Finance Biography

As cofounder of KISS, America's number one gold-record award-winning group of all time, Simmons knows the thrill and seduction of power firsthand. But gold records alone don't equal power. The decisions you make once you attain a certain level of success are what separate the pretenders from the pantheon. Inspired by Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince, Simmons offers his unique take on the dynamics of power in every realm of life, from the bedroom to the boardroom, to the world of rock, celebrity, and social media, to politics.

Called the "greatest stock picker of the century" by Money magazine, legendary fund manager Sir John Templeton is remembered as one of the world's foremost investors, known for his pioneering insights and phenomenal investment performance over a professional career which spanned more than half a century. Templeton's Way with Money provides a unique, professional 21st century appraisal of what made this formidable investor the success he was and why his methods remain as valid today as they were during his long and successful lifetime.

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.

From the man who was in the very middle of this perfect economic storm, On the Brink is Paulson's fast-paced retelling of the key decisions that had to be made with lightning speed. Paulson puts the listener in the room for all the intense moments as he addressed urgent market conditions, weighed critical decisions, and debated policy and economic considerations with of all the notable players.

In 2006, an oddball group of bankers, traders and brokers from some of the world's largest financial institutions made a startling realization: Libor - the London interbank offered rate, which determines the interest rates on trillions in loans worldwide - was set daily by a small group of easily manipulated functionaries, and that they could reap huge profits by nudging it to suit their trading portfolios.

Jamie Dimon is Wall Street's biggest player. Following the 11h-hour rescue of Bear Stearns by JPMorgan, his profile has reached stratospheric levels. And while the deals and decisions he's made have usually turned out to be the right ones, his journey to the top of the financial world has been anything but easy. Now, in The House of Dimon, business writer Patricia Crisafulli goes behind the scenes to recount the amazing events that have shaped Dimon's career.

The story the Vanguard Group as told by its founder, legendary investor John C. Bogle, Stay the Course traces the history of Vanguard - the largest mutual fund organization on Earth. An engaging blend of company history, investment perspective, and personal memoir, this book provides a fascinating look into the mind of an extraordinary man and the company he created.

Few companies in history have ever been as successful and as admired as Google, the company that has transformed the Internet and become an indispensable part of our lives. How has Google done it? Veteran technology reporter Steven Levy was granted unprecedented access to the company, and in this revelatory book he takes listeners inside Google headquarters - the Googleplex - to explain how Google works.

Stress Test is the story of Tim Geithner’s education in financial crises. As president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and then as President Barack Obama’s secretary of the Treasury, Timothy F. Geithner helped the United States navigate the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, from boom to bust to rescue to recovery.

In 2006, hedge fund manager John Paulson realized something few others suspected - that the housing market and the value of subprime mortgages were grossly inflated and headed for a major fall. Paulson's background was in mergers and acquisitions, however, and he knew little about real estate or how to wager against housing. He had spent a career as an also-ran on Wall Street. But Paulson was convinced this was his chance to make his mark. He just wasn't sure how to do it. Colleagues at investment banks scoffed at him and investors dismissed him.

Xi Jinping rules over 1.4 billion people and the second biggest economy on earth. He commands huge armed forces and runs a technology programme meant to dominate the globe. His ambition is to take the place of the United States and to change the world order. Xi's life story is full of drama: plots, purges, murders, a power struggle and a pandemic. The book, based on new sources, leads the listener from the poor, isolated China of the 1950s to the modern economic and military juggernaut of today.

The Unusual Billionaires tells the story of eight, truly outstanding companies which delivered 10 percent revenue growth over the last 10 years and 15 percent return on capital employed. In simple words, these companies defeated 5000 other public listed companies to deliver high growth while maintaining profitability year-on-year for the last decade. How did these companies do it? Why couldn’t this be reciprocated by other companies? What are they doing differently?

Born into one of America's most illustrious trading families, Sam Israel was determined to strike out on his own. After apprenticing with one of the greatest traders of the 1980s, he founded his own fast-growing hedge fund, promising investors extraordinary returns. But it was all an elaborate charade.

A brilliant investigative narrative: How six average Soviet men rose to the pinnacle of Russia's battered economy. David Hoffman, former Moscow bureau chief for

The Washington Post, sheds light onto the hidden lives of Russia's most feared power brokers: the oligarchs. Focusing on six of these ruthless men Hoffman reveals how a few players managed to take over Russia's cash-strapped economy and then divvy it up in loans-for-shares deals.

Tracy Kidder, the “master of the nonfiction narrative” (The Baltimore Sun) and author of the bestselling classic The Soul of a New Machine, now tells the story of Paul English, a kinetic and unconventional inventor and entrepreneur, who as a boy rebelled against authority.

Everyone knew it was crazy to try to extract oil and natural gas buried in shale rock deep below the ground. Everyone, that is, except a few reckless wildcatters - who risked their careers to prove the world wrong. Things looked grim for American energy in 2006. Oil production was in steep decline and natural gas was hard to find. The Iraq War threatened the nation’s already tenuous relations with the Middle East. China was rapidly industrializing and competing for resources.

In the late 1630s, lured by the promise of the New World, Andrea Stuart's earliest known maternal ancestor, George Ashby, set sail from England to settle in Barbados. He fell into the life of a sugar plantation owner by mere chance, but by the time he harvested his first crop, a revolution was fully under way, binding together ambitious White entrepreneurs and enslaved Black workers in a strangling embrace....

Gerard Lee Bevan was the black sheep of one of London's most respectable banking families. A high-living womanizer and upper-class shyster of almost pantomime proportions, he exploited a glittering range of social connections. After a long run of success in City dealings he perpetrated a massive fraud which ruined both the City Equitable Fire Insurance Company and his stockbroking firm, Ellis & Co. He fled the country and was eventually arrested, tried, and jailed.

No One Would Listen: A True Financial Thriller is exactly what the title promises. This is more than another book about the Bernie Madoff scandal, this is a fast-paced, blow-by-blow, true-crime story that you have to hear to believe. In a true David and Goliath tale, the underdog number cruncher uncovers the largest financial fraud in history, and has to fight everything and everyone in the system to bring it down.

Investing can be a roller-coaster of highs and lows, and the investors detailed here reveal just how low it can go; stories from Warren Buffet, Bill Ackman, Chris Sacca, Jack Bogle, Mark Twain, John Maynard Keynes, and many more illustrate the simple but overlooked concept that investing is really hard, whether you're managing a few thousand dollars or a few billion. Failures and losses are part of the game. Much more than just anecdotal diversion, these stories set the basis for the book's critical focus: learning from mistakes.