Bank Memoir

In the tradition of Michael Lewis and Tom Wolfe, a fascinating and frightening behind-the-scenes look at the interconnected cultures of hackers, security specialists, and law enforcement. A cybersecurity professional turned journalist, Kate Fazzini illuminates the many lies companies and governments tell us about our security, the lies criminals tell to get ahead, and the lies security leaders tell to make us think they are better at their jobs than they are.

Although we have long intellectual traditions of wrestling with mortality, few have ever heard of natality, the term political theorist Hannah Arendt used to describe birth's active role in our lives. In this ambitious, revelatory book, Jennifer Banks begins with Arendt's definition of natality as the "miracle that saves the world" to develop an expansive framework for birth's philosophical, political, spiritual, and aesthetic significance. Banks focuses on seven renowned Western thinkers to reveal a provocative countertradition of birth.

Do you feel lost when explaining your car problems to a mechanic? Do you panic when something goes wrong with your ride? Have you felt like you were being overcharged or pressured into unnecessary add-ons at the auto shop? Fear no more: The Girls Auto Clinic Glove Box Guide has got your back. So many women feel powerless, nervous, or embarrassed when taking our cars in for a repair, and yet we outnumber men both as drivers and as customers at auto repair shops. The time has come for us to grab the wheel and finally take control of our cars.

On a Sunday evening in December 2004, two young men were at home with their families. Both worked for the Northern Bank’s cash centre in Belfast. They heard knocks on their front doors. Within a few minutes, masked men invaded their homes, overpowered their loved ones and disabled their electronic devices. It was made clear to the two bank officials that they had a choice: do what they were told or their families would die. In the wake of the twentieth anniversary of this bizarre robbery, Glenn Patterson builds on his popular BBC podcast to shed new light on the story of the infamous heist.

Becoming a young Wall Street banker is like pledging the world's most lucrative and soul-crushing fraternity. Every year, thousands of eager college graduates are hired by the world's financial giants, where they're taught the secrets of making obscene amounts of money - as well as how to dress, talk, date, drink, and schmooze like real financiers. But they experience something new, too: an industry forever changed by the massive financial collapse of 2008. And as they get their Wall Street educations, they face hard questions about morality, prestige, and the value of their work.

In a true story, the author writes of a brutal childhood interrupted by occasional spurts of Disneyland and ponies. After a fumbled ax attack by her mother, she takes to the streets at 14 years old. She is a prey looking for a predator. Predators she finds, as well as the unlikeliest of heroes. There is no “road less traveled”. There is no road. She makes her way through back alleys that are dark and mesmerizing. Occasionally brutal, occasionally flat out funny.

There is no one in the world right now who is in a better position to influence the next wave of technology than Masayoshi Son. Not Jeff Bezos, not Mark Zuckerberg, not Elon Musk. They might have the money, but they lack Masa's combination of ambition, imagination and nerve. Masayoshi Son is the most powerful person in Silicon Valley. As CEO and founder of the Japanese investment firm, SoftBank, 'Masa' has invested in some of the most exciting and influential tech companies in recent memory - Uber, WeWork, ByteDance, Slack and many others.

Gene Washington’s football career ended long before his daughter Maya was born. She never saw the legendary powerhouse as anything but her dad. She didn’t yet grasp the impact he’d had on the sport - and on America. To understand his historic role in the integration of college football and fully appreciate his legacy, Maya had a lot of catching up to do. Maya retraces her father’s journey from the segregated south to Michigan State during the peak of the Civil Rights Movement and his journey as an NFL pioneer after the 1967 draft.

Norco '80 tells the story of how five heavily armed young men - led by an apocalyptic born-again Christian - attempted a bank robbery that turned into one of the most violent criminal events in US history, forever changing the face of American law enforcement. Part action thriller and part courtroom drama, Norco '80 transports the listener back to the Southern California of the 1970s, an era of predatory evangelical gurus, doomsday predictions, megachurches, and soaring crime rates, with the threat of nuclear obliteration looming over it all.

August, 1755. Newcastle, on the north bank of the Tyne. In the fields, men and women are getting the harvest in. Sunlight or rain. Scudding clouds and backbreaking labour. Three hundred feet underground, young Charles Hutton is at the coalface. Cramped, dust choked, wielding a five-pound pick by candlelight. Eighteen years old, he’s been down the pits on and off for more than a decade, and now it looks like a life sentence. No unusual story, although Charles is a clever lad - gifted at maths and languages - and for a time he hoped for a different life. Many hoped.

Work in Progress is a snapshot of several years--from a boy, then a teenager, and finally a young adult--of being thrown into a series of jobs that Father Martin had zero training. He never once set foot in a restaurant kitchen before working as a busboy; never stepped onto a golf course before working as a caddy; and never once seen a factory floor before working as an assembly-line worker. He almost always felt uncomfortable, unsettled, and uneasy. But, we've all done jobs we didn't love because we needed the money.

How did a bank, which boasts ‘we’re committed to helping protect the world’s financial system on which millions of people depend, by only doing business with customers who meet our high standards of transparency’ come to facilitate Mexico’s richest drug baron? And how did a bank that as recently as 2002 had been named ‘one of the best-run organisations in the world’ become so entwined with such a criminal? Too Big to Jail is an extraordinary story brilliantly told by writer, commentator, and former editor of The Independent.

Chas Smith grew up deeply enmeshed in the evangelical Christian world that grew out of Southern California in the late 1960s. His family included famous missionaries and megachurch pastors, but his cousin Daniel Courson was Grandma’s favorite. Smith looked up to Cousin Danny. He was handsome, adventurous, and smart, earned a degree from Bible college, and settled into a family and a stable career. Needless to say, it was a big surprise when Cousin Danny started robbing banks.

The Pursuit of Purpose is an honest, poignant, and emotionally powerful book. It's a story about struggle, finding a purpose in life, striving to build a fairer society, and discovering who you are along the way.

Luke 'Milky' Moore is a fun-loving Australian country boy who transforms into a high-rolling playboy, a prison inmate, and a successful criminal lawyer - all because of a bank error. Milky's story starts in a dark place. After the 2008 stock market crash, Milky loses his job, life savings, suffers serious injury in a massive car accident, and struggles to make his house payments. And of course, his girlfriend leaves him. But at this lowest point, his bank accidentally throws him a lifeline.

Hired by ForbesTraveler.com to review some of the most luxurious accommodations on Earth, and then inspired by a chance encounter in Dubai with the impoverished workers whose backbreaking jobs create such opulence, Bob Harris had an epiphany: He would turn his own good fortune into an effort to make lives like theirs better.

On one of the rare occasions he wasn't incarcerated, Floyd met Nancy, a golden-haired goddess, the love of his life. Given the choice between loving her and being the greatest bank robber in America, he chose Nancy without hesitation. But before he went straight, he just needed to pull off one last job....

Charles Deville Wells has two loves in life: Jeannette, his beautiful French mistress, and his sumptuous yacht, the Palais Royal. At the risk of losing both, Wells stakes everything he owns at the roulette tables in Monte Carlo's world-famous casino - and in the space of a few days he breaks the bank, not once but 10 times, winning the equivalent of millions in today's money. Is he phenomenally lucky? Has he really invented an 'infallible' gambling system, as he claims? Or is he just an exceptionally clever fraudster?

Told from the perspective of his stepdaughter Vicki, The Counterfeit Legend details the personal and family life of notorious Los Angeles bank robber John Jennings. Jennings did whatever it took to satisfy his compulsive need for attention, notoriety, and fame. As stepfather to young children, Jennings was cruel and abusive. He hid his double life as an armed bank robber by masking himself as a community hero.

Why did transportation occur, why did it end and what was it like living in Australia from 1788 to 1870? Skilfully researched and told in Jim Haynes's warm and witty style, Heroes, Rebels and Radicals of Convict Australia answers these questions and brings to life well-known and unknown figures from Australia's history as a penal settlement. This is the true story of the colonisation of Australia.