Business Memoirs

Ray Dalio does not want you to listen to this audiobook. Late last year, when the billionaire founder of Bridgewater Associates, the largest hedge fund on the planet, announced that he was stepping down from the company he started out of his apartment nearly 50 years ago, the news made headlines around the world. Dalio cultivated an aura of international admiration and fame thanks to his company’s eye-popping success, coupled with a mystique he encouraged with frequent media appearances, celebrity hobnobbing, and his bestselling book, Principles.

An exclusive look at one of the world's most successful and controversial companies and the mysterious family behind it.

In this audiobook, you'll discover everything you need to know about how, exactly, many of America's most famous (and infamous) millionaires and billionaires acquired their fortunes. The big surprise is that all of the super-wealthy it profiles got where they are today by taking one of just 10 possible roads - including starting a business, buying real estate, investing wisely, and marrying extremely well. Whether you aspire to shameful wealth or just a demure fortune, best-selling author and self-made billionaire Ken Fisher will show you how to walk in the footsteps of tycoons.

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.

The prize-winning and best-selling author of Say Nothing presents a grand, devastating portrait of three generations of the Sackler family, famed for their philanthropy, whose fortune was built by Valium and whose reputation was destroyed by OxyContin. Empire of Pain is a masterpiece of narrative reporting and writing, exhaustively documented and ferociously compelling.

In the summer of 1987, Payam Zamani fled Iran. As a member of the Baha'i Faith, he had already survived years of religious persecution at the hands of Islamic fundamentalists. Taking the only path available to him, he escaped to Pakistan through the Emptiness Desert: a harrowing five-day trek through one of the hottest, driest, and most hostile regions on the planet. Twelve years later, he and his brother set records when the company they founded hit a $1.2 billion valuation on Wall Street.

Tim Kennedy has a problem; he only feels alive right before he’s about to die. Kennedy, a Green Beret, decorated Army sniper, and UFC headliner, has tackled a bull with his bare hands, jumped out of airplanes, dove to the depths of the ocean, and traveled the world hunting poachers, human traffickers, and the Taliban. But he’s also the same man who got kicked out of the police department, fire department, and as an EMT, before getting two women pregnant four days apart, and finally, been beaten up by his Special Forces colleagues.

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.

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.

Smart, competent, and capable people are rare and in high demand. Every organization-from commercial enterprises, healthcare, non-profit, sports, education, to the military-is in an outright battle to recruit and retain these bright and talented people. Fanatical Military Recruiting begins where the Recruiting and Retention colleges of the various branches of the military leave off. It is an advanced, master's level training resource designed specifically for the unique demands of Military Recruiting.

Listed as one of the “12 greatest entrepreneurs of our time" by Fortune magazine in 2012, Nagavara Ramarao Narayana Murthy, or NR Narayana Murthy as he is better known, is probably the most recognized and respected face of Indian industry. This book takes you through the fascinating journey of a 17-year-old who had to sacrifice his entry into the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology because his father did not have money to pay his fees and ultimately came up in life to head a global IT giant.

Jack Welch’s innovative leadership strategies revived a lagging GE, transforming it into a powerhouse with a staggering $300 billion-plus market capitalization. In writing Jack Welch and the GE Way, author Robert Slater was given unprecedented access to Welch and other prominent GE insiders. What emerged is a brilliant portrait that tells you what makes Jack Welch tick. Learn how to work the Welch magic on your own company.

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.

One of the great economists of the 20th century, Milton Friedman has always challenged the prevailing economic orthodoxy. At the same time, his work has become popular because it is engagingly written and because it helps in practical prediction. Thanks to Friedman, money is now regarded as a far more powerful factor than it had been before. It offers the prospect of permanently controlling the inflation that has become the most important economic problem of our age.

Dr. Jeffrey Gurian shares in his book Healing Your Heart, By Changing Your Mind - A Spiritual and Humorous Approach to Achieving Happiness how he has learned through his own personal experience and years of study to overcome all the above and more. Burdened with a severe stutter until he was in his 20's and beyond, seemingly unable to be helped by therapy, and combined with the confusion of A.D.D. and a bit of O.C.D. thrown in, he was faced with having to deal with that for the rest of his life.

In this widely acclaimed memoir ("Riveting, moving...a wonderful book" The New York Times Book Review), Katharine Graham tells her story—one that is extraordinary both for the events it encompasses and for the courage, candor, and dignity of its telling.

Alexandra Posadzki’s ground-breaking coverage in the Globe and Mail exposed one of the most spectacular boardroom and family dramas in Canadian corporate history—one that has pitted the company’s extraordinarily powerful chairman and controlling shareholder, Edward Rogers, against not only his own management team but also the wishes of his mother and two of his sisters. Posadzki takes us inside a company that touches the lives of millions of Canadians, challenging what we thought we knew about corporate governance and who really holds the power.

The unauthorized story of Lululemon. 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. This book is also about missed opportunity - five years of missed opportunity. Chip was playing to win while the directors of the company he founded were playing not to lose.

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.

When Hugh Hefner quit his job at Esquire to start a magazine called Playboy, he didn't just want to make money, he wanted to make dreams come true. In this wise and penetrating biography, intellectual historian Steven Watts looks at what Hugh Hefner went on to become and how he took America with him. Hefner became one of the most hated and envied celebrities in America, standing just barely on the wrong side of decency - with as many as seven million subscribers to his magazine.