Business Biography

"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...."

The first in-depth look at Lance Armstrong's doping scandal, the phenomenal business success built on the back of fraud, and the greatest conspiracy in the history of sports. Lance Armstrong won a record-smashing seven Tours de France after staring down cancer, and in the process became an international symbol of resilience and courage. In a sport constantly dogged by blood-doping scandals, he seemed above the fray. Then, in January 2013, the legend imploded. He admitted doping during the Tours and, in an interview with Oprah, described his "mythic, perfect story" as "one big lie."

The Hudson’s Bay Company started out small in 1670, trading practical manufactured goods for furs with the indigenous inhabitants of inland subarctic Canada. Controlled by a handful of English aristocrats, it expanded into a powerful political force that ruled the lives of many thousands of people - from the lowlands south and west of Hudson Bay, to the tundra, the great plains, the Rocky Mountains, and the Pacific Northwest.

Ever since he was a kid, kicking broken soccer balls on the run-down streets of East London, Gary Stevenson dreamed of something bigger. As luck would have it, he was good at numbers. At the London School of Economics, wearing tracksuits and sneakers, Stevenson shocked his posh classmates by winning a competition called “The Trading Game.” The prize? A golden ticket to a new life, as the youngest trader at Citibank.

In her famed TED talk, Sheryl Sandberg described how women unintentionally hold themselves back in their careers. Her talk, which has been viewed more than eleven million times, encouraged women to “sit at the table,” seek challenges, take risks, and pursue their goals with gusto.

Dive deep into the lives, successes, and failures of some of the most successful, and wealthiest, men on the planet - Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Jack Ma, and Richard Branson - and discover what drove them all to become super achievers.

Weijian Shan's Out of the Gobi is a powerful memoir and commentary that will be one of the most important books on China of our time, one with the potential to re-shape how Americans view China, and how the Chinese view life in America. Shan, a former hard laborer who is now one of Asia's best-known financiers, is thoughtful, observant, eloquent, and brutally honest, making him well-positioned to tell the story of a life that is a microcosm of modern China, and of how, improbably, that life became intertwined with America.

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.

During his storied career as head coach of the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers, Phil Jackson won more championships than any coach in the history of professional sports. This is the story of a preacher's kid from North Dakota who grew up to be one of the most innovative leaders of our time. Eleven times, Jackson led his teams to the ultimate goal: the NBA championship - six times with the Chicago Bulls and five times with the Los Angeles Lakers. This book is full of revelations.

Peter Lynch, one of the most successful investors of all time, shows you how to use what you already know to make money in the market. You'll discover why smart money is not so smart - and why you may be a better stock picker than the pros, how to follow your hunches and back them up with facts, how to disregard reports on the economy and pick your own time to buy and sell, and how to determine which types of stocks are right for you. Lynch is the former manager of the $9 billion Fidelity Magellan Fund, where he earned investors a $190,000 return on a $10,000 investment.

Beating the Odds is the improbable, inspiring autobiography of financial guru Eddie C. Brown, one of the nation's top stock pickers and money managers. It details how Brown skillfully kept Brown Capital Management afloat through the dot-com bust, 9/11, and the Great Recession. Born to a 13-year-old unwed mother in the rural South, this African-American investment whiz created a Baltimore-based financial firm that amassed more than $6 billion under management.

In 2014, Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes was widely seen as the next Steve Jobs: a brilliant Stanford dropout whose startup “unicorn” promised to revolutionize the medical industry with its breakthrough device, which performed the whole range of laboratory tests from a single drop of blood. Backed by investors such as Larry Ellison and Tim Draper, Theranos sold shares in a fundraising round that valued the company at more than $9 billion, putting Holmes’s worth at an estimated $4.5 billion.

The co-founder and longtime president of Pixar updates and expands his 2014 New York Times bestseller on creative leadership, reflecting on the management principles that built Pixar’s singularly successful culture, and on all he learned during the past nine years that allowed Pixar to retain its creative culture while continuing to evolve.

In 1986, before Michael Lewis became the best-selling author of The Big Short, Moneyball, and Flash Boys, he landed a job at Salomon Brothers, one of Wall Street’s premier investment firms. During the next three years, Lewis rose from callow trainee to New York- and London-based bond salesman, raking in millions for the firm and cashing in on a modern-day gold rush. Liar’s Poker is the culmination of those heady, frenzied years - a behind-the-scenes look at a unique and turbulent time in American business.

During the upheavals of 2007-9, the chairman of the Federal Reserve had the name of a Victorian icon on the tip of his tongue: Walter Bagehot. Banker, man of letters, inventor of the Treasury bill, and author of Lombard Street, the still-canonical guide to stopping a run on the banks, Bagehot prescribed the doctrines that - decades later - inspired the radical responses to the world's worst financial crises.

Mark Messier is one of the most accomplished athletes and dynamic leaders in the history of professional sports. He won the Stanley Cup five times with the Edmonton Oilers during their dynasty years and once more with the New York Rangers, ending the team’s 54-year championship drought. He is second on the all-time career lists for playoff points and third for regular season games played and for regular season points. Notably, he is the only player to have captained two different NHL franchises to championships.

Naval Ravikant is an entrepreneur, philosopher, and investor who has captivated the world with his principles for building wealth and creating long-term happiness. The Almanack of Naval Ravikant is a collection of Naval’s wisdom and experience from the last 10 years, shared as a curation of his most insightful interviews and poignant reflections. This isn’t a how-to book, or a step-by-step gimmick. Instead, through Naval’s own words, you will learn how to walk your own unique path toward a happier, wealthier life.

If you had the resources to accomplish something great in the world, what would you do? Legendary investor Warren Buffett posed this challenge to his son in 2006, when he announced he was leaving the bulk of his fortune to philanthropy. So, Howard G. Buffett set out to help the most vulnerable people on Earth - nearly a billion individuals who lack basic food security. And Howard has given himself a deadline: 40 years to put more than $3 billion to work on this challenge.

In Prince of Darkness, a groundbreaking and vivid account, eminent historian Shane White reveals the larger-than-life story of a man who defied every convention of his time. He wheeled and dealed in the lily-white business world, he married a White woman, he bought a mansion in rural New Jersey, he owned railroad stock on trains he was not legally allowed to ride, and generally he set his White contemporaries' teeth on edge when he wasn't just plain outsmarting them.

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.