American Business History

A New York Times bestseller and a “charming tribute” (Kirkus) to Hollywood’s most beloved era Film and television star Robert Wagner has been delighting audiences for more than sixty years, and his many fans flocked to bookstores when he began to record his memories on the page. In his...

The intimate, fly-on-the wall tale of the decline and fall of an America icon With one notable exception, the firms that make up what we know as Wall Street have always been part of an inbred, insular culture that most people only vaguely understand. The exception was Merrill Lynch, a firm...

The former top CEO examines the scandalous and corrupt reasons behind obscene pay packages for corporate executives—and explains how this hurts all of us--and how we can stop it. Today, the pay gap between chief executive officers of major U.S. firms and their workers is higher than ever...

A provocative critique of the pieties and fallacies of our obsession with economic growth We live in a society in which a priesthood of economists, wielding impenetrable mathematical formulas, set the framework for public debate. Ultimately, it is the perceived health of the economy which...

Taking his inspiration from biographical facts, novelist Colum McCann tells the erotically charged story of the Russian dancer Rudolf Nureyev through the cast of those who knew him. There is Anna Vasileva, Rudi's first ballet teacher, who rescues her protégé from the stunted life of his...

Based on fifteen years of research, Glock is the riveting story of the weapon that has become known as American’s gun. Today the Glock pistol has been embraced by two-thirds of all U.S. police departments, glamorized in countless Hollywood movies, and featured as a ubiquitous presence on...

America emerged from Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal with strong democratic values and broadly shared prosperity. But for the past thirty years American politics has been dominated by a conservative movement determined to undermine the New Deal’s achievements. Now, the tide may be...

Circle of Greed is the epic story of the rise and fall of Bill Lerach, once the leading class action lawyer in America and now a convicted felon. For more than two decades, Lerach threatened, shook down and sued top Fortune 500 companies, including Disney, Apple, Time Warner, and—most...

Businesses, investors, and consumers are grappling with the seismic daily changes technology has brought to the banking and finance industry. The Money Hackers is the story of fintech’s major players and explores how these disruptions are transforming even money itself. Whether you’ve heard...

America's greatness comes from people working hard to fulfill their dreams. But today that greatness is being undermined by people using the government to steal other people's dreams (and money). Rather than participate and innovate in the marketplace, generating goods and services that benefit...

From an award-winning New York Times reporter comes the full, mind-boggling true story of the lies, crimes, and ineptitude behind the Enron scandal that imperiled a presidency, destroyed a marketplace, and changed Washington and Wall Street forever. It was the corporate collapse that appeared to...

For years, government bureaucrats have been looking for ways to destroy small businesses. With coronavirus, they finally had their chance. In 2020, the American economy suffered the biggest financial collapse in history. But while Main Street suffered like never before, the stock market...

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Why does it feel like no matter what happens in American politics, the Democrats still get their way? When he left Congress in 2017, Jason Chaffetz still thought elections could save us. For generations, conservatives have hoped that freedom-loving...

PEN/Hemingway Award-winner Bobbie Ann Mason turns her acumen on one of twentieth-century America's most mysterious icons, The King himself. This new biography eschews sensational speculation to paint a thoughtfully researched but wholly felt portrait of the man-child who metamorphosed into a...

A groundbreaking study of the journalism startups that are solving the local news crisis one community at a time A must-read for activists, entrepreneurs, and journalists who want to start local news outlets in their communities Local news is essential to democracy. Meaningful participation in...

American monopolies dominate, control, and consume most of the energy of our entire economic system; they function the same way as cancer does in a body, and like cancer, they weaken our systems while threatening to crash the entire body economics. American monopolies have also seized massive political power and use it to maintain their obscene profits and CEO salaries while crushing small competitors.

"This is the most important book on Silicon Valley I've read in two decades. It will take us all back to our roots in the counterculture, and will remind us of the true nature of the innovation process, before we tried to tame it with slogans and buzzwords." -- Po Bronson, #1 New York Times...

The author of the classic best seller Lincoln on Leadership answers the question: How would President Lincoln handle the pressing crises of our modern world? Abraham Lincoln is recognized as one of history's finest leaders, a great president when the United States was under tremendous strain. But suppose he were alive today. How would Lincoln deal with today's high-pressure issues, from politics to business?

Two founding fathers of American industry. One desire to dominate business at any price. “Masterful . . . Standiford has a way of making the 1890s resonate with a twenty-first-century audience.”—USA Today “The narrative is as absorbing as that of any good novel—and as difficult to...

Winner of the William G. Bowen Prize Named a "Triumph" of 2018 by New York Times Book Critics Shortlisted for the 800-CEO-READ Business Book Award The untold history of the surprising origins of the "gig economy"--how deliberate decisions made by consultants and CEOs in the 50s and 60s upended...