Finance Biography

In a career that has seen him face coup leaders in his native Ivory Coast and lead some of the most prestigious Western financial institutions, Tidjane Thiam has blazed a trail through African and European politics and business. After a childhood in tumultuous west and north Africa, Thiam broke...

In 2006, Ben S. Bernanke was appointed chair of the Federal Reserve, capping a meteoric trajectory from a rural South Carolina childhood to professorships at Stanford and Princeton, to public service in Washington's halls of power. There would be no time to celebrate, however - the burst of the housing bubble in 2007 set off a domino effect that would bring the global financial system to the brink of meltdown.

From the author of the eye-opening and controversial essay on poverty that was read by millions comes the real-life Nickel and Dimed, and Linda Tirado explains what it’s like to be working poor in America, and why poor people make the decisions they do. We in America have certain ideas of...

"[An] extraordinary tale"—Wall Street Journal "Compelling [and] engaging"—Financial Times "Magnificently detailed yet pacy...Think Trading Places meets Wall Street"—Sunday Times (UK) The riveting story of a trading prodigy who amassed $70 million from his childhood bedroom—until the...

Cómo Amazon está cambiando nuestras vidas y lo que han aprendido de ellas las mejores compañías del mundo. Una mirada profunda, reveladora e imparcial al modelo de negocio de Amazon que no sólo ha dominado el mundo, sino que lo está cambiando.

One of the great economists of the 20th century, Milton Friedman has always challenged the prevailing economic orthodoxy. At the same time, his work has become popular because it is engagingly written and because it helps in practical prediction. Thanks to Friedman, money is now regarded as a far more powerful factor than it had been before. It offers the prospect of permanently controlling the inflation that has become the most important economic problem of our age.

Born into one of America's most illustrious trading families, Sam Israel was determined to strike out on his own. After apprenticing with one of the greatest traders of the 1980s, he founded his own fast-growing hedge fund, promising investors extraordinary returns. But it was all an elaborate charade.

A grand and revelatory portrait of Wall Street’s most storied investment bank Wall Street investment banks move trillions of dollars a year, make billions in fees, pay their executives in the tens of millions of dollars. But even among the most powerful firms, Lazard Frères & Co. stood...

From one of the nation's preeminent experts on economic policy, a major reassessment of the foundations of modern economic thinking that explores the profound influence of an until-now unrecognized force—religion. "Friedman has given us an original and brilliant new perspective on the...

THE WILD INSIDE STORY OF CRYPTO'S GET-RICH-QUICK UNDERBELLY Nat Eliason had six months to make as much money as possible before his first child was born. So, he turned to where countless others did in 2021: Crypto. Within a year, he'd made millions writing code holding hundreds of millions of...

John Jacob Astor was the best-known and most important American businessman for more than a half-century. His career encompassed the country's formative economic years from the precarious days following the American Revolution to the emergence of an urban-centered manufacturing economy in the late 1840s.

A guide to the 10 power moves that have built Taylor Swift’s superstardom and empire, from a former Strategist at Harvard Business School’s Institute for Strategy Taylor Swift’s genius is not limited to her singing and songcraft: as the founder of her own multi-billion dollar...

From the collaborators behind the modern business classic All the Devils are Here comes a damning indictment of American capitalism—and the leaders that left us brutally unprepared for a global pandemic In 2020, the novel coronavirus pandemic made it painfully clear that the U.S. could not...

At the height of the roaring 20s, Swedish émigré Ivar Kreuger made a fortune raising money in America and loaning it to Europe in exchange for matchstick monopolies. His enterprise was a rare success story throughout the Great Depression. Yet after Kreuger's suicide in 1932, the true nature of his empire emerged.

Copy This!, Paul Orfalea's inspiring personal story of turning lessons into lemonade, may be the most unusual business memoir ever published. Paul Orfalea struggles mightily to read, to write, and to sit still through business meetings. So what's the problem? By working with the obstacles life...

Banking on It is the firsthand account of one woman's quest to rebuild Britain's broken banking system. After a lengthy career at the top of some of Britain's leading banks, Anne Boden had become disillusioned with the status quo - the financial crash had broken trust in the whole sector, but there seemed to be little appetite to make the most of emerging technologies to revolutionise customer experience. Increasingly frustrated with the inertia within the industry, she decided to shake things up herself by doing something totally radical - setting up her own bank.

A WALL STREET JOURNAL BUSINESS BESTSELLER The riveting inside story of Elon Musk and Tesla's bid to build the world's greatest car—from award-winning Wall Street Journal tech and auto reporter Tim Higgins. “A deeply reported and business-savvy chronicle of Tesla's wild ride.”...

The Target Story will help you understand and adopt the competitive strategies, workplace culture, and daily business practices that enabled the big box store to become the retail giant it is today. In an industry that has seen constant disruption over the last two decades, Target has...

Wouldn't life be better if you were free of the daily grind - the conventional job and boss - and instead, succeeded or failed purely on the merits of your own investment choices? Free Capital is a window into this world. Based on a series of interviews, it outlines the investing strategies, wisdom, and lifestyles of 12 highly successful private investors. Each of them has accumulated £1 million or more - in most cases, considerably more - mainly from stock market investment.

Unorthodox success principles from a billionaire entrepreneur and philanthropist.

Eli Broad's embrace of "unreasonable thinking" has helped him build two Fortune 500 companies, amass personal billions, and use his wealth to create a new approach to philanthropy. He has helped to fund scientific research institutes, K-12 education reform, and some of the world's greatest contemporary art museums. By contrast, "reasonable" people come up with all the reasons something new and different can't be done, because, after all, no one else has done it that way.