Surprisingly, it’s not about education or pedigree or even native smarts. Most of us are like jack welch, who started life as a lowercase guy, the son of a railroad conductor, but went on to become the most celebrated and successful executive of recent years. Sure, Jack Welch—and lots of other people like him—are smart and talented, but there are countless people even smarter and more talented who stall out on the way up. Something else is going on. What is it, and what can the rest of us ...

National Book Critics Circle Award FinalistFrom the acclaimed, award-winning author of Alexander Hamilton: here is the essential, endlessly engrossing biography of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.—the Jekyll-and-Hyde of American capitalism. In the course of his nearly 98 years, Rockefeller was known as both a rapacious robber baron, whose Standard Oil Company rode roughshod over an industry, and a philanthropist who donated money lavishly to universities and medic...

A sweeping saga of the success—and excess—of an iconic American family.Demanding and enigmatic, patriarch Conrad Hilton's visionary ideas and unyielding will established the model for the modern luxury hotel industry. But outside the boardroom, Conrad struggled with emotional detachment, failed marriages, and conflicted Catholicism. Then there were his children: Playboy Nicky Hilton's tragic alcoholism and marriage to Elizabeth Taylor was the stuff of tabloid legen...

An instant New York Times bestseller, Dan Lyons' "hysterical" (Recode) memoir, hailed by the Los Angeles Times as "the best book about Silicon Valley," takes readers inside the maddening world of fad-chasing venture capitalists, sales bros, social climbers, and sociopaths at today's tech startups.For twenty-five years Dan Lyons was a magazine writer at the top of his profession--until one Friday morning when he received a phone call: Poof. His job...

“‘The Woz’ built the first [personal computer]—by hand, by himself.”—USA TodayBefore slim laptops that fit into briefcases, computers looked like strange vending machines, with cryptic switches and pages of encoded output. But in 1977 Steve Wozniak revolutionized the computer industry with his invention of the first personal computer. As the sole inventor of the Apple I and II computers, Wozniak has enjoyed wealth, fame, and the most coveted awards an engineer can receive,...

The National Book Award–winning history of American finance by the renowned biographer and author of Hamilton: "A tour de force" ( New York Times Book Review).The House of Morgan is a panoramic story of four generations in the powerful Morgan family and their secretive firms that would transform the modern financial world. Tracing the trajectory of J. P. Morgan's empire from its obscure beginnings in Victorian London to the financial crisi...

From the acclaimed Vanity Fair and GQ journalist–an unprecedented, in-depth portrait of the man whose return to Apple precipitated one of the biggest turnarounds in business history. With a new epilogue on Apple’s future survival in today’s roller-coaster economy, here is the revealing biography that blew away the critics and stirred controversy within industry and media circles around the country.

Biz Stone, the co-founder of Twitter, discusses the power of creativity and how to harness it, through stories from his remarkable life and career.Things a Little Bird Told MeFrom GQ's "Nerd of the Year" to one of Time's most influential people in the world, Biz Stone represents different things to different people. But he is known to all as the creative, effervescent, funny, charmingly positive and remarkably savvy co-founder of Twitter-t...

It’s like a plot from a Hollywood potboiler: start out in the mailroom, end up a mogul. But for many, it happens to be true. Some of the biggest names in entertainment—including David Geffen, Barry Diller, and Michael Ovitz— started their dazzling careers in the lowly mailroom. Based on more than two hundred interviews, David Rensin unfolds the never-before-told history of an American institution—in the voices of the people who lived it. Through nearly seven decades of glamour and humiliat...

"Eminently enjoyable, Fools Rush In is a gossipy, in-depth look at a deal doomed from the start . . . Grade: A." — Entertainment WeeklyEvery era has its merger; every era has its story. For the New Media Age it was an even bigger disaster: the AOL-Time Warner deal.At the time AOL and Time Warner were considered a matchless combination of old media content and new media distribution. But very soon after the deal was announced things...

Introduction to one hundred of the most influential gay lesbian and bi- entertainers in the US and around the world

So much to read, so little time? This brief overview of Elon Musk tells you what you need to know—before or after you read Ashlee Vance's book.Crafted and edited with care, Worth Books set the standard for quality and give you the tools you need to be a well-informed reader.This short summary and analysis of Elon Musk includes:Historical contextChapter-by-chapter overviewsProfiles of the main characters