Showing titles in Professionals & Academics

From John Mack, former CEO of Morgan Stanley, an intimate personal memoir and riveting business story, recounting how he helped grow the company from 300 to 50,000 employees over four decades, transformed a notoriously competitive culture into a successful and collaborative one, and lead the company through the 2008 financial crisis. With humor and honesty, Mack shares advice on both business and life: how to create a culture of team players, how to keep perspective during crises, how to make difficult decisions when all eyes are on you, and more.

From its creation as a mail-order record company to the literal launch of Virgin Galactic, today Virgin is one of the premier 'way-of-life' brands in the world, trusted and enjoyed by many millions of people. In Business Stripped Bare, Sir Richard Branson shares the inside track on his life in business and reveals the incredible truth about his most risky, brilliant, and audacious deals.

One ordinary day, out of the blue, the heart-shaped tin in which Bee Wilson baked her wedding cake falls to the ground. This should have been unremarkable, except that two months earlier her husband left her for another woman. In a search of others who had also invested kitchen objects with strong meanings and emotions, Wilson found that this way of thinking might be the rule rather than the exception. Even those who believe they’re not at all sentimental might have a weak spot – a grandmother’s wooden spoon or a salt shaker inherited from a parent.

How a Michigan farm boy became the richest man in America is a classic, almost mythic tale, but never before has Henry Ford's outsized genius been brought to life so vividly as it is in this engaging and superbly researched biography. The real Henry Ford was a tangle of contradictions. He set off the consumer revolution by producing a car affordable to the masses, all the while lamenting the moral toll exacted by consumerism.

A gripping, groundbreaking biography of the combative man whose genius and force of will created modern capitalism. Founder of a dynasty, builder of the original Grand Central, creator of an impossibly vast fortune, Cornelius “Commodore” Vanderbilt is an American icon. Humbly born on Staten Island during George Washington’s presidency, he rose from boatman to builder of the nation’s largest fleet of steamships to lord of a railroad empire.

There's a Customer Born Every Minute reveals the lost wisdom of famous entrepreneur and showman, P. T. Barnum. Barnum was much more than a showman; he was a dedicated businessman and entrepreneur with a razor-sharp mind. In this delightful and absorbing new edition, Joe Vitale reveals the secrets of Barnum's success and shares the 10 key business practices that Barnum developed and lived by.

Some $65 billion evaporated during Bernie Madoff’s epic confidence game. Two people were driven to suicide in the wake of the Ponzi Scheme’s exposure. Others went to prison. But there has never been a satisfying accounting for how Bernie got away with so much, for so long. Until now. Shocking, infuriating, riveting (and at times absurdly funny), Madoff shows us how Bernie ensnared thousands of investors. As Behar’s dogged reporting over the last fifteen years makes clear, however, there aren’t many innocents left standing by the end of this tale.

To her thousands of fans, Wisdom & Wellness founder, Speaker and Influencer Mpoomy Ledwaba is a symbol of strength and women empowerment. But going from university dropout to Forbes magazine’s list of 30 Under 30 wasn’t always easy–it took a lot of guts and a commitment to personal growth. How did we get here? is her coming-of-age story. Looking back on her upbringing, major milestones and the challenges she’s faced, Mpoomy takes us on her journey of self-discovery. Behind the Instagram likes and thousands of YouTube subscribers is a bright girl who sometimes bit off more than she could chew.

The late Dr. Michihiko Hachiya was director of the Hiroshima Communications Hospital when the world's first atomic bomb was dropped on the city. Though his responsibilities in the appalling chaos of a devastated city were awesome, he found time to record the story daily, with compassion and tenderness. Dr. Hachiya's compelling diary was originally published by the UNC Press in 1955, with the help of Dr. Warner Wells of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

'Ring of Bright Water' represents Gavin Maxwell's account of his life at Camusfearna, a remote cottage in the western Highlands, and in particular the two otters, Mijbil and Edal, who became his constant and much-loved companions.

The twists and turns of the last 15 years of the Qantas story contain all the ingredients of a corporate thriller, with constant shocks to the system, and boardroom dramas and disasters narrowly avoided. During this tumultuous period, as CEO of Australia's iconic airline, Alan Joyce became one of the best-known corporate figures in Australia, and one of the most polarising. Global aviation expert Peter Harbison tells the full and unvarnished story of this fascinating period of the Qantas journey.

The founder of modern science and the embodiment of the conflict between science and faith, Galileo remains the most fascinating figure of his age. In this biography, James Reston Jr. provides a lively, vivid portrait of Galileo, taking the listener to the heart of this passionate, embattled, arrogant, and brilliant man.

Nearly a hundred years after its publication, Kurt Gödel's famous proof that every mathematical system must contain propositions that are true - yet never provable - continues to unsettle mathematics, philosophy, and computer science. Yet unlike Einstein, with whom he formed a warm and abiding friendship, Gödel has long escaped all but the most casual scrutiny of his life.

Buzz Aldrin, one of the three men who took part in the first moon landing in 1969, is a true American hero. Magnificent Desolation begins with the story of his voyage into space, which came within seconds of failure, and reveals a fascinating insider's view of the American space programme. But that thrilling adventure was only the beginning, as Aldrin battled with his own desolation in the form of depression and alcoholism. This epic journey encompasses the brutally honest tale of Aldrin's self-destruction, and the redemption that came through finding love when hope seemed lost.

Nine months of tying tourniquets and pushing new medications, of IVs, chest compressions, and defibrillator shocks - that was Kevin Grange's initiation into emergency medicine when, at age 36, he enrolled in the "Harvard of paramedic schools": UCLA's Daniel Freeman paramedic program, long considered one of the best and most intense paramedic training programs in the world.

Out of Paypal's ranks have come three billionaires and dozens of multi-millionaires, including household names like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and Reid Hoffman. Paypal's alumni have built, funded and advised almost all of the billion-dollar-plus companies to emerge from Silicon Valley in the past two decades. Today, every online video you watch and every internet purchase you make bears PayPal's fingerprints -- its inventions made the modern internet possible and are embedded in our social networks, our banks and our intelligence agencies.

In 2017, David got what he thought was a mild touch of the flu. This book is the story of why David would make a lousy doctor. Contrary to the book’s title, David had lymphoma and it was terminal. But A Mild Touch of the Cancer isn’t your standard "how I survived" compendium. It is a hilarious tale, written while battling one of life’s greatest challenges. It’s a book about living with optimism and positivity, by a self-proclaimed Genetically Modified Organism.

Arms trafficking, offshore accounts and luxury property deals. Super-yachts, private jets and super-car collections. blood diamonds, suspect oil deals, deforestation and murder. This is the world of Global Witness, the award-winning organisation dedicated to rooting out worldwide corruption. And this is co-founder Patrick Alley's revealing inside track on a breath-taking catalogue of modern super-crimes—and the 'shadow network' that enables them. Very Bad People is about going undercover in the world's most dangerous places and bringing down the people behind the crimes.

Dame Sue Black is an internationally renowned forensic anthropologist and human anatomist. She has lived her life eye to eye with the Grim Reaper, and she writes vividly about it in this book, which is part primer on the basics of identifying human remains, part frank memoir of a woman whose first paying job as a schoolgirl was to apprentice in a butcher shop, and part no-nonsense but deeply humane introduction to the reality of death in our lives. It is a treat for CSI junkies, murder mystery and thriller fans, and anyone seeking a clear-eyed guide to a subject that touches us all.

Radioactive is the mesmerizing, landmark biography of Marie Curie, by acclaimed author and artist Lauren Redniss. Through brilliant storytelling, Redniss walks us through Curie’s life, which was marked by extraordinary scientific discovery and dramatic personal trauma - from her complex working and romantic relationship with Pierre Curie, to their discovery of two new scientific elements, to Pierre’s tragic death, to Marie’s two Nobel Prizes.