Finance Biography

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.

No one could protect her once she was inside. No friend would hear her if she screamed. A brilliant undercover journalist and actress, Nellie Bly is admitted into Blackwell's Island asylum in New York as a homeless "crazy" lady. What will she be in 10 days?

Sudhir Venkatesh, acclaimed sociologist at Columbia University and author of Gang Leader for a Day, returns to the streets to connect the dots of New York's divergent economic worlds and crack the code of the city's underground economy. Based on Venkatesh's interviews with prostitutes and socialites, immigrants and academics, high end drug bosses and street-level dealers, Floating City exposes the underground as the city's true engine of social transformation and economic prosperity - revealing a wholly unprecedented vision of New York.

When Ashton Kutcher first heard about 50 Cent's nine-figure Vitaminwater windfall in 2007, the actor realized he'd been missing out. He soon followed the rapper's formula - seeking equity instead of cash for endorsement deals - but with a twist: as the first person to top one million Twitter followers, Kutcher leveraged his social reach to accumulate stakes in a vast range of user-hungry tech startups. A decade later, Kutcher is perhaps the brightest in a firmament of star investors from Beyoncé and Jay-Z to Jennifer Lopez and Alex Rodriguez.

During 2003, the US economy was described by one economist as "nervous, anxious, and waiting." In December, the Dow had topped 10,000 for the first time in a year and a half, and at year's end the markets were up for the first time since 1999. But in the same year, American troops had moved into Iraq, and corporate boards were cutting CEOs at the slightest signs of trouble. Amidst this turmoil Robert Greifeld, a former tech entrepreneur from outside the Wall Street bubble, became CEO of Nasdaq, a position he would hold for the next 13 years.

Donald Trump is unlike any president we've ever had. He is the only person ever elected to be commander in chief who has not first held public office or served as a general in the military. His principles grow out of five decades of business and celebrity success - not politics - so he behaves differently from traditional politicians.

Andrés Manuel López Obrador ofrece, como ningún otro presidente de México lo había hecho antes, un diálogo íntimo y elocuente sobre los puntuales resultados de su primer año de gobierno. Este audiolibro permite entender con claridad la propuesta del presidente Andrés Manuel López Obrador de una economía nacional basada en la prosperidad general de la población y la restructuración de los organismos, las instituciones y, sobre todo, las prácticas políticas y sociales para servir al bien común y propiciar un verdadero Estado de bienestar.

Here is the fascinating story of the making of the high-tech business revolution and the birth of the Digital Age. Journalist Jeffrey Young chronicles six decades of unbridled technological innovation, taking you inside today's business empires and introducing you to the dreamers, the schemers, the entrepreneurs, and the inventors who built them...

Richard H. Lawrence, Jr. founded Overlook Investments in Hong Kong in 1991. Since inception, Overlook has grown at 14.3% per year for three decades a remarkable record of growth that is testament to a consistent ability to find and invest in Asia's best companies. This raises two important questions: How did Overlook achieve its success; and how can Overlook best ensure future success? Now, in a level of detail never before disclosed, Richard and the Overlook executive team turn the lens inward to analyze The Overlook Model.

The early years of venture capital were a far cry from today’s very public dealings. Alan Patricof, one of the pioneers of the venture arena, offers a behind-the-scenes look at the past 50 years of the industry. From buying stock in Apple when its market valuation was only $60 million to founding New York Magazine to investing in AOL, Audible, and more recently, Axios, his discerning approach to finding companies is almost peerless.

Andrew Carnegie immigrated to the United States with his parents as a young child. He began his climb to the top as a modest errand boy and eventually moved into the steel industry. By the time he was an adult, Carnegie was one of the richest men in the country. Known as a generous man, he spent a great deal of his fortune investing in organizations that aimed to advance social progress and improve conditions for people of all classes. Andrew Carnegie was also intensely interested in world peace and the security of democracy.

Lloyd Constantine began his career in legal services, representing impoverished clients in civil rights and constitutional cases. Decades later, he would make headlines for representing retailers and consumers against a cartel that undermined one of the fundamental tenets of commerce in America: competition. A man who thrives on competition himself, Constantine now gives us the insider's story on the biggest antitrust lawsuit in history - a case that pitted his small firm against financial-industry giants Visa and MasterCard, along with Clifford-Chance, the largest law firm in the world.

"This book is in part a detective story. After 9/11 I knew, if I needed further reinforcement, that we are living in a new world - the world of a global capitalist economy that is vastly more flexible, resilient, open, self-correcting, and fast-changing than it was even a quarter century earlier. It's a world that presents us with enormous new possibilities but also enormous new challenges. The Age of Turbulence is my attempt to understand the nature of this new world." (Alan Greenspan)

John Jacob Astor was the best-known and most important American businessman for more than a half-century. His career encompassed the country's formative economic years from the precarious days following the American Revolution to the emergence of an urban-centered manufacturing economy in the late 1840s.

Revlon's C.E.O., financier Ronald O. Perelman is one of the richest men in America. Watched by the financial community with interest, Perelman has built a personal business empire worth an estimated $6 billion over the past 15 years. Linked to society's most dazzling beauties, Perelman owns palatial estates in Palm Beach, East Hampton, Manhattan, Sun Valley and Bel Air, as well as an impressive art collection, a fleet of automobiles and two G-4 jets.

Britain's rise to global dominance from the 16th century owed as much to the vision and creativity of traders, industrialists and bankers as it did to wars of conquest fought by military men. Dragons tells the story of British business endeavours through the lives of ten titans of commerce. Beginning with the Tudor merchants who transformed England's economy via trade with the New World, Liam Byrne traces a fascinating and eye-opening entrepreneurial line.

Over the course of nearly half a century, five American presidents - three Democrats and two Republicans - have relied on the financial acumen, and the integrity, of Paul A. Volcker. During his tenure as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, when he battled the Great Inflation of the 1970s, Volcker did nothing less than restore the reputation of an American financial system on the verge of collapse.

Agent Orange, the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund, the Virginia Tech massacre, the 2008 financial crisis, and the Deep Horizon gulf oil spill: Each was a disaster in its own right. What they had in common was their aftermath - each required compensation for lives lost, bodies maimed, livelihoods wrecked, economies and ecosystems upended. In each instance, an objective third party had to step up and dole out allocated funds: In each instance, Presidents, Attorneys General, and other public officials have asked Kenneth R. Feinberg to get the job done.

In the 30 years after the Civil War, the United States blew by Great Britain to become the greatest economic power in world history. That is a well-known period in history, when titans like Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and J. P. Morgan walked the earth. But as Charles R. Morris shows us, the platform for that spectacular growth spurt was built in the first half of the century. By the 1820s, America was already the world's most productive manufacturer and the most intensely commercialized society in history.

Simpler government arrived four years ago. It helped put money in your pocket. It saved hours of your time. It improved your children's diet, lengthened your life span, and benefited businesses large and small. It did so by issuing fewer regulations, by insisting on smarter regulations, and by eliminating or improving old regulations. Cass R. Sunstein, as administrator of the most powerful White House office you never heard of, oversaw it and explains how it works, why government will never be the same again (thank goodness), and what must happen in the future. Cutting-edge research in behavioral economics has influenced business and politics.