Career Memoirs

Gates' Business @ the Speed of Thought is one of audible.com's most popular programs. This is one investment that will pay consistent dividends. Download it for your commute.

Bruised but not beaten, Graham Linehan explains why he chose the hill of women and girls' rights to die on—and why, despite the hardship of cancellation, he's not coming down from it any time soon.

Nothing Is Missing is a “sparkling and impassioned story” (Glamour) of what it takes to show up for yourself—and the joy that can come once you do. Raised in a home where food was unstable and anger was the norm, Nicole learned that she needed to take charge of her own safety and security. So she did: She got into an elite private school by talking to a stranger in her dad’s cab, she strategized her way onto Wheel of Fortune to pay for college, she adopted three girls after meeting their mother panhandling, she quit her job to launch her own business, and she struggled.

With $1,500 and no business experience, Mel and Patricia Ziegler turned a wild idea into a company that would become the international retail colossus Banana Republic. Reimagining military surplus as safari and expedition wear, the former journalist and artist created a world that captured the zeitgeist for a generation and spoke to the creativity, adventure, and independence in everyone.

Susan Fowler was just twenty-five years old when her blog post describing the sexual harassment and retaliation she'd experienced at Uber riveted the nation. Her post would eventually lead to the ousting of Uber's powerful CEO, but its ripples extended far beyond that, as her courageous choice to attach her name to the post inspired other women to speak publicly about their experiences. In the year that followed, an unprecedented number of women came forward, and Fowler was recognized by Time as one of the "Silence Breakers" who ignited the #MeToo movement.

In 1998, three Harvard Business School graduates - two men and one woman - turned down six-figure salaries at big corporations, bet on themselves, and launched their own new companies. By their 10-year reunion, their audacity had paid huge dividends. They'd made many millions of dollars, created hundreds of jobs and left their mark on the world. The Intelligent Entrepreneur tells the compelling and instructive story of how these three young founders did it.

Erik Weihenmayer is the first and only blind person to summit Mount Everest, the highest point on Earth. Descending carefully, he and his team picked their way across deep crevasses and through the deadly Khumbu Icefall; when the mountain was finally behind him, Erik knew he was going to live. His expedition leader slapped him on the back and said something that would affect the course of Erik’s life: “Don’t make Everest the greatest thing you ever do.” No Barriers is Erik’s response to that challenge.

Take undersized five-year-old farm girl Elinor, give her the polio that not only cripples her but also nearly kills her, then give her an impossible dream. In her childhood and again as a college student she rebels against the plan. Finally, she embraces the dream, and it leads Elinor to one of the most primitive, rugged places on earth and to a life that brawny international explorers would envy.

From housewife to billionaire CEO, Martha Stewart is not just the businesswoman with the Midas touch, she is also a lightning rod for many of the most important and controversial social and economic issues of post-WWII American life. In the unauthorized Martha Inc.: The Incredible Story of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, business writer and columnist Christopher Byron traces Martha's journey from the troubled world of a working-class family in New Jersey to the pinnacle of fame and power.

So You Want to Start a Brewery? is the first-person account of Tony Magee's gut-wrenching challenges and heart-warming successes in founding Lagunitas Brewing Company. In just 20 years, the company has grown from a seat-of-the-pants, one-man operation to be the fifth largest--and the fastest growing--craft brewer in the United States.

Ian Purkayastha is New York City's leading truffle importer and boasts a devoted clientele of top chefs nationwide, including Jean-Georges Vongerichten, David Chang, Sean Brock, and David Bouley. But before he was purveying the world's most expensive fungus to the country's most esteemed chefs, Ian was just a food-obsessed teenager in rural Arkansas - a misfit with a peculiar fascination for rare and exotic ingredients. The son of an Indian immigrant father and a Texan mother, Ian learned to forage for wild mushrooms from an uncle in the Ozark hills.

After Steve Jobs was unceremoniously dismissed from Apple, he turned his attention to a little-known graphics art company that he owned called Pixar. One day, out of the blue, Jobs called Lawrence Levy, a Harvard-trained lawyer and Silicon Valley executive to whom he had never spoken before, in the hope of persuading Levy to help him get Pixar on the right track. What Levy found in Pixar was a company on the verge of failure. To Pixar and Beyond is the extraordinary story of what happened next.

Being alone has a serious branding issue. We've only ever had negative language to talk about flying solo - but what about when time spent alone is restorative and joyful? What if it's something you crave? Enter: alonement, Francesca Specter's empowering new word to express valuing your own company and carving out time to spend with yourself, whoever you are and whatever your relationship status. In Alonement, Francesca Specter reveals how we can all thrive alone, whatever our circumstances, and harness the untapped power of some meaningful time with me, myself and I.

Who are the greatest innovators in the world? You're probably thinking Steve Jobs, Thomas Edison, and Henry Ford - the usual suspects.

This book isn't about them. It's about people who are just as innovative, entrepreneurial, and visionary as the Jobses, Edisons, and Fords of the world, except they're not in Silicon Valley. They're in the street markets of Sao Paulo and Guangzhou, and the rubbish dumps of Lagos. They are pirates, slum dwellers, computer hackers, dissidents, and inner city gang members.

Simon Jordan made his fortune building a mobile phone company from scratch. When he sold it for £75 million, he bought Crystal Palace FC, the club he'd supported as a boy, and led them into the Premier League. Ten years later, Palace was in administration and Jordan had lost nigh on everything. Be Careful What You Wish For lifts the lid on being the owner of a football club and how the game really works. Hopes and dreams sit alongside greed, self-interest, dodgy transfers, boardroom fights and dressing room dressing downs.

Jennifer Romolini started her career as an awkward 27-year-old misfit, navigated her way through New York media, and became a boss - an editor in chief, an editorial director, and a vice president - all within little more than a decade. Her book, Weird in a World That's Not, asserts that being outside the norm and achieving real, high-level success are not mutually exclusive, even if the perception of the business world often seems otherwise, even if it seems like only office-politicking extroverts are set up for reward.

For decades there have been two iconic Japanese auto companies. One has been endlessly studied and written about. The other has been generally underappreciated and misunderstood. Until now. Since its birth as a motorcycle company in 1949, Honda has steadily grown into the world’s fifth largest automaker and top engine manufacturer, as well as one of the most beloved, most profitable, and most consistently innovative multinational corporations.

Twenty years before the publication of his magnum opus Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill was an instructor, philosopher, and writer at the George Washington Institute in Chicago, where he taught courses in advertising and sales. These rare, never-before-seen lectures were thought to be lost to history. Until now. Given exclusive access to the archives of the Napoleon Hill Foundation, Jeffrey Gitomer has unearthed Hill’s original course notes containing the fundamental beliefs in hard work and personal development that established Hill as a global leader of success and positive attitude.

Robert E. Lee scholar H. W. Crocker III is an esteemed Civil War historian. Skillfully summarizing Lee’s life, Crocker clearly extracts leadership lessons from the storied career of the South’s beloved leader and applies them to today’s business worldUnder General Lee’s management, a rag-tag army of poor farmers—vastly outnumbered, outgunned, under-supplied, and under-fed—consistently routed Union troops. Brilliantly seizing strategic opportunities, Lee stunned his foes and inspired his soldiers. He was decisive, focused, and humble.

This memoir chronicles the life of Sanjay Singhal. Everything from his bankruptcy at the age of 31, diagnosis of bipolar disorder, and all the business successes that followed. By providing support through real life experience, Sanjay helps pave the way for a shorter path to success and help people empower their ability to be their own entrepreneurs. As one of Canada’s most sought after and successful startup investors, Sanjay’s mission lies with inspiring the next generation to take risks that no rational person would consider reasonable.