American Business History

The gripping, definitive account of the private family behind one of the most powerful financial institutions in the world. When Edward C. Johnson 2d founded Fidelity in 1946, investing was a pursuit reserved for the elite. Today, more than $15 trillion flows through Fidelity’s customer...

Morgan Siler is one of Washington, D.C.'s most powerful K Street law firms, its roster of clients stocked with multibillion-dollar corporations. The obsessive efforts of its senior partner, Peter Morgan, have transformed it from an old-fashioned business into a veritable Goliath. As Peter...

Today, mobile connections are so readily accessible that it is perhaps easy to forget the time when only the elite had access to a phone provided by the sole operator: the Government of India. It all changed in the early 1990s as liberalisation stirred the Indian economy out of its decades of...

The only woman in Forbes’ Greatest Business Stories of All Time and the first woman to chair a company on the New York Stock Exchange, Mary Kay Ash has a life story that reads like a Barbara Taylor Bradford novel Growing up in Depression-era Texas, Mary Kathlyn Wagner is a dutiful daughter and...

In his acclaimed book American Theocracy, Kevin Phillips warned of the perilous interaction of debt, financial recklessness, and the spiking cost (and growing scarcity) of oil- warnings that are proving to be frighteningly accurate. Now, in his most significant and timely book yet, Phillips...

“Contravening conventional wisdom, Zelizer offers a spirited defense of parties and partisanship.” —Frances Lee, Princeton University Partisanship is a dirty word in American politics. If there is one issue on which almost everyone in our divided country seems to agree, it’s the belief...

From award-winning journalist and coauthor of The 15:17 to Paris, an affecting human history of the first self-steering bomb Paveway, the first "smart" bomb, was created to be a more precise and ostensibly humane weapon, reducing civilian casualties. The true impact of the bomb, however, is ever...

From the innermost sanctum of the Prime Minister’s private offices among the Minaret-studded buildings of Putrajaya to streets filled with tear-gassed protestors in downtown Kuala Lumpur, Romen Bose, a former international correspondent and political communications consultant to then Prime...

From the world of Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls comes a story based on the life of Madam C.J. Walker, America’s first female self-made millionaire. Sarah is the first person in her family who wasn’t born into slavery in Delta, Louisiana. But being free doesn’t mean that Sarah...

09.07 am. 12 de abril de 1961. Un cohete de alto secreto en la URSS. Un joven ruso se sienta en una minúscula cápsula encima del misil balístico intercontinental más potente de la Unión Soviética -diseñado originalmente para transportar una cabeza nuclear- y despega hacia el cielo. Se...

Americans have always loved guns. This special bond was forged during the American Revolution and sanctified by the Second Amendment. It is because of this exceptional relationship that American civilians are more heavily armed than the citizens of any other nation. Or so we're told. In The Gunning of America, historian Pamela Haag overturns this conventional wisdom. American gun culture, she argues, developed not because the gun was exceptional but precisely because it was not.

Shortly before Christmas 1933 in Depression-scarred Canton, Ohio, a small newspaper ad offered cash gifts to seventy-five families in distress. Readers were asked to send letters describing their hardships to a benefactor calling himself Mr. B. Virdot. The author’s grandfather, Sam Stone, was...

There are more slaves in the world today than any other time in history.Enter the world of human trafficking and explore what we can do together to end this global crime. Where Were You?: A Profile of Modern Slavery by Matthew Friedman provides an up-to-date overview of human trafficking, a...

Robert E. Lee scholar H. W. Crocker III is an esteemed Civil War historian. Skillfully summarizing Lee’s life, Crocker clearly extracts leadership lessons from the storied career of the South’s beloved leader and applies them to today’s business worldUnder General Lee’s management, a rag-tag army of poor farmers—vastly outnumbered, outgunned, under-supplied, and under-fed—consistently routed Union troops. Brilliantly seizing strategic opportunities, Lee stunned his foes and inspired his soldiers. He was decisive, focused, and humble.

Political races in the United States rely heavily on highly paid political consultants who carefully curate the images of politicians, advise candidates on polling and analytics, and shape voters' perceptions through marketing and advertising techniques. More than half of the $6 billion spent in the 2012 election went to consultants who controlled virtually every aspect of the campaigns, from polling, fundraising, and media to more novel techniques of social media and micro-targeting.

From CNN legal analyst Elliot Williams, a revelatory account of how one man, four teenagers, and a struggling city collided over race, vigilantism, and public safety . . . exposing the fault lines of a nation On a dirty New York subway car on December 22, 1984, Bernhard Goetz shot Barry Allen...

The Civil War was the first "modern war." Because of the rapid changes in American society, Abraham Lincoln became president of a divided United States during a period of technological and social revolution. Among the many modern marvels that gave the North an advantage was the telegraph, which Lincoln used to stay connected to the forces in the field in almost real time. No leader in history had ever possessed such a powerful tool to gain control over a fractious situation. An eager student of technology, Lincoln had to learn to use the power of electronic messages.

In this revelatory narrative covering the years 1967 to 2017, Steven Brill gives us a stunningly cogent picture of the broken system at the heart of our society. He shows us how, over the last half century, America’s core values—meritocracy, innovation, due process, free speech, and even...

More than twenty years ago, Alan Elliott shared his positive outlook and uplifting view of the spirit of the American people in A Dose of the American Dream. Now in this revised, modernized, and newly titled edition, Elliot showcases the vision, accountability, faith, and essential values that...

For readers of Dopesick and Drug Use for Grown-Ups--a celebrated cannabis attorney's insider look at the War on Drugs and what comes next for the drug legalization movement. Spoiler: everyone uses drugs. Whether you’re popping an aspirin for a headache, pushing through the day with an extra...