Professional English

Everyone knows Steve Madden's name and his shoes, but few are familiar with his story. Over the past 30 years, Steve Madden has taken his eponymous shoe company from the fledgling start-up he founded with a mere $1,100 to a global, multibillion-dollar brand. But Madden's mistakes, from his battle with addiction to the financial shortcuts that landed him in prison, are as important to his story as his most iconic shoes. In this raw, intimate, and ultimately inspiring book, Madden holds nothing back as he shares what it took to get here and the lessons he's learned along the way.

Dr. Johnson may have been correct in saying that “Rousseau was a very bad man,” but none can argue that his ideas are among the most influential in all of world history. It was Rousseau, the father of the romantic movement, who was responsible for introducing at least two modern day thoughts that pervade academia. The Confessions is Rousseau’s landmark autobiography. Both brilliant and flawed, it is nonetheless beautifully written and remains one of the most moving human documents in all of literature.

Operation Greylord was the longest and most successful undercover investigation in FBI history, and the largest corruption bust ever in the US. It resulted in bribery and tax charges against 103 judges, lawyers, and other court personnel, and, eventually, more than 70 indictments. And it was led by Terrence Hake, a young assistant prosecutor in the Cook County State's Attorney's Office in Chicago, who worked undercover for nearly four years.

In Prince of Darkness, a groundbreaking and vivid account, eminent historian Shane White reveals the larger-than-life story of a man who defied every convention of his time. He wheeled and dealed in the lily-white business world, he married a White woman, he bought a mansion in rural New Jersey, he owned railroad stock on trains he was not legally allowed to ride, and generally he set his White contemporaries' teeth on edge when he wasn't just plain outsmarting them.

What does it mean to explore and confront the unknown? Beyond the Trees recounts Adam Shoalts's epic, never-before-attempted solo crossing of Canada's mainland Arctic in a single season. It's also a multilayered story that weaves the narrative of Shoalts's journey into accounts of other adventurers, explorers, First Nations, fur traders, dreamers, eccentrics, and bush pilots to create an unforgettable tale of adventure and exploration.

Anthony Bourdain saw more of the world than nearly anyone. His travels took him from the hidden pockets of his hometown of New York to a tribal longhouse in Borneo, from cosmopolitan Buenos Aires, Paris, and Shanghai to Tanzania’s utter beauty and the stunning desert solitude of Oman’s Empty Quarter - and many places beyond. In World Travel, a life of experience is collected into an entertaining, practical, fun and frank travel guide that gives listeners an introduction to some of his favorite places - in his own words.

The 38 letters written by Rockefeller to his son imparting his perspectives, ideology, and wisdom to his son.

Benjamin Franklin's autobiography is one of the greatest autobiographies of all time, but it was incomplete. Franklin ended his life's story in 1757, when he was 51. He lived another 33 eventful years, serving as America's advocate in London, Pennsylvania's representative in the Continental Congress, and America's wartime ambassador to France. Now, at last, we get the rest of the story, in Franklin's own words.

Vividly written, The Infidel and the Professor is a compelling account of a great friendship of two towering Enlightenment thinkers that had great consequences for modern thought. David Hume is widely regarded as the most important philosopher ever to write in English, but during his lifetime, he was attacked as "the Great Infidel" for his skeptical religious views and deemed unfit to teach the young. In contrast, Adam Smith was a revered professor of moral philosophy and is now often hailed as the founding father of capitalism.

During the upheavals of 2007-9, the chairman of the Federal Reserve had the name of a Victorian icon on the tip of his tongue: Walter Bagehot. Banker, man of letters, inventor of the Treasury bill, and author of Lombard Street, the still-canonical guide to stopping a run on the banks, Bagehot prescribed the doctrines that - decades later - inspired the radical responses to the world's worst financial crises.

Shakespeare professor and prison volunteer Laura Bates thought she had seen it all. That is, until she decided to teach Shakespeare in a place the bard had never been before - supermax solitary confinement. In this unwelcoming place, surrounded by inmates known as the worst of the worst, is Larry Newton.

Archetypal wild man Edward Abbey and proper, dedicated Wallace Stegner left their footprints all over the western landscape. Now, the award-winning nature writer David Gessner follows the ghosts of these two remarkable writer-environmentalists - from Stegner's birthplace in Saskatchewan to the site of Abbey's pilgrimages to Arches - braiding their stories and asking how they speak to the lives of all those who care about the West. What is the future of a region beset by droughts and fires, by fracking and drilling?

In Beer School, authors and entrepreneurs Steve Hindy and Tom Potter share the improbable saga of Brooklyn Brewery, the company they grew from a home-brew hobby into a multimillion-dollar business - all in the most competitive beer market in the United States. If you have a thirst for entrepreneurial success, drink up. If you are a business manager or owner and want fresh ideas and insight, tap in. You'll learn entrepreneurial basics, plus some things textbooks don't teach you, as you follow the company's successes (and a few failures).

Whether you are building a small business from the ground up or managing a multinational company, you can learn the seven key traits for leadership success from one of the greatest business innovators and creative thinkers of the 20th century: Walt Disney. Whether you know him as the first to produce cartoons in Technicolor, the mastermind behind the theme park Disneyland, or the founder of the largest entertainment conglomerate, Walt's story of creativity, perseverance in spite of obstacles, and achieving goals resonates and inspires as much today as it ever has.

In Believe It, Jamie Kern Lima, founder of IT Cosmetics, shares the wild but true story of how a once-struggling waitress turned her against-the-grain idea into an international best-selling sensation, eventually selling the company for more than a billion dollars and becoming the first female CEO of a brand in L’Oréal’s 100-plus-year history.

The profession of life coaching is more necessary than ever in this time of pandemic-related uncertainty, the shift (in some cases, permanent) to remote learning and working, and the constant change that accompanies world events. With his bestselling Therapist as Life Coach, Patrick Williams introduced the therapeutic community to the career of life coach, and in the first and second editions of Becoming a Professional Life Coach, he and Diane S. Menendez covered basic principles and strategies for effective coaching.

An entrepreneur is someone who has a great, innovative idea that identifies the need for the creation of a new business, taking on the financial risk in the hope of profit and driving that business forward in a measured way. This book draws on the stories, experiences and words of iconic business figures from around the globe and across the years - from Andrew Carnegie and Oprah Winfrey to Steve Jobs and Sunil Mittal.

Growing up in Ferguson, Missouri, Stanley Andrisse began making poor decisions at a very young age. He started selling dope and was arrested for the first time at 14 years old. By his early 20s, hewas in front of a judge facing 20 years to life on drug-trafficking charges. In prison, while challenged with a strong desire for self-renewal, he faced an environment that was not conducive for transformative change. From poor institutional structure and policies to individual institutionalized thinking and behaviors, he battled on a daily basis to retain and maintain his humanity.

According to Jeffrey Rosen, Louis D. Brandeis was "the Jewish Jefferson", the greatest critic of what he called "the curse of bigness" in business and government since the author of the Declaration of Independence. Published to commemorate the 100th anniversary of his Supreme Court confirmation on June 1, 1916, Louis D. Brandeis: American Prophet argues that Brandeis was the most farseeing constitutional philosopher of the 20th century.

Thousands of people have had near-death experiences, but scientists have argued that they are impossible. Dr. Eben Alexander was one of those scientists. Neurosurgeon Alexander knew that NDEs feel real, but are simply fantasies produced by brains under extreme stress. Then, Dr. Alexander’s own brain was attacked by a rare illness. The part of the brain that controls thought and emotion shut down completely. For seven days he lay in a coma. Then Alexander’s eyes popped open. He had come back. Alexander’s recovery is a medical miracle. But the real miracle of his story lies elsewhere.