American Business History

As enlightening as The Facebook Effect, Elon Musk, and Chaos Monkeys—the compelling, behind-the-scenes story of the creation of one of the most essential applications ever devised, and the rag-tag team that built it and changed how we navigate the world. Never Lost Again chronicles the...

Based on the chart-topping Business Wars podcast, stories and lessons from history’s greatest business rivalries, interspersed with audio clips from the podcast. Using Chinese military genius Sun Tzu’s strategies as a guide, Brown examines why some companies triumph while others crumble...

A profound look at the crisis of work and the collapse of the safety net, and a vision for a better way forward, rooted in America’s cooperative spirit, from the founder of the Freelancers Union “Read this essential book to see how we can and must build the future.”—Reid Hoffman...

One of Vogue's most anticipated books of 2023. A quintessentially American fashion narrative about the rise and fall of the first lifestyle brand, J.Crew, and what the company’s fate means for the shifting landscape of the retail industry. Once upon a time, a no-frills J.Crew rollneck sweater...

A former CIA analyst draws on his experience combatting jihadi terror movements and the history of totalitarian regimes to show how citizens lose touch with reality. Some of history’s greatest empires have devolved into genocidal lunacy—often with shocking compliance from their own people...

An urgent new warning from two bestselling security experts--and a gripping inside look at how governments, firms, and ordinary citizens can confront and contain the tyrants, hackers, and criminals bent on turning the digital realm into a war zone. "In the battle raging between offense and...

In its fight for global dominance, Communist China has thrown out the old rules of war. China expert General Robert Spalding walks us through their new playbook. Many Americans are finally waking up to the alarming reality of China's stealth war on the United States and puzzling over how to...

Noam Chomsky’s backpocket classic on wartime propaganda and opinion control begins by asserting two models of democracy—one in which the public actively participates, and one in which the public is manipulated and controlled. According to Chomsky, "propaganda is to democracy as the bludgeon...

Winner of the 2021 Midland Authors Book Award in History In a time of great inequality and a gutted middle class, the dramatic story of “the strike heard around the world” is a testament to what workers can gain when they stand up for their rights. The tumultuous Flint sit-down strike of...

The never-before-told inside story of the rebuilding of the World Trade Center — an epic tale of business, politics, and engineering by the man who spent two decades working to make it happen After the terrorist attacks of 9/11 destroyed the World Trade Center, New Yorkers and Americans faced...

America’s first great organized-crime lord was a lady—a nice Jewish mother named Mrs. Mandelbaum. “A tour de force . . . With a pickpocket’s finesse, Margalit Fox lures us into the criminal underworld of Gilded Age New York.”—Liza Mundy, author of The Sisterhood A PARADE BEST BOOK OF...

A delicious romp through the heyday of rock and roll and a revealing portrait of the man at the helm of the iconic magazine that made it all possible, with candid look backs at the era from Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Elton John, Bono, Bruce Springsteen, Paul McCartney, and others. The story...

In the 30 years after the Civil War, the United States blew by Great Britain to become the greatest economic power in world history. That is a well-known period in history, when titans like Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and J. P. Morgan walked the earth. But as Charles R. Morris shows us, the platform for that spectacular growth spurt was built in the first half of the century. By the 1820s, America was already the world's most productive manufacturer and the most intensely commercialized society in history.

A sweeping history of the legendary private investment firm Brown Brothers Harriman, exploring its central role in the story of American wealth and its rise to global power Conspiracy theories have always swirled around Brown Brothers Harriman, and not without reason. Throughout the nineteenth...

From New York Times business reporter Nelson D. Schwartz comes a gripping investigation of how a virtual velvet rope divides Americans in every arena of life, creating a friction-free existence for those with money on one side and a Darwinian struggle for the middle class on the other side. In...

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...

Arthashastra' is one of the oldest books with immense historical significance written by Kautilya or Arya Chanakya as he was popularly known. This book is one of the most effective books ever written on the art of statecraft and the science of everyday living. Originally written in Sanskrit...

“They’re still trying to hide the weenie,” thought Sherron Watkins as she read a newspaper clipping about Enron two weeks before Christmas, 2001. . . It quoted [CFO] Jeff McMahon addressing the company’s creditors and cautioning them against a rash judgment. “Don’t assume that there...

The inspiring, instructive, and ultimately triumphant memoir of a man who used hard work and a Master Plan to turn a life sentence into a second chance. Growing up in a tough Washington, D.C., neighborhood, Chris Wilson was so afraid for his life he wouldn't leave the house without a gun. One...

The “extraordinary” (New York Times Book Review, Editors’ Choice) story of FDR’s fight for the soul of American capitalism—from award-winning journalist Diana B. Henriques, author of The Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust “I thought I was well versed in the New...