Best Business Books: A

Thousands of business books are published every year-- Here are the best of the best After years of reading, evaluating, and selling business books, Jack Covert and Todd Sattersten are among the most respected experts on the category. Now they have chosen and reviewed the one hundred best business titles of all time--the ones that deliver the biggest payoff for today's busy readers. The 100 Best Business Books of All Time puts each book in context so that readers can quickly find solutions to the problems they face, such as how best to spend The First 90 Days in a new job or how to take their company from Good to Great. Many of the choices are surprising--you'll find reviews of Moneyball and Orbiting the Giant Hairball, but not Jack Welch's memoir. At the end of each review, Jack and Todd direct readers to other books both inside and outside The 100 Best. And sprinkled throughout are sidebars taking the reader beyond business books, suggesting movies, novels, and even children's books that offer equally relevant insights. This guide will appeal to anyone, from entry-level to CEO, who wants to cut through the clutter and discover the brilliant books that are truly worth their investment of time and money.

In the wake of the financial crisis of 2008, the largest banks at its center have emerged bigger, more profitable, and more resistant to regulation, even as they continue to wield power in Washington. Without an effective government crackdown on their deleterious, conventional practices, these banks threaten to create yet another crippling economic downturn. The choice that our political and economic system faces is stark: accede to the vested interests of an unfettered financial sector that runs up profits in good years and dumps its losses on taxpayers in lean years, or reform, through stringent regulation, the banking system as an engine of economic growth. In 13 Bankers, Simon Johnson—one of the most prominent economists in America and James Kwak examine not only how Wall Street’s ideology, wealth, and political power among policy makers in Washington led to the financial debacle of 2008, but also what the lessons learned portend for the future. To restore health and balance to our economy, they argue, we must confront the political force of big finance and reverse the inside-the-Beltway consensus that what is good for Wall Street is good for Main Street.

Never trust an investment "guru" who uses phrases like the market will . . . , you must . . . , and I guarantee . . . . Because a true expert knows that there are no absolutes in markets. Tadas Viskanta is a true expert. An experienced investor and creator of the popular blog Abnormal Returns, he understands the value of humility when it comes to investing in today''s turbulent global markets. But he also knows that just because you can''t control the markets doesn''t mean you can''t control your own actions--and in Abnormal Returns, he provides a solid foundation in the basic principles for taking a slow, steady, and savvy approach to your financial future. Viskanta helps you navigate your way through the post-crisis markets by developing a solid investing strategy. His simple truths are timely but have been proven effective through recent history. Sophisticated but simple to understand, Abnormal Returns helps you: Master the fundamentals of risk and return Become an expert on the main asset classes--equities and fi xed income Diversify and allocate your assets to build a solid portfolio Understand how ETFs, alternative assets, and globalization affect how we invest Combat your personal behavioral patterns that lead to poor investing Separate the wheat from the chaff when it comes to the financial media While the world of investing has become more complex, there has never been a better time to be an individual investor. It is now easier--and cheaper--to invest than ever before. This back-to-basics approach provides the tools you need for ultimate success. Abnormal Returns doesn''t give you the latest investing trends, "fail-safe" market predictions, or hot new tips for hitting the jackpot right now. What you do get is a fresh perspective on how markets work--and expert insight into how to make them work for you.

In the groundbreaking new book Accelerate (XLR8), leadership and change management expert, and best-selling author, John Kotter provides a fascinating answer-and a powerful new framework for competing and winning in a world of constant turbulence and disruption.Kotter explains how traditional organizational hierarchies evolved to meet the daily demands of running an enterprise. For most companies, the hierarchy is the singular operating system at the heart of the firm. But the reality is, this system simply is not built for an environment where change has become the norm. Kotter advocates a new system-a second, more agile, network-like structure that operates in concert with the hierarchy to create what he calls a "dual operating system"-one that allows companies to capitalize on rapid-fire strategic challenges and still make their numbers. Accelerate (XLR8) vividly illustrates the five core principles underlying the new network system, the eight Accelerators that drive it, and how leaders must create urgency in others through role modeling. The book reveals how the best companies focus and align their people's energy and urgency around what Kotter calls the big opportunity.If you're a pioneer, a leader who knows that bold change is necessary to survive and thrive in an ever-changing world, this book will help you accelerate into a better, more profitable future.

From the moment they met, Eduardo and Mark Zuckerberg had an intense bond. Both outsiders at Harvard, the two boys shared a geeky awkwardness - especially when it came to matters of the opposite sex. But at Harvard, social acceptance was something you had to apply for. Without family money or innate charisma, Eduardo and Mark turned to their natural talents and hacked into the administration's computer system, pulled up a picture of every female student and designed a complex alogarithm named FaceSmash that allowed users to rank their 'hotness'. Within two hours 80% of Harvard's population had voted and the university's computer system crashed. Eduardo and Mark refocused their programming into something less controversal - Facebook. It spread like a wildfire across campuses... and around the world. Suddenly, Eduardo and Mark had gained notoriety and were finally getting nods not just from their fellow students but also from Venture capitalists who threw larger and larger sums at them to buy Facebook. With that the first cracks in their friendship started to appear. Before long, what began as a simple argument erupted into an out and out war with back-stabbing and actual violence.

If you read the "business pages" of a newspaper or if you listen to the financial news on the television or radio, you will often hear terms such as "liability", "balance sheet" or "earnings". These terms turn up in non-financial contexts as well: "he was more of a liability than an asset".If you invest in shares, have a building society account, or sit on a committee of the property company which owns your apartment block, you will receive financial statements every year. If you are a manager in a company, a hospital or a school, you will see accounting information often. This Very Short Introduction provides a guide to understanding and using accounting information. Christopher Nobes explains the main areas of accounting work, from bookkeeping and financial reporting to auditing and management accounting. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, andenthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Much has been written about the ups and downs of financial markets. Yet a more fundamental and pernicious source of uncertainty exists in today's world: the traditional "insurance" risks of earthquakes, storms, terrorist attacks, and other disasters. Michael R. Powers guides readers through the methods available for identifying and measuring such risks, financing their consequences, and forecasting their future behavior within the limits of science. A distinctive characteristic of earthquakes, hurricanes, bombings, and other insurance risks is that they impact the values of stocks, bonds, commodities, and other market-based financial products, while remaining largely unaffected by or "aloof" from the behavior of markets. Quantifying such risks given limited data is difficult yet crucial for achieving the financing objectives of insurance. Powers begins with a discussion of how risk impacts our lives, health, and possessions and proceeds to introduce the statistical techniques necessary for analyzing these uncertainties. He then considers the experience of risk from the perspectives of both policyholders and insurance companies, and compares their respective responses. Powers concludes with an interdisciplinary investigation into the nature of uncertainty, incorporating ideas from physics, philosophy, and game theory to assess science's limitations in predicting the ramifications of risk.

Adam Smith (1723–90) is celebrated all over the world as the author of The Wealth of Nations and the founder of modern economics. A few of his ideas—that of the “invisible hand” of the market and that “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest” have become iconic. Yet Smith saw himself primarily as a philosopher rather than an economist and would never have predicted that the ideas for which he is now best known were his most important. This book shows the extent to which The Wealth of Nations and Smith’s other great work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, were part of a larger scheme to establish a grand “Science of Man" which was to encompass law, history, and aesthetics as well as economics and ethics, and which was only half complete on Smith’s death in 1790. Nick Phillipson reconstructs Smith’s intellectual ancestry and shows what Smith took from, and what he gave to, in the rapidly changing intellectual and commercial cultures of Glasgow and Edinburgh as they entered the great years of the Scottish Enlightenment. Above all he explains how far Smith’s ideas developed in dialogue with those of his closest friend, the other titan of the age, David Hume.

Outlines a counterintuitive approach to changing the world by assessing its failures, drawing on myriad disciplines to argue that complex challenges must be met through adaptive trial-and-error practices that do not depend on expert opinions or ready-made solutions

Adland is a ground-breaking examination of modern advertising, from its origins in the 19th century, to the evolution of the current advertising landscape. Bestselling author and journalist Mark Tungate examines key developments in advertising, from copy adverts, radio and television, to the opportunities afforded by the explosion of digital media - podcasting, text messaging and interactive campaigns. Adland focuses on key players in the industry and features exclusive interviews with leading names in advertising, including Jean-Marie Dru, Sir Alan Parker, John Hegarty and Sir Martin Sorrell. Exploring the roots of the advertising industry in New York and London, and going on to cover the emerging markets of Eastern Europe, Asia and Latin America, Adland offers a comprehensive examination of a global industry and suggests ways in which it is likely to develop in the future.

Now in its fourth edition, the popular Ads, Fads, and consumer Culture is an engaging cultural studies critique of contemporary advertising and its impacts on American society. Arthur Asa Berger looks at marketing strategies, sex and advertising, consumer culture, political advertising, and communication theory and process to give an accessible overview of advertising in America. This new edition features up-to-date examples and new theoretical material, including expanded discussions of a number of topics, such as Weber's study of religion and its role in consumption, the role of the unconscious and emotion in shaping consumer behavior, the way brands shape the behavior of "mall girls," sexuality and advertising, and Maslow's theory of needs. The book also comes complete with updated ads and Berger's signature drawings. Whether they are new to Berger's lively style of teaching and writing or loyal adopters, advertising and media professors will want to check out the latest edition of this text.

This concise volume from the Boston Review series creates a conversation between leading scholars on Africa and development specialists. The opening salvo comes from economist Miguel who tentatively posits, "It is now possible to wonder whether the terrible decades of war, famine, and despair are finally over." Nine scholars debate this claim, highlighting technological, political and environmental aspects of African development. Olu Ajakaiye, of the African Economic Research Consortium, questions China's ability to improve African trade markets; Paul Collier (The Bottom Billion) questions Miguel's assertion that democratization is responsible for recent economic gains on the continent. While the book focuses on Africa's recent political and economic gains, the authors do not gloss over the violence, corruption and global economic factors that could still derail Africa's economic renewal, but they avoid "politically correct positive and stereotypically negative" prognostications, making this a refreshing take on the fortunes of Africa in the current century and a fascinating compendium of some of the leading theorists of African development.

One of the wisest economic thinkers offers a masterful narrative of the crisis and its lessons. Blinder shows how the U.S. financial system, which had grown far too complex for its own good--and too unregulated for the public good--experienced a perfect storm beginning in 2007. Things started unraveling when the much-chronicled housing bubble burst, but the ensuing implosion of what Blinder calls the “bond bubble” was larger and more devastating. Some people think of the financial industry as a sideshow with little relevance to the real economy—where the jobs, factories, and shops are. But finance is more like the circulatory system of the economic body: if the blood stops flowing, the body goes into cardiac arrest. When America’s financial structure crumbled, the damage proved to be not only deep, but wide. It took the crisis for the world to discover just how truly interconnected the global financial system is. Some observers argue that large global forces were the major culprits of the crisis. Blinder disagrees, arguing that the problem started in the U.S. and was pushed abroad, as complex, opaque, and overrated investment products were exported to a hungry world, which was nearly poisoned by them.

Long-listed for the 2014 National Book Award in nonfiction. A vibrant, colorful, and revelatory inner history of China during a moment of profound transformation From abroad, we often see China as a caricature: a nation of pragmatic plutocrats and ruthlessly dedicated students destined to rule the global economy—or an addled Goliath, riddled with corruption and on the edge of stagnation. What we don’t see is how both powerful and ordinary people are remaking their lives as their country dramatically changes.      As the Beijing correspondent for The New Yorker, Evan Osnos was on the ground in China for years, witness to profound political, economic, and cultural upheaval. In Age of Ambition, he describes the greatest collision taking place in that country: the clash between the rise of the individual and the Communist Party’s struggle to retain control. He asks probing questions: Why does a government with more success lifting people from poverty than any civilization in history choose to put strict restraints on freedom of expression? Why do millions of young Chinese professionals—fluent in English and devoted to Western pop culture—consider themselves “angry youth,” dedicated to resisting the West’s influence? How are Chinese from all strata finding meaning after two decades of the relentless pursuit of wealth?      Writing with great narrative verve and a keen sense of irony, Osnos follows the moving stories of everyday people and reveals life in the new China to be a battleground between aspiration and authoritarianism, in which only one can prevail.

A prescient political observer provides a sobering account of how pitched battles over scarce resources will increasingly define American politics in the coming years--and how to avoid, or at least mitigate, the damage from these ideological and economic battles.

Top economist Gary Shilling shows you how to prosper in the slow-growing and deflationary times that lie ahead. While many investors fear a rapid rise in inflation, author Gary Shilling argues that the global economy is going through a long period of de-leveraging and weak growth, which makes deflation far more likely and a far greater threat to investors than inflation. Shilling explains why the U.S. and world economy will struggle for several more years and what investors can do to protect and grow their wealth in the difficult times ahead. The investment strategies that worked for last 25 years will not work in the next 10 years. Shilling advises readers to avoid broad exposure to stocks, real estate, and commodities and to focus on high-quality bonds, high-dividend stocks, and consumer staple and food stocks. He explains what to invest in, what to avoid, and how to cope with a deflationary, slow-growth economy. This timely guide lays out a convincing case for why investors need to be prepared for a long period of weak growth and deflation-not inflation-and what you can do to prosper in the difficult times ahead

The present is a contest between the bright and dark sides of discovery. To avoid being torn apart by its stresses, we need to recognize the fact—and gain courage and wisdom from the past.Age of Discovery shows how. Now is the best moment in history to be alive, but we have never felt more anxious or divided. Human health, aggregate wealth and education are flourishing. Scientific discovery is racing forward. But the same global flows of trade, capital, people and ideas that make gains possible for some people deliver big losses to others—and make us all more vulnerable to one another. Business and science are working giant revolutions upon our societies, but our politics and institutions evolve at a much slower pace. That’s why, in a moment when everyone ought to be celebrating giant global gains, many of us are righteously angry at being left out and stressed about where we’re headed. To make sense of present shocks, we need to step back and recognize: we’ve been here before. The first Renaissance, the time of Columbus, Copernicus, Gutenberg and others, likewise redrew all maps of the world, democratized communication and sparked a flourishing of creative achievement. But their world also grappled with the same dark side of rapid change: social division, political extremism, insecurity, pandemics and other unintended consequences of discovery. Now is the second Renaissance. We can still flourish—if we learn from the first.

In this second edition of his bestselling book, author Art Kleiner explores the nature of effective leadership in times of change and defines its importance to the corporation of the future. He describes a heretic as a visionary who creates change in large-scale companies, balancing the contrary truths they can’t deny against their loyalty to their organizations. The Age of Heretics reveals how managers can get stuck in counterproductive ways of doing things and shows why it takes a heretical point of view to get past the deadlock and move forward.

In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, in his fourteenth year as Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, Alan Greenspan took part in a collective effort to ensure that America didn't experience an economic meltdown, taking the rest of the world with it. The stock market crash of October 1987 had come much closer than is even today generally known to freezing the financial system and triggering a genuine financial panic. But the most remarkable thing that happened to the economy after 9/11 was...nothing. After 9/11 Alan Greenspan knew that the world of a global capitalist economy is vastly more flexible than it was even 20 years ago. The Age of Turbulence is Alan Greenspan's incomparable reckoning with the nature of this new world channeled through his own experiences working in the command room of the global economy for longer and with greater effect than any other single living figure. Alan Greenspan reveals the universals of economic growth, delves into the specific facts on the ground in each of the major countries and regions of the world, and explains what the trend-lines of globalization are from here. The distillation of a life's worth of wisdom and insight into an elegant expression of a coherent worldview, The Age of Turbulence will stand as Alan Greenspan's personal and intellectual legacy.

In this candid and entertaining insider's look at the most influential school in global business, Philip Delves Broughton draws on his crack reporting skills to describe his madcap years at Harvard Business School. Ahead of the Curve recounts the most edifying and surprising lessons learned in the quest for an MBA, from the ingenious chicanery of leveraging and the unlikely pleasures of accounting, to the antics of the "booze luge" and other, less savory trappings of student culture. Published during the one hundredth anniversary of Harvard Business School, this is the unflinching truth about life in the trenches of an iconic American institution.

Neil Irwin’s The Alchemists is a gripping account of the most intense exercise in economic crisis management we’ve ever seen, a poker game in which the stakes have run into the trillions of dollars. The book begins in Stockholm, Sweden, in the seventeenth century, where central banking had its rocky birth, and then progresses through a brisk tutorial on how the central banker came to exert such vast influence over our world, from its troubled beginnings to the Age of Greenspan, bringing the reader into the present with a marvelous handle on how these figures and institutions became what they are – the possessors of extraordinary power over our collective fate. What they chose to do with those powers is the heart of the story Irwin tells.Irwin covered the Fed and other central banks from the earliest days of the crisis for the Washington Post, enjoying privileged access to leading central bankers and people close to them. His account is the holistic, truly global story of the central bankers’ role in the world economy we have been missing. It is a landmark reckoning with central bankers and their power, with the great financial crisis of our time, and with the history of the relationship between capitalism and the state. Definitive, revelatory, and riveting, The Alchemists shows us where money comes from—and where it may well be going.

A fascinating exploration of how insights from computer algorithms can be applied to our everyday lives, helping to solve common decision-making problems and illuminate the workings of the human mind All our lives are constrained by limited space and time, limits that give rise to a particular set of problems. What should we do, or leave undone, in a day or a lifetime? How much messiness should we accept? What balance of new activities and familiar favorites is the most fulfilling? These may seem like uniquely human quandaries, but they are not: computers, too, face the same constraints, so computer scientists have been grappling with their version of such issues for decades. And the solutions they've found have much to teach us. In a dazzlingly interdisciplinary work, acclaimed author Brian Christian and cognitive scientist Tom Griffiths show how the algorithms used by computers can also untangle very human questions. They explain how to have better hunches and when to leave things to chance, how to deal with overwhelming choices and how best to connect with others. From finding a spouse to finding a parking spot, from organizing one's inbox to understanding the workings of memory, Algorithms to Live By transforms the wisdom of computer science into strategies for human living.

An engrossing, insider’s account of how a teacher built one of the world’s most valuable companies—rivaling Walmart & Amazon—and forever reshaped the global economy. In just a decade and half Jack Ma, a man from modest beginnings who started out as an English teacher, founded and built Alibaba into one of the world’s largest companies, an e-commerce empire on which hundreds of millions of Chinese consumers depend. Alibaba’s $25 billion IPO in 2014 was the largest global IPO ever. A Rockefeller of his age who is courted by CEOs and Presidents around the world, Jack is an icon for China’s booming private sector and the gatekeeper to hundreds of millions of middle class consumers. Duncan Clark first met Jack in 1999 in the small apartment where Jack founded Alibaba. Granted unprecedented access to a wealth of new material including exclusive interviews, Clark draws on his own experience as an early advisor to Alibaba and two decades in China chronicling the Internet’s impact on the country to create an authoritative, compelling narrative account of Alibaba’s rise. How did Jack overcome his humble origins and early failures to achieve massive success with Alibaba? How did he outsmart rival entrepreneurs from China and Silicon Valley? Can Alibaba maintain its 80% market share? As it forges ahead into finance and entertainment, are there limits to Alibaba’s ambitions?  How does the Chinese government view its rise?  Will Alibaba expand further overseas, including in the U.S.' Clark tells Alibaba’s tale in the context of China’s momentous economic and social changes, illuminating an unlikely corporate titan as never before.

As soon as the financial crisis erupted, the finger-pointing began. Should the blame fall on Wall Street, Main Street, or Pennsylvania Avenue? On greedy traders, misguided regulators, sleazy subprime companies, cowardly legislators, or clueless home buyers? According to Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera, two of America's most acclaimed business journalists, the real answer is all of the above-and more. The full story is like the legend of the blind men and the elephant. Almost everyone has missed the big picture. Almost no one has put all the pieces together. All the Devils Are Here goes back several decades to weave the hidden history of the financial crisis in a way no previous book has done. It explores the motivations of everyone from famous CEOs, cabinet secretaries, and politicians to anonymous lenders, borrowers, analysts, and Wall Street traders. It delves into the powerful American mythology of homeownership. And it proves that the crisis ultimately wasn't about finance at all; it was about human nature.

You don't care who can access your data because you have nothing to hide. But what if corporations were using that data to control your decisions? As millions of consumers carry on unaware, powerful corporations race to collect more and more data about our behaviors, needs, and desires. This massive trove of data represents one of the most valuable assets on the planet. In All You Can Pay, Anna Bernasek and D. T. Mongan show how companies use what they know about you to determine how much you are willing to pay for everything you buy. From college tuition to plane tickets to groceries to medicine, companies already set varying prices based on intimate knowledge of individual wants and purchasing power. As the consumer age fades into history, rapidly changing prices and complex offers tailored to each individual are spreading like a fog over the free market. Data giants know everything about us before we enter stores or open our browsers. We may think that the Internet lets us find the best deals, but the extensive information companies have about us means that the price we see tends toward the maximum they know we can pay. In a momentous shift, the economics of information will turn our economy on its head. Fair bargaining is over.

From the groundbreaking author team behind the bestselling Winner-Take-All Politics, a timely and topical work that examines what’s good for American business and what’s good for Americans—and why those interests are misaligned. In Winner-Take-All Politics, Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson explained how political elites have enabled and propelled plutocracy. Now in American Amnesia, they trace the economic and political history of the United States over the last century and show how a viable mixed economy has long been the dominant engine of America’s prosperity. Like every other prospering democracy, the United States developed a mixed economy that channeled the spirit of capitalism into strong growth and healthy social development. In this bargain, government and business were as much partners as rivals. Public investments in education, science, transportation, and technology laid the foundation for broadly based prosperity. Programs of economic security and progressive taxation provided a floor of protection and business focused on the pursuit of profit—and government addressed needs business could not. The mixed economy was the most important social innovation of the twentieth century. It spread a previously unimaginable level of broad prosperity. It enabled steep increases in education, health, longevity, and economic security. And yet, extraordinarily, it is anathema to many current economic and political elites. And as the advocates of anti-government free market fundamentalist have gained power, they are hell-bent on scrapping the instrument of nearly a century of unprecedented economic and social progress. In American Amnesia, Hacker and Pierson explain how—and why they must be stopped.

In this tale of grit and glamour, setbacks and comebacks, business and pop culture icon Tommy Hilfiger shares his extraordinary life story for the first time.   Few designers have stayed on top of changing trends the way Tommy Hilfiger has. Fewer still have left such an indelible mark on global culture. Since designing his first collection of "classics with a twist" three decades ago, Tommy Hilfiger has been synonymous with all-American style--but his destiny wasn't always so clear. Growing up one of nine children in a working-class family in Elmira, New York, Tommy suffered from dyslexia, flunked sophomore year of high school, and found himself constantly at odds with his father. Nevertheless, this self-described dreamer had a vision and the relentless will to make it a reality. At eighteen he opened his own clothing store, parlaying his uncanny instinct for style into a budding career as a fashion designer. Through decades of triumph and turmoil, Tommy remained doggedly optimistic. To this day, his approach to commerce is rooted in his positive view of the world. American Dreamer brims with anecdotes that cover Tommy's years as a club kid and scrappy entrepreneur in 1970s New York as well as unique insights into the exclusive A-list personalities with whom he's collaborated and interacted, from Mick Jagger and David Bowie to Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein. But this is more than just a fashion icon's memoir--it's a road map for building a brand, both professionally and personally. Tommy takes us behind the scenes of every decision--and every mistake--he's ever made, offering advice on leadership, business, team-building, and creativity.  This is the story of a true American original, told for the first time in his own words, with honesty, humor, and the insatiable appetite for life and style that proves that sometimes you have to dream big to make it big.   Advance praise for American Dreamer   "Tommy burst onto the fashion scene at the height of hip-hop and was instantly taken up by rappers and rockers alike. Since then, year after year he has been ahead of the curve with his elegant and stylish looks. His creative energy has always been an inspiration to me. He's really himself in American Dreamer."--Mick Jagger   "Whenever I think of Tommy Hilfiger, I think of a designer who has been able to wrap fashion in the American flag. In American Dreamer Tommy shows how he has taken the (rock) stars and the (preppy) stripes and come up with a look--and a label--that are recognized globally as being quintessentially American, as well as a brand that constantly keeps time with pop music."--Anna Wintour   "Tommy is an inspiration to many people. American Dreamer shows how he has managed to be successful in business and done so with integrity. I have come to know Tommy, and every time we talk I learn something new about creating a successful business."--David Beckham    "Tommy is one of the most genuine people I know! In American Dreamer you can feel his passion pour through everything he does: fashion, fatherhood, family, and friendship!"--Alicia Keys   "Tommy Hilfiger is an American icon who was able to transcend fashion and blend it with pop culture and take it to a worldwide audience. American Dreamer documents how, unlike any other designer, Tommy was able to tap into music, its subculture, and its influence on society, which propelled his fashion to be mainstream and global."--Tommy Mottola

What does it mean to be an American? What are American ideas and values? American Enterprise, the companion book to a major exhibition at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, aims to answer these questions about the American experience through an exploration of its economic and commercial history. It argues that by looking at the intersection of capitalism and democracy, we can see where we as a nation have come from and where we might be going in the future. Richly illustrated with images of objects from the museum's collections, American Enterprise includes an early Thomas Edison light bulb, a wheat thresher, a Barbie doll, a Google server, and many other goods and services that have shaped American culture. Historical and contemporary advertisements are also featured, emphasizing the evolution of the relationship between producers and consumers over time. Interspersed in the historical narrative are essays from today's industry leaders-including Sheila Bair, Adam Davidson, Bill Ford, Sally Greenberg, Fisk Johnson, Hank Paulson, Richard Trumka, and Pat Woertz-that pose provocative questions about the state of contemporary American business and society. American Enterprise is a multi-faceted survey of the nation's business heritage and corresponding social effects that is fundamental to an understanding of the lives of the American people, the history of the United States, and the nation's role in global affairs.

Americans today face no shortage of threats to their financial well-being, such as job and retirement insecurity, health care costs, and spiraling college tuition. While one might expect that these concerns would motivate people to become more politically engaged on the issues, this often doesn’t happen, and the resulting inaction carries consequences for political debates and public policy. Moving beyond previously studied barriers to political organization, American Insecurity sheds light on the public’s inaction over economic insecurities by showing that the rhetoric surrounding these issues is actually self-undermining. By their nature, the very arguments intended to mobilize individuals—asking them to devote money or time to politics—remind citizens of their economic fears and personal constraints, leading to undermobilization and nonparticipation. Adam Seth Levine explains why the set of people who become politically active on financial insecurity issues is therefore quite narrow. When money is needed, only those who care about the issues but are not personally affected become involved. When time is needed, participation is limited to those not personally affected or those who are personally affected but outside of the labor force with time to spare. The latter explains why it is relatively easy to mobilize retirees on topics that reflect personal financial concerns, such as Social Security and Medicare. In general, however, when political representation requires a large group to make their case, economic insecurity threats are uniquely disadvantaged. Scrutinizing the foundations of political behavior, American Insecurity offers a new perspective on collective participation.

Successful home ownership requires the availability of appropriate mortgage products. In the years leading up to the collapse of the housing market, home buyers frequently accepted mortgages that were not only wrong for them but catastrophic for the economy as a whole. When the housing market bubble burst, so did a cornerstone of the American dream for many families. Restoring the promise of this dream requires an unflinching inspection of lending institutions and the right tools to repair the structures that support solid home purchases. The American Mortgage System: Crisis and Reform focuses on the causes of the housing market collapse and proposes solutions to prevent another rash of foreclosures. It examines key elements of the mortgage meltdown and the influence of the Community Reinvestment Act, which is often blamed for the crisis. They uncover how the government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac invested outside the housing market with disastrous results. The American Mortgage System offers solutions to the problems. This book is a sound investment for economists, urban planners, and all who shape public policy.

Once an icon of American industry, railroads fell into a long decline beginning around the turn of the twentieth century. Overburdened with regulation and often displaced by barge traffic on government-maintained waterways, trucking on interstate highways, and jet aviation, railroads measured their misfortune in lost market share, abandoned track, bankruptcies, and unemployment. Today, however, as Robert Gallamore and John Meyer demonstrate, rail transportation is reviving, rescued by new sources of traffic and advanced technology, as well as less onerous bureaucracy. In 1970, Congress responded to the industry's plight by consolidating most passenger rail service nationwide into Amtrak. But private-sector freight service was left to succeed or fail on its own. The renaissance in freight traffic began in 1980 with the Staggers Rail Act, which allowed railroad companies to contract with customers for services and granted freedom to set most rates based on market supply and demand. Railroads found new business hauling low-sulfur coal and grain long distances in redesigned freight cars, while double-stacked container cars moved a growing volume of both international and domestic goods. Today, trains have smaller crews, operate over better track, and are longer and heavier than ever before. Near the end of the twentieth century, after several difficult but important mergers, privately owned railroads increased their investments in safe, energy-efficient, environmentally friendly freight transportation. American Railroads tells a riveting story about how this crucial U.S. industry managed to turn itself around.

The assembly line was invented in 1913 and has been in continuous operation ever since. It is the most familiar form of mass production. Both praised as a boon to workers and condemned for exploiting them. In America's Assembly Line, David Nye examines the industrial innovation that made the United States productive and wealthy in the twentieth century. The assembly line -- developed at the Ford Motor Company in 1913 for the mass production of Model Ts -- first created and then served an expanding mass market. It inspired fiction, paintings, photographs, comedy, cafeteria layouts, andcookie-cutter suburban housing. It also transformed industrial labor and provoked strikes and uniondrives. During World War II and the Cold War, it was often seen as a bastion of liberty andcapitalism. By 1980, Japan had reinvented the assembly line as a system of "leanmanufacturing"; American industry reluctantly adopted this new approach. Nye describes thisevolution and the new global landscape of increasingly automated factories, with fewer industrialjobs in America and questionable working conditions in developing countries. A century after Ford'spioneering innovation, the assembly line continues to evolve toward more sustainablemanufacturing.

The tumultuous era and remarkable personalities that unexpectedly birthed the Federal Reserve, from renowned financial writer Roger Lowenstein Until the election of Woodrow Wilson the United States—alone among developed nations—lacked a central bank. Ever since the Revolutionary War, Americans had desperately feared the consequences of centralizing the nation’s finances under government control. However, in the aftermath of a disastrous financial panic, Congress was persuaded—by a confluence of populist unrest, widespread mistrust of bankers, ideological divisions, and secretive lobbying—to approve the landmark 1913 Federal Reserve Act. Writing in a rich and untapped historical vein, Roger Lowenstein—acclaimed financial journalist and bestselling author of When Genius Failed and The End of Wall Street—reveals the drama-filled, unlikely story of how America created the Federal Reserve, thereby taking its first steps onto the world stage as a global financial power. America’s Bank showcases Lowenstein at his very finest: illuminating complex financial and political issues with striking clarity, infusing the debates of our past with all the gripping immediacy of today, and painting unforgettable portraits of Gilded Age bankers, presidents, and politicians. With America’s Bank, Lowenstein focuses on the four men at the heart of the drama to create the Federal Reserve. These are Paul Warburg, a refined, German-born financier, recently relocated to New York, who was horrified at America’s primitive finances; Rhode Island’s Nelson W. Aldrich, the reigning power broker in the U.S. Senate and an archetypal Gilded Age legislat∨ Carter Glass, the ambitious but little-known Virginia congressman who chaired the House Banking and Currency Committee at a crucial moment of political transition; and, of course, President Woodrow Wilson, who forced Glass to reconcile his deep-seated differences with bankers en route to landmark and controversial legislation which that finally gave America a central bank. Weaving a slice of American politics together with a storied financial collapse and intrigue at the highest levels of Washington and Wall Street, Lowenstein delivers a gripping historical narrative. America’s Bank reveals the improbable origins of the Federal Reserve in a way that will make readers wonder whether they are reading about one hundred years ago or about the still-seething conflicts that mark our discussions of banking and politics today. A powerful and intelligent story told by one of our most accomplished financial experts, America’s Bank puts readers into the cockpit at a time of financial turmoil and political transformation, bringing the beginnings of one of the country’s most crucial institutions to vivid and unforgettable life.  

The definitive life of Andrew Carnegie-one of American business's most iconic and elusive titans-by the bestselling author of Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst. Celebrated historian David Nasaw, brings new life to the story of one of America's most famous and successful businessmen and philanthropists---in what will prove to be the biography of the season. With a trove of new material--unpublished chapters of Carnegie's Autobiography; personal letters between Carnegie and his future wife, Louise, and other family members; his prenuptial agreement; diaries of family and close friends; his applications for citizenship; his extensive correspondence with Henry Clay Frick; and dozens of private letters to and from presidents Grant, Cleveland, McKinley, Roosevelt, and British prime ministers Gladstone and Balfour, as well as friends Herbert Spencer, Matthew Arnold, and Mark Twain--Nasaw brilliantly plumbs the core of this facinating and complex man, deftly placing his life in cultural and political context as only a master storyteller can.

The global financial crisis has made it painfully clear that powerful psychological forces are imperiling the wealth of nations today. From blind faith in ever-rising housing prices to plummeting confidence in capital markets, "animal spirits" are driving financial events worldwide. George Akerlof and Robert Shiller challenge the economic wisdom that got us into this mess, and put forward a bold new vision that will transform economics and restore prosperity. They reassert the necessity of an active government role in economic policymaking by recovering the idea of animal spirits, a term John Maynard Keynes used to describe the gloom and despondence that led to the Great Depression and the changing psychology that accompanied recovery. Like Keynes, Akerlof and Shiller know that managing these animal spirits requires the steady hand of government. They detail the most pervasive effects of animal spirits in contemporary economic life and show how Reaganomics, Thatcherism, and the rational expectations revolution failed to account for them.Animal Spiritsoffers a road map for reversing the financial misfortunes besetting us today. Read it and learn how leaders can channel animal spirits--the powerful forces of human psychology that are afoot in the world economy today.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the bestselling author of The Black Swan reveals how to thrive in an uncertain world.   Just as human bones get stronger when subjected to stress and tension, and rumors or riots intensify when someone tries to repress them, many things in life benefit from stress, disorder, and turmoil. What Taleb has identified and calls “antifragile” is that category of things that not only gain from chaos but need it in order to survive and flourish. In Antifragile,Taleb stands uncertainty on its head, making it desirable, even necessary, and proposes that things be built in an antifragile manner. The antifragile is beyond the resilient or robust. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better and better. The antifragile is immune to prediction errors and protected from adverse events. Why is the city-state better than the nation-state and why is what we call “efficient” not efficient at all? How did the sinking of the Titanic save lives? The book spans innovation by trial and error, life decisions, politics, urban planning, war, personal finance, economic systems, and medicine. In addition to the street wisdom of Fat Tony of Brooklyn, the voices and recipes of ancient wisdom, from Roman, Greek, Semitic, and medieval sources, are loud and clear.   Antifragileis a blueprint for living in a Black Swan world.

Dubai's Burj Khalifa--the world's tallest building--looks nothing like Microsoft's Office Suite, and digital surround sound doesn't work like a citywide telecommunication grid. Yet these engineering feats have much in common.Applied Minds explores the unique visions and mental tools of engineers to reveal the enormous--and often understated--influence they wield in transforming problems into opportunities. The resulting account pairs the innovators of modern history--Thomas Edison, the Wright brothers, Steve Jobs--with everything from ATMs and the ZIP code system to the disposable diaper.An engineer himself, Guru Madhavan introduces a flexible intellectual tool kit called modular systems thinking as he explains the discipline's penchant for seeing structure where there is none. The creations that result from this process express the engineer's answers to the fundamental questions of design: usefulness, functionality, reliability, and user friendliness.Through narratives and case studies spanning the brilliant history of engineering, Madhavan shows how the concepts of prototyping, efficiency, reliability, standards, optimization, and feedback are put to use in fields as diverse as transportation, retail, health care, and entertainment.Equal parts personal, practical, and profound, Applied Minds charts a path to a future where we apply strategies borrowed from engineering to create useful and inspired solutions to our most pressing challenges.

In this book, Simon Bowmaker offers a remarkable collection of conversations with leading economists about research in economics. He has selected a broad sample of the great economists of our time, including people whose perspectives span most of the major subdivisions of economics research, from micro to macro, from theoretical to empirical, from rationalist to behavioralist. This innovative volume contains 25 interviews with practicing economists, presenting insightful personal accounts into an often-misunderstood field. Contributors to this volume were asked to reflect on their own experience in economics research, including their methods of working, the process of scientific discovery and knowledge creation, and the challenges of successfully disseminating their work. The unique and compelling interview format showcases each contributor's personal connection to his or her work, presenting a view of current economics research that is technical, comprehensive, and refreshingly human. Both students and current scholars in economics will find much to admire in this book's window into the inner workings of some of the brightest and best-known minds in the field.

Whether mundane or life-altering, these choices define us and shape our lives. Sheena Iyengar asks the difficult questions about how and why we choose: Is the desire for choice innate or bound by culture? Why do we sometimes choose against our best interests? How much control do we really have over what we choose? Sheena Iyengar's award-winning research reveals that the answers are surprising and profound. In our world of shifting political and cultural forces, technological revolution, and interconnected commerce, our decisions have far-reaching consequences. Use THE ART OF CHOOSING as your companion and guide for the many challenges ahead.

Your guide to becoming an explanation specialist. You've done the hard work. Your product or service works beautifully - but something is missing.  People just don't see the big idea - and it's keeping you from being successful. Your idea has an explanation problem. The Art of Explanation is for business people, educators and influencers who want to improve their explanation skills and start solving explanation problems. Author Lee LeFever is the founder of Common Craft, a company known around the world for making complex ideas easy to understand through short animated videos. He is your guide to helping audiences fall in love with your ideas, products or services through better explanations in any medium.  You will learn to:  Plan: Learn explanation basics, what causes them to fail and how to diagnose explanation problems. Package: Using simple elements, create an explanation strategy that builds confidence and motivates your audience.  Present: Produce remarkable explanations with visuals and media.  The Art of Explanation is your invitation to become an explanation specialist and see why explanation is now a fundamental skill for professionals.

A member of the world-renowned Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School introduces the powerful next-generation approach to negotiation. For many years, two approaches to negotiation have prevailed: the "win-win" method exemplified in Getting to Yes by Roger Fisher, William Ury, and Bruce Patton; and the hard-bargaining style of Herb Cohen's You Can Negotiate Anything. Michael Wheeler provides a dynamic alternative to one-size-fits-all strategies that don't match real world realities. The Art of Negotiation shows how master negotiators thrive in the face of chaos and uncertainty. They understand negotiation as a process of exploration that demands ongoing learning, adapting, and influencing. Their agility enables them to reach agreement when others would be stalemated. Michael Wheeler illuminates the improvisational nature of negotiation, drawing on his own research and his work with Program on Negotiation colleagues. He explains how the best practices of diplomats such as George J. Mitchell, dealmaker Bruce Wasserstein, and Hollywood producer Jerry Weintraub apply to everyday transactions like selling a house, buying a car, or landing a new contract. Wheeler also draws lessons on agility and creativity from fields like jazz, sports, theater, and even military science.

Game theory means rigorous strategic thinking. It’s the art of anticipating your opponent’s next moves, knowing full well that your rival is trying to do the same thing to you. Though parts of game theory involve simple common sense, much is counterintuitive, and it can only be mastered by developing a new way of seeing the world. Using a diverse array of rich case studies—from pop culture, TV, movies, sports, politics, and history—the authors show how nearly every business and personal interaction has a game-theory component to it. Mastering game theory will make you more successful in business and life, and this lively book is the key to that mastery.

Niall Ferguson follows the money to tell the human story behind the evolution of finance, from its origins in ancient Mesopotamia to the latest upheavals. To Christians, love of it is the root of all evil. To generals, it's the sinews of war. To revolutionaries, it's the chains of labor. But historian Ferguson shows that finance is in fact the foundation of human progress. What's more, he reveals financial history as the essential backstory behind all history. Through Ferguson's expert lens, for example, the civilization of the Renaissance looks very different: a boom in the market for art and architecture made possible when Italian bankers adopted Arabic mathematics. The rise of the Dutch republic is reinterpreted as the triumph of the world's first modern bond market over insolvent Habsburg absolutism. Yet the central lesson of financial history is that, sooner or later, every bubble bursts.--From publisher description.

Stocks and bonds? Real estate? Hedge funds? Private equity? If you think those are the things to focus on in building an investment portfolio, Andrew Ang has accumulated a body of research that will prove otherwise.In his new book Asset Management: A Systematic Approach to Factor Investing, Ang upends the conventional wisdom about asset allocation by showing that what matters aren't asset class labels but the bundles of overlapping risks they represent. Making investments is like eating a healthy diet, Angsays: you've got to look through the foods you eat to focus on the nutrients they contain. Failing to do so can lead to a serious case of malnutrition - for investors as well as diners.The key, in Ang's view, is bad times, and the fact that every investor's bad times are somewhat different. The notion that bad times are paramount is the guiding principle of the book, which offers a new approach to the age-old problem of where do you put your money? Years of experience, both as afinance professor and as a consultant, have led Ang to see that the traditional approach, with its focus on asset classes, is too crude and ultimately too costly to serve investors adequately. He focuses instead on "factor risks," the peculiar sets of hard times that cut across asset classes, andthat must be the focus of our attention if we are to weather market turmoil and receive the rewards that come with doing so. Optimally harvesting factor premiums - on our own or by hiring others -r equires identifying your particular set of hard times, and exploiting the difference between them andthose of the average investor. Clearly written yet chock-full of the latest research and data, Asset Management will be indispensable reading for trustees, professional money managers, smart private investors, and business students who want to understand the economics behind factor risk premiums, harvest them efficiently in theirportfolios, and embark on the search for true alpha.

Economists make confident assertions in op-ed columns and on cable news-so why are their explanations often at odds with equally confident assertions from other economists? And why are all economic predictions so rarely borne out? Harnessing his frustration with these contradictions, Jonathan Schlefer set out to investigate how economists arrive at their opinions. While economists cloak their views in the aura of science, what they actually do is make assumptions about the world, use those assumptions to build imaginary economies (known as models), and from those models generate conclusions. Schlefer takes up current controversies such as income inequality and the financial crisis, for which he holds economists in large part accountable. Although theorists won international acclaim for creating models that demonstrated the inherent instability of markets, ostensibly practical economists ignored those accepted theories and instead relied on their blind faith in the invisible hand of unregulated enterprise. Schlefer explains how the politics of economics allowed them to do so. The Assumptions Economists Make renders the behavior of economists much more comprehensible, if not less irrational.

From Tim Wu, author of the award-winning The Master Switch ( a New Yorker and Fortune Book of the Year) and who coined the term "net neutrality"--a revelatory, ambitious and urgent account of how the capture and re-sale of human attention became the defining industry of our time.   Feeling attention challenged? Even assaulted? American business depends on it. In nearly every moment of our waking lives, we face a barrage of messaging, advertising enticements, branding, sponsored social media, and other efforts to harvest our attention. Few moments or spaces of our day remain uncultivated by the "attention merchants," contributing to the distracted, unfocused tenor of our times. Tim Wu argues that this condition is not simply the byproduct of recent technological innovations but the result of more than a century's growth and expansion in the industries that feed on human attention. From the pre-Madison Avenue birth of advertising to the explosion of the mobile web; from AOL and the invention of email to the attention monopolies of Google and Facebook; from Ed Sullivan to celebrity power brands like Oprah Winfrey, Kim Kardashian and Donald Trump, the basic business model of "attention merchants" has never changed: free diversion in exchange for a moment of your consideration, sold in turn to the highest-bidding advertiser. Wu describes the revolts that have risen against the relentless siege of our awareness, from the remote control to the creation of public broadcasting to Apple's ad-blocking OS. But he makes clear that attention merchants are always growing new heads, even as their means of getting inside our heads are changing our very nature--cognitive, social, political and otherwise--in ways unimaginable even a generation ago.   "A startling and sweeping examination of the increasingly ubiquitous commercial effort to capture and commodify our attention...We've become the consumers, the producers, and the content. We are selling ourselves to ourselves." --Tom Vanderbilt, The New Republic   "An erudite, energizing, outraging, funny and thorough history...A devastating critique of ad tech as it stands today, transforming "don't be evil" into the surveillance business model in just a few short years. It connects the dots between the sale of advertising inventory in schools to the bizarre ecosystem of trackers, analyzers and machine-learning models that allow the things you look at on the web to look back at you...This stuff is my daily beat, and I learned a lot from Attention Merchants." --Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing  "Illuminating." --Jacob Weisberg, The New York Review of Books 

Although it is among the oldest of market institutions, the auction is ubiquitous in today's economy, used for everything from government procurement to selling advertising on the Internet to course assignment at MIT's Sloan School. And yet beyond the small number of economists who specialize in the subject, few people understand how auctions really work. This concise, accessible, and engaging book explains both the theory and the practice of auctions. It describes the main auction formats and pricing rules, develops a simple model to explain bidder behavior, and provides a range of real-world examples. The authors explain what constitutes an auction and how auctions can be modeled as games of asymmetric information -- that is, games in which some players know something that other players do not. They characterize behavior in these strategic situations and maintain a focus on the real world by illustrating their discussions with examples that include not just auctions held by eBay and Sotheby's, but those used by Google, the U.S. Treasury, TaskRabbit, and charities. Readers will begin to understand how economists model auctions and how the rules of the auction shape bidder incentives. They will appreciate the role auctions play in our modern economy and understand why these selling mechanisms are so resilient.

The Internet and smartphone are just the latest in a 250 year long cycle of disruption that has continuously changed the way we live, the way we work and the way we interact. The coming Augmented Age, however, promises a level of disruption, behavioral shifts and changes that are unparalleled. While consumers today are camping outside of an Apple store waiting to be one of the first to score a new Apple Watch or iPhone, the next generation of wearables will be able to predict if we re likely to have a heart attack and recommend a course of action. We watch news of Google s self-driving cars, but don t likely realize this means progressive cities will have to ban human drives in the next decade because us humans are too risky. Following on from the Industrial or Machine Age, the Space Age and the Digital Age, the Augmented Age will be based on four key disruptive themes Artificial Intelligence, Experience Design, Smart Infrastructure, and Health Tech. Historically the previous ages brought significant disruption and changes, but on a net basis jobs were created, wealth was enhanced, and the health and security of society improved. What will the Augmented Age bring? Will robots take our jobs, and AI s subsume us as inferior intelligences, or will this usher in a new age of abundance? Augmented is a book on future history, but more than that, it is a story about how you will live your life in a world that will change more in the next 20 years than it has in the last 250 years. Are you ready to adapt? Because if history proves anything, you don't have much of a choice."

These days, high-level tasks are increasingly being handled by algorithms that can do precise work not only with speed but also with nuance. These 'bots' started with human programming and logic, but now their reach extends beyond what their creators ever expected. Christopher Steiner tells the story of how algorithms took over—and shows why the 'bot revolution' is about to spill into every aspect of our lives, often silently, without our knowledge.The May 2010 'Flash Crash' exposed Wall Street's reliance on trading bots to the tune of a 998-point market drop and $1 trillion in vanished market value. In Automate This, we meet bots that are driving cars, penning haiku, and writing music mistaken for Bach's. They listen in on our customer service calls and figure out what Iran would do in the event of a nuclear standoff. There are algorithms that can identify the next Jeremy Lin.The interaction of man and machine can make our lives easier. But what will the world look like when algorithms control our hospitals, our roads, our culture, and our national security? What happens to businesses when we automate judgement and eliminate human instinct? Who knows—maybe there's a bot learning to do your job this minute.

The recent economic rise of China and India has attracted a great deal of attention. Together, the two countries account for one-fifth of the global economy and are projected to represent a full third of the world's income by 2025. Yet, many of the views regarding China and India's market reforms and high growth have been exaggerated or oversimplified. Awakening Giants, Feet of Clay scrutinizes the phenomenal rise of both nations, and demolishes the myths that have accumulated around the economic achievements of these two giants in the last quarter century." "Exploring the challenges that both countries must overcome to become true leaders in the international economy, Pranab Bardhan looks beyond short-run macroeconomic issues to examine and compare China and India's major policy changes, political and economic structures, and current general performance." Bardhan investigates the two countries' economic reforms and the problems afflicting their agricultural, industrial, intrastructural, and financial sectors. He considers how these factors affect China and India's poverty, inequality, and environment, how political factors shape each country's pattern of burgeoning capitalism, and how significant poverty reduction in both countries is mainly due to domestic factors - not global integration, as most would believe. He shows how authoritarianism has distorted Chinese development while democratic governance in India has been marred by severe accountability failures.