan began her business career at the age of ten by catching bait and selling it to local fishermen. She was so good at her job, she knew she wanted to be her own boss one day. At the age of seventeen, Rennehan decided to strike out on her own, so she packed a hockey bag full of her belongings and fled to Halifax, where she began cold calling construction companies, volunteering to work for free, so she could learn more about contracting and the trades.

Command Sergeant Major (CSM) Bradley P. Jones, in his wildest dreams, never thought he would make a career out of the military. Like many, he joined for the college tuition assistance. He was determined to serve out his first and only enlistment, and then move on to bigger and better. He managed to leave the military—called a break in service—for four years, but the military never left his thoughts or his system.

Certain businesses are legendary, exerting immense influence in their field. Zingerman’s in Ann Arbor, Michigan, is one of those places. Over the years, the flagship deli has expanded into a community of more than a dozen businesses, including a wildly successful mail order operation, restaurants, bakery, coffee roastery, creamery, candy maker, and events space—transforming Ann Arbor into a destination for food lovers.

Written and read by the man whose resumé boasts "Inventor of the World Wide Web," Weaving the Web is the not-to-be-missed story of how the Internet came to be and where its creator thinks it's going.

In 1950 Gerald Frank, a determined Black man, arrived in Seattle at the age of eighteen. Fleeing the violence of Detroit and the suffocating grip of Jim Crow Laws, Gerald carried nothing but dreams and drumsticks in his heart. His unwavering belief that he could carve out a better life set the stage for an incredible journey. Today, over seventy years later, the real estate empire forged by Gerald and his wife, Theresa, continues to flourish under the guidance of the third generation of the Frank family. But theirs was not a journey paved with silver spoons.

Few organizations solve as many impossible problems as NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and nobody knows more about leading rocket scientists to unlikely breakthroughs than Adam Steltzner. As the phase lead and development manager for EDL (entry, descent, and landing) of the Curiosity rover to Mars, Steltzner spearheaded the creation of one of engineering's wackiest kluges - the sky crane, which allowed the heaviest rover in the history of space exploration to land on Mars unscathed.

Henry Ford, uno dei più famosi imprenditori della storia americana, fu il fondatore dell'omonima casa di produzione di automobili, la Ford Motor Company, conosciuta anche solo come Ford. Qui seguiremo i momenti salienti della compagnia, gli alti e i bassi, attraverso aneddoti e citazioni. Cercheremo di capire come ha fatto un uomo dalle umili origini, nato in una famiglia di agricoltori nella periferia di Detroit, a fondare e dirigere uno dei più grandi imperi industriali del XX secolo e diventare un esempio per ogni manager. Cercheremo, insomma, di capire il segreto del suo successo.

Take a Shot! is the incredible true story of how three unlikely partners broke all the rules and beat all the odds to create Major League Lacrosse. This book will take you on a roller-coaster ride through the ups and downs of starting a business - and not just any business, but a professional sports league built around America’s oldest and most tradition-bound game. Today, Major League Lacrosse is entering its 12th season, and the sport has exploded into the fastest-growing game in the U.S. But it wasn’t always that way... not even close.

From its creation as a mail-order record company to the literal launch of Virgin Galactic, today Virgin is one of the premier 'way-of-life' brands in the world, trusted and enjoyed by many millions of people. In Business Stripped Bare, Sir Richard Branson shares the inside track on his life in business and reveals the incredible truth about his most risky, brilliant, and audacious deals.

You may not recognize my name-or my face for that matter-but it's very likely you've seen me at work. I've managed to cram quite a bit into my thirty-year acting career. In fact I've helped put more bums on cinema seats than Will Smith or Tom Hanks. Who else can say that they've helped destroy a Death Star? Defeated an evil sorceress? Taught magic to Harry Potter? Become a Jedi Master? Reluctantly hitchhiked across the galaxy in search of the answer to the Ultimate Question?