Business Memoirs

How did the trailblazers of Indian business turn their dreams into reality? The Pilani Pioneers profiles twenty-five accomplished BITS Pilani graduates, including startup founders, entrepreneurs and CEOs, who have made an indelible mark on the Indian and global business landscape while deftly navigating the twists and turns of their professional and personal lives.

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.

This audiobook includes biographies on the following men: Benjamin Franklin, Nikola Tesla, Henry Ford, J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, and Thomas Edison.

In 1986, fresh out of college, Paul Downs opened his first and last business: a small company that built custom furniture. With no idea how to run a business or how to build custom furniture, Downs spent a year teaching himself the business, and in 1987 he hired his first employee. That was when things got complicated.

Gerald D. Hines stands at the top of the international real estate investment and development world. A Purdue graduate with a degree in engineering, Hines may have arrived in Houston in 1948 for a nine-to-five job at a heating and air conditioning company, but before long he was making the deals that would transform Houston’s skyline. Later, with his revolutionary idea that great architecture was good business, he was reshaping the skylines of the world.

In this, his final work, finished only weeks before his passing, Peres offers a long-awaited examination of the crucial turning points in Israeli history through the prism of having been a decision maker and eyewitness. Told with the frankness of someone aware this would likely be his final statement, No Room for Small Dreams spans decades and events, but as much as it is about what happened, it is about why it happened.

With insights into the cyclical nature of innovation and the indomitable spirit of human ingenuity, Bandwidth is a powerful saga that shines a light on how history may be repeating itself as the AI, quantum, and blockchain Boom cycle is taking hold.

According to The Waiter, 80 percent of customers are nice people just looking for something to eat. The remaining 20 percent, however, are socially maladjusted psychopaths.

Waiter Rant offers the server's unique point of view, replete with tales of customer stupidity, arrogant misbehavior, and unseen bits of human grace transpiring in the most unlikely places.

In Shark Tales, Barbara shares her hilarious stories about growing up, getting into trouble, failing miserably, and then starting over again. In each chapter, she comes back to one of her mom's unconventional lessons, and how it applies in the real world of business. Whatever your calling, the homespun lessons that work for Barbara will help you use what you've got to create success in your life.

Alisha’s “What If” year reveals that she can achieve success on her own terms by embodying the spirit of the intern: never stop learning, be flexible, and understand that failure is a prerequisite for growth. For anyone who’s ever felt stuck in a rut, My What If Year proves that it’s never too late to say yes to second chances and explore the roads untraveled throughout your life.

Trump Revealed offers the most thorough and wide-ranging examination of Donald Trump's public and private lives to date, from his upbringing in Queens and formative years at the New York Military Academy to his turbulent careers in real estate and entertainment to his astonishing rise as the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination. The book is based on the investigative reporting of more than two dozen Washington Post reporters and researchers.

Written by descendant Arthur T. Vanderbilt II, Fortune's Children traces the dramatic and amazingly colorful history of this great American family, from the rise of industrialist and philanthropist Cornelius Vanderbilt to the fall of his progeny - wild spendthrifts whose profligacy bankrupted a vast inheritance.

As heir apparent to the first global media dynasty, Lachlan Murdoch has been waiting to run his father Rupert’s empire all his life. In this riveting first biography of a little-understood but hugely influential figure, acclaimed journalist Paddy Manning asks: Can the dutiful son hang onto the empire, or will the third generation of Murdoch moguls prove the last? Despite a life in the spotlight, Lachlan’s personality, politics, and business acumen remain obscure. Is he the ultra-conservative ideologue media reports maintain, or a free-thinking libertarian, as some friends suggest?

Pour la majorité des Canadiens, le nom de la famille Molson fait partie de l’essence même du Canada. Depuis 1786, année où John Molson fonda sa première brasserie à Montréal, il rime avec bière, hockey et philanthropie. Rares sont cependant ceux qui savent à quel point la famille est passée proche, ces dernières années, de perdre le contrôle de cette entreprise.

Amid one of the darkest times in American history, it was a moment that captured the attention of the nation. Brett Crozier, captain of the most powerful and prestigious aircraft carrier in the United States Navy, walked off his ship for the last time while thousands of his sailors saluted and chanted his name in admiration. This remarkable moment occurred after Crozier made the decision to try to protect his sailors by pleading with his superiors for help when COVID-19 swept through the vessel. Two days later, he was relieved of command.

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.

Robert Rubin, former secretary of the Treasury and co-chairman of Goldman Sachs, shares thoughts on decision-making developed over more than six decades in markets, business, government, and politics, and offers listeners an astute and original guide for navigating uncertain times.

The best-selling author of Bringing Down the House (63 weeks on the New York Times best seller list and the basis for the hit movie 21) and The Accidental Billionaires (the basis for the Academy Award-winning film The Social Network) delivers an epic drama of wealth, rivalry, and betrayal among megawealthy Russian oligarchs - and its international repercussions.

In January 2022, Bruce Eric Kaplan found himself confused and upset by the state of the world and the state of his life as a television writer in Los Angeles. He started a journal to keep from going mad, which eventually became They Went Another Way. The book’s through line traces his attempt to get a television project set up in the increasingly Byzantine world of Hollywood.

After conquering the hallowed halls of Harvard Business School, he enters the testosterone-laced warrens of the Merc Exchange, the asylumlike oil exchange located in lower Manhattan. A place where billions of dollars trade hands every week, the Merc is like a casino on crack, where former garbagemen become millionaires overnight and where fistfights break out on the trading floor.