An American Girl Anthology: Finding Ourselves in the Pleasant Company Universe
by
Justine Orlovsky-Schnitzler (Editor); K. C. Hysmith (Editor)
Contributions by Mary Berman, Mary M. Burke, Abigail C. Fine, Juliette Holder, KC Hysmith, Mackenzie Kwok, Esther Martin, Hannah Matthews, Janine B. Napierkowski, Justine Orlovsky-Schnitzler, Samantha Pickette, Sheena Roetman-Wynn, Rebekkah Rubin, Marissa J. Spear, Tara Strauch, Cary Tide, and Laura Traister An American Girl Anthology: Finding Ourselves in the Pleasant Company Universe turns American Girl dolls--and the ever-growing ecosystem surrounding them--inside out. Editors Justine Orlovsky-Schnitzler and KC Hysmith, along with an expansive list of contributors across multiple disciplines and within different research areas, explore Pleasant Company (American Girl's parent corporation) and the social and cultural impact the dolls and broader American Girl universe continue to have for generations of American consumers through thoughtful and fun essays. This collection serves as an ode to the democratizing power of the internet and the intoxicating power of nostalgia, while also looking toward the future as the eldest American Girl fans become parents themselves. It is also a critical account of the ways in which American Girl has shaped senses of self-worth and hopes for the future, securing a base of lifelong consumers, and also serves as a love letter to the kids we collectively used to be. Along the way, readers will take seriously American Girl's influence and place within larger cultural conversations. They will find essays focusing on topics as diverse as food and historical recipes in American Girl publications, the advent of "tag yourself" memes, the struggle to find authentic and long-lasting Asian American representation within the pages of the American Girl catalog, and the enduring power of The Care and Keeping of You as a resource for finding joy in our bodies.
ISBN: 9781496858061
Publication Date: 2025-05-15
The Athlete's NIL Playbook : The Complete Guide to Owning and Profiting from Your Name, Image, and Likeness.
by
Kristi Dosh
The definitive guide for athletes to understand and earn from name, image, and likeness (NIL) rights The first comprehensive guide designed to help college, high school, and youth athletes navigate the name, image, and likeness (NIL) rights they've gained since 2021, The Athlete's NIL Playbook walks readers through NIL rules, opportunities, and red flags, showing them how to build a personal brand, find deals, reach out to companies, and negotiate terms. Along with real-life examples, exercises, and pitch templates, this book includes case studies from college and high school athletes who have successfully navigated this burgeoning market: the Cavinder Twins, Olivia Dunne, Travis Hunter, Chase Griffin, Emily Cole, and many more. Written by Kristi Dosh, a seasoned sports business reporter and founder of a nationally-recognized news platform covering the business of college sports, this book covers aspects of NIL including: The types of opportunities available (social media marketing, lessons, camps/clinics, merchandise, personal appearances, and more) Whether you need an agent or not, and how to find the right one if you do Working with third parties like collectives and marketplaces and protecting/registering your own intellectual property A true playbook for leveraging and capitalizing on NIL monetization opportunities, The Athlete's NIL Playbook is an essential read for athletes and parents seeking to ensure athletic success is matched with lucrative financial and career opportunities that can go far beyond graduation.
ISBN: 1394354061
Publication Date: 2025-06-19
The Future Boardroom : How to Transform in Turbulent Times.
by
Helle Bank Jorgensen
" A significant rethink of what is required of boards and board members to effectively execute their oversight mandate." Ronald O' Hanley, chairman and CEO, State Street At a time when many corporate leaders are turning away from progressive environmental and social policies, does this mean that the drive for corporate sustainability has crashed and burned?Helle Bank Jorgensen, who advises corporate boards around the world on how to deal with turbulent times, says the answer is a resounding No. Corporations still face urgent demands from regulators, politicians, customers, and other stakeholders to clean up their environmental behaviour and treat people fairly. This gives board members the complicated task of steering organizations that are facing conflicting demands from many quarters.This book, with insights from some of the world's top executives and board leaders, shows how boards should operate to deal with these unprecedented challenges, and how they can work better.
ISBN: 9781998841233
Publication Date: 2025-05-22
Newly Published (2025-2026) Print Books
Abundance
by
Ezra Klein; Derek Thompson
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "A terrific book...Powerful and persuasive." --Fareed Zakaria "Spectacular...Offers a comprehensive indictment of the current problems and a clear path forward...Klein and Thompson usher in a mood shift. They inspire hope and enlarge the imagination." --David Brooks, The New York Times "A raging political fad has taken over the Democratic Party....The Abundance movement cuts across the party's ideological fissures....Democratic politicians are rushing to embrace the new mantra." --The Wall Street Journal From bestselling authors and journalistic titans Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, Abundance is a once-in-a-generation, paradigm-shifting call to renew a politics of plenty, face up to the failures of liberal governance, and abandon the chosen scarcities that have deformed American life. To trace the history of the twenty-first century so far is to trace a history of unaffordability and shortage. After years of refusing to build sufficient housing, America has a national housing crisis. After years of limiting immigration, we don't have enough workers. Despite decades of being warned about the consequences of climate change, we haven't built anything close to the clean-energy infrastructure we need. Ambitious public projects are finished late and over budget--if they are ever finished at all. The crisis that's clicking into focus now has been building for decades--because we haven't been building enough. Abundance explains that our problems today are not the results of yesteryear's villains. Rather, one generation's solutions have become the next generation's problems. Rules and regulations designed to solve the problems of the 1970s often prevent urban-density and green-energy projects that would help solve the problems of the 2020s. Laws meant to ensure that government considers the consequences of its actions have made it too difficult for government to act consequentially. In the last few decades, our capacity to see problems has sharpened while our ability to solve them has diminished. Progress requires facing up to the institutions in life that are not working as they need to. It means, for liberals, recognizing when the government is failing. It means, for conservatives, recognizing when the government is needed. In a book exploring how we can move from a liberalism that not only protects and preserves but also builds, Klein and Thompson trace the political, economic, and cultural barriers to progress and propose a path toward a politics of abundance. At a time when movements of scarcity are gaining power in country after country, this is an answer that meets the challenges of the moment while grappling honestly with the fury so many rightfully feel.
ISBN: 9781668023488
Publication Date: 2025-03-18
Bad company : private equity and the death of the American dream
by
Megan Greenwell
*ONE OF AV CLUB'S BEST BOOKS OF 2025* "[An] indictment of an industry that has cannily tilted the playing field in its favor. Bad Company details how clichéd abstractions like 'consolidation' and 'efficiency' have given cover to real betrayals." - The New York Times A timely work of singular reportage and a damning indictment of the private equity industry told through the stories of four American workers whose lives and communities were upended by the ruinous effects of private equity takeovers. Private equity runs our country, yet few Americans have any idea how ingrained it is in their lives. Private equity controls our hospitals, daycare centers, supermarket chains, voting machine manufacturers, local newspapers, nursing home operators, fertility clinics, and prisons. The industry even manages highways, municipal water systems, fire departments, emergency medical services, and owns a growing swath of commercial and residential real estate. Private equity executives, meanwhile, are not only among the wealthiest people in American society, but have grown to become modern-day barons with outsized influence on our politics and legislation. CEOs of firms like Blackstone, Carlyle, KKR, and Apollo are rewarded with seats in the Senate and on the boards of the country's most august institutions; meanwhile, entire communities are hollowed out as a result of their buyouts. Workers lose their jobs. Communities lose their institutions. Only private equity wins. Acclaimed journalist Megan Greenwell's Bad Company unearths the hidden story of private equity by examining the lives of four American workers that were devastated as private equity upended their employers and communities: a Toys R Us floor supervisor, a rural doctor, a local newspaper journalist, and an affordable housing organizer. Taken together, their individual experiences also pull back the curtain on a much larger project: how private equity reshaped the American economy to serve its own interests, creating a new class of billionaires while stripping ordinary people of their livelihoods, their health care, their homes, and their sense of security. In the tradition of deeply human reportage like Matthew Desmond's Evicted, Megan Greenwell pulls back the curtain on shadowy multibillion dollar private equity firms, telling a larger story about how private equity is reshaping the economy, disrupting communities, and hollowing out the very idea of the American dream itself. Timely and masterfully told, Bad Company is a forceful rebuke of America's most consequential, yet least understood economic forces.
ISBN: 9780063299351
Publication Date: 2025-06-10
Becoming You
by
Suzy Welch
An inspiring, wise and highly practical method for discovering your true self and identifying the fulfilling career meant just for you. No matter where we are in our lives, be it atop the heights of achievement or just setting out on our journey, we've all had that moment where we've wondered, What is my purpose? What was I born to do? The answer can feel just within our grasp or as far off as the horizon. Either way, how in the world do we get there? Enter Becoming You, a joyful, deeply researched, and immediately applicable step-by-step guidebook to help you answer that very question. Original, research-driven, and transformative, Becoming You is based on the widely acclaimed class at NYU Stern School of Business taught by Professor Suzy Welch, a three-time New York Times-bestselling author, Top 5 career podcast host, CEO advisor, and tech innovator. Becoming You opens with a shot across the bow of what Professor Welch calls the "happiness industrial complex" and its platitudes about joy and optimism. Happiness, she argues, isn't a goal to chase at all--it's an outcome. And not an outcome of manifesting or mindset-molding, but of doing the deep, often difficult inner work of building a meaningful, productive, and connected life. Here Professor Welch lays out a practical and accessible 13-part methodology designed to help readers do just that. Developed over years of research, data analysis, and extensive testing, the Becoming You method teaches you who you are when you're standing still, so that when you get moving, you know exactly which way to go. It's about building the bridge between the life you're living and the life you want, can, and should be living. In the lexicon of Becoming You, it is about finding your "Area of Transcendence," which is made possible when: You live according to your deepest, most authentic value You're aligned with your strongest and most unique aptitudes Your work is economically viable, and calls to you emotionally, economically, or both Funny, warm, deeply personal, sometimes tough, and always refreshingly honest, Becoming You is packed with gritty real-life stories, thought-provoking exercises, and heart-opening activities. It's a book with the proven power to change lives--turning fear and uncertainty about the future into confidence and a clear path forward.
ISBN: 9780063418608
Publication Date: 2025-05-06
The Black Family Who Built America: The McKinssacks, Two Centuries of Daring Pioneers
by
Cheryl McKissack Daniel; Nick Chiles (As told to)
The riveting story of the McKissack family--the founders of the leading Black design and construction firm in the United States, from its beginnings in the mid-1800s to its thriving status today--in a moving celebration of resilience and innovation. Captured in his native West Africa and enslaved on American shores by a North Carolina plantation owner, Moses McKissack I began to build his way to emancipation right from the start. Becoming an enslaved craftsman, he picked up the trade his family would become famous for in the earliest years of the 19th century, passing his learnings down to his children and seeing them off to freedom after the Civil War. The family would settle in Tennessee, getting its bearings in the building trades despite rampant discrimination, establishing a foothold that now sees its latest generations working at the absolute peak of its industry. The family's fingerprints have been left all across the United States, spanning from Reconstruction to contemporary times, through projects like the Morris Memorial Building, Capers C.M.E. Church, John F. Kennedy International Airport, and Philadelphia's Lincoln Financial Field. Here, Cheryl McKissack Daniel, CEO and president of McKissack & McKissack, reveals the full fascinating story of her family. So much more than an exploration of architectural achievements, The Black Family Who Built America is also a compelling illustration of how history rhymes and reverberates, and a celebration of the human spirit's ability to overcome adversity and drive change. From Moses's humble beginnings to Cheryl's current role as a trailblazer and champion of diversity, the family's journey underscores the importance of perseverance, innovation, and strategic vision in shaping a legacy that continues to inspire and impact the construction industry.
ISBN: 9781668033999
Publication Date: 2025-08-12
Consumed: How Big Brands Got Us Hooked on Plastic.
by
Saabira Chaudhuri
LONGLISTED FOR THE FINANCIAL TIMES BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR 'This book will change the way you see the world and could change the world itself' CHRIS VAN TULLEKEN, BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF ULTRA- PROCESSED PEOPLE 'Chaudhuri does a mighty job of showing how plastic came to take over our lives, and why we have repeatedly failed to curb it' FINANCIAL TIMES 'A must read for anyone who buys anything plastic' MICHAEL MOSS, PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF SALT, SUGAR, FAT 'Sharp research and a gripping story' BEN COHEN AND JERRY GREENFIELD, CO-FOUNDERS OF BEN & JERRY'S 'Fantastic reporting! This book will entertain you even as it raises your blood pressure' BILL MCKIBBEN, BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE END OF THE WORLD 'Eye-popping, engaging and rigorous' MIKE BERNERS-LEE, AUTHOR OF A CLIMATE OF TRUTH 'An important and engaging read' ADAM ALTER, BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF IRRESISTIBLE Over the past seventy years, McDonald's, Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble, Unilever and other consumer goods makers have harnessed single-use plastics to turbocharge their profits. They've poured billions of dollars into convincing us we need disposable diapers, cups, bags, bottles, shampoo sachets and ultra-processed foods. We were never clamoring for any of this. But this shift towards disposability has fundamentally transformed our daily habits. Think of toddlers kept in disposable diapers for far longer than their parents wore cloth, our obsession with bottled water and our insatiable appetite for convenient snacks and coffee. While at first we shaped plastics, somewhere along the way, plastics took over and began shaping us. Like any addiction, our plastic habit has consequences. It is damaging our climate and biodiversity and we are only just starting to understand its effect on our own health. How did plastic take over our lives? And why have we been unable to rein it in? In investigating how we got here, Consumed arms us to make better decisions about where we go next. It is only by understanding this history that we will stop accepting the same failed solutions and demand better from the brands that got us hooked on plastic in the first place.
ISBN: 9781785120329
Publication Date: 2025-09-23
False Claims: One Insider's Impossible Battle Against Big Pharma Corruption
by
Lisa Pratta
For the first time, Lisa Pratta shares her story of going undercover as a whistleblower at a Big Pharma company and standing up to systemic corruption, greed, and harassment--all while caring for her special needs son as a single mother. When Lisa Pratta started her career as a pharmaceutical sales representative, she had no idea of the industry's depravity, and the endemic sexual harassment, bribery, and fraud she witnessed only got worse over time. Lisa hoped that might all change when she landed her dream job with a small company called Questcor which sold a drug that, when prescribed correctly, could help patients with multiple sclerosis. Yet Questcor realized they could make more money prescribing the drug incorrectly. While the FDA had approved the drug for two- to three-week treatments, Questcor was training, encouraging, and incentivizing its sales force to push a five-day treatment plan not backed by any science--and arbitrarily increased the drug's price to $28,000 for a single vial. Pratta recognized this as being not only dangerous for patients, but also highly illegal. As the single mother of a special-needs son, Lisa couldn't risk losing her job--but her moral compass also wouldn't allow her to stay silent. Thus began her double life as a whistleblower. For nearly a decade she clandestinely fed information to the Department of Justice. Resisting internal pressure to succumb to Questcor's illegal sales tactics, she was constantly harassed by supervisors and in danger of being fired, while the government offered her no protection in the event her betrayal was discovered. This incredible story offers an insider's look at the unscrupulous sales methods used by America's corrupt pharmaceutical industry, analyzes the levers they pull to extract ludicrous profits from the sick and dying, and is a page-turning portrait of one woman's epic fight against Big Pharma and a mother's heroic struggle to protect her family.
ISBN: 9780063371101
Publication Date: 2025-06-03
The Haves and Have-Yachts: Dispatches on the Ultrarich
by
Evan Osnos
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From the National Book Award-winning author Evan Osnos comes a timely and provocative collection of essays exploring American oligarchy and the culture of excess, providing a wry, unfiltered look at how the ultrarich shape--and sometimes warp--our social and political landscape. The ultrarich hold more of America's wealth than they did in the heyday of the Carnegies and Rockefellers. Here, Evan Osnos's incisive reportage yields an unforgettable portrait of the tactics and obsessions driving this new Gilded Age, in which superyachts, luxury bunkers, elite tax dodges, and a torrent of political donations bespeak staggering disparities of wealth and power. With deft storytelling and meticulous reporting, this is a book about the indulgences, incentives, and psychological distortions that define our economic age. In each essay, Osnos delves into a world that is rarely visible, from the outrageous to the fabulous to the ridiculous: a private wealth manager who broke with members of an American dynasty and spilled their secrets; the pop stars who perform at lavish parties for thirteen-year-olds; the status anxieties that spill out of marinas in Monaco and Palm Beach like real-world episodes of Succession and The White Lotus; the ethos behind the largest Ponzi scheme in Hollywood history; the confessions of disgraced titans in a "white-collar support group." A celebrated political reporter, Osnos delves into the unprecedented Washington influence of Silicon Valley and Wall Street, drawing on in-depth interviews with Mark Zuckerberg and other billionaires, about their power and the explosive backlash it stirs. Originally published in The New Yorker, these essays have been revised and expanded to deliver an unflinching portrait of raw ambition, unimaginable fortune, and the rise of America's modern oligarchy. Osnos's essays are a wake-up call--a case against complacency in the face of unchecked excess, as the choices of the ultrarich ripple through our lives. Entertaining, unsettling, and eye-opening, The Haves and the Have-Yachts couldn't be more relevant to today's world.
ISBN: 9781668204481
Publication Date: 2025-06-03
Hoodwinked: how marketers use the same tactics as cults
by
Mara Einstein; Douglas Rushkoff (Foreword by)
Powerhouse marketing expert, narrator of Netflix's Buy Now documentary, shows how today's biggest brands are using cult-like tactics to capture not just your wallet, but your devotion. From viral leggings to must-have apps, Dr. Mara Einstein exposes the hidden parallels between cult manipulation and modern marketing strategies in this eye-opening investigation. Drawing from her unique background as both a former MTV marketing executive and a respected media studies professor, she reveals how companies weaponize psychology to transform casual customers into devoted followers. This groundbreaking book uncovers: How social media platforms use anxiety-inducing algorithms to keep you trapped in a purchase-panic cycle The secret playbook marketers use to create "brand religions" around everyday products Why even the most rational consumers fall prey to scarcity marketing and manufactured FOMO Practical strategies to break free from manipulative digital marketing tactics With compelling real-world examples and insights from industry insiders, Hoodwinked equips you with the knowledge to recognize and resist these sophisticated manipulation techniques. Dr. Einstein's expertise has been featured in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Harvard Business Review, making her the perfect guide through the maze of modern marketing manipulation. Break free from the cult of consumerism--discover how to make mindful choices in an increasingly manipulative digital marketplace. "Easy to read, and such a good peek behind the curtain of for-profit companies and the ways they influence and manipulate us," --Daniella Young, author of Uncultured
ISBN: 9781493086153
Publication Date: 2025-02-04
Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the Indie Video Game Industry
by
Devon Gidley
The indie video game industry attracts an enormous amount of enthusiasm and curiosity, blending cutting edge tech, a creative industries environment and a certain rebellious energy. It is idealised as a world where creative and technical ability is given free reign and can yield enormous financial and reputational rewards. But what is it really like to enter and work in this space? And how do the universal aspects of organisation, including teamwork, leadership and competition, manifest in this unique environment? By embedding himself in just such a hub, the author was able to explore the experiences and interactions of ten indie game companies, four mentors, various funders, and two interns over a one-year period. The narrative is structured around six critical events: the introduction of newcomers, change in organizational rules, departure of a dominant social actor, self-inflicted crisis, introduction of a powerful manager, and external crisis. A process view shows how these events can hinder or accelerate creative production. Going beyond success stories or failure statistics, this book analyses the organizational and entrepreneurial strength of this approach, which combines aspects of the incubator and accelerator models for start-up development. At its heart though, this book attempts to give a fleshed out and analytical picture of what it is really like to work in the indie video game industry and offers practical lessons for indie-game developers.
ISBN: 9783031808760
Publication Date: 2025-05-24
The Little Book of Data: Understanding the Powerful Analytics that Fuel AI, Make or Break Careers, and Could Just End Up Saving the World.
by
Justin Evans
Data is not about number crunching. It's about ideas. And when used properly (read: ethically), it is the problem solver of our time. Yet many savvy people seem to be in data denial: they don't think they need to understand data, or it's too complicated, or worse, using it is somehow unethical. Yet as data and AI (just an accelerated way to put data to work) move to the center of professional and civic life, every professional and citizen needs to harness this power. In The Little Book of Data, each chapter illustrates one of the core principles of solving problems with data by featuring an expert who has solved a big problem with data--from the entrepreneur creating a "loneliness score" to the epidemiologist trying to save lives by finding disease "hotspots." The stories are told in a fast-moving, vivid, sometimes comic style, and cover a wide frame of reference from adtech to climate tech, the bubonic plague, tiny submarines, genomics, railroads, bond ratings, and meat grading. (That's right. Meat.) Along the way Evans injects lessons from his own career journey and offers practical thought-starters for readers to apply to their own organizations. By reading The Little Book of Data, you will achieve the fluency to apply your data superpowers to your own mission and challenges--and you will have fun along the way. You will be, in other words, a data person.
ISBN: 9781400248353
Publication Date: 2025-06-03
No More Tears: The Dark Secrets of Johnson & Johnson
by
Gardiner Harris
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * An explosive, deeply reported exposé of Johnson & Johnson, one of America's oldest and most trusted pharmaceutical companies--from an award-winning investigative journalist "A damning portrait."--Associated Press "A page-turning drama that raises life-or-death questions about the world's largest healthcare conglomerate."--Jonathan Eig, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of King: A Life One day in 2004, Gardiner Harris, a pharmaceutical reporter for The New York Times, was early for a flight and sat down at an airport bar. He struck up a conversation with the woman on the barstool next to him, who happened to be a drug sales rep for Johnson & Johnson. Her horrific story about unethical sales practices and the devastating impact they'd had on her family fundamentally changed the nature of how Harris would cover the company--and the entire pharmaceutical industry--for the Times. His subsequent investigations and ongoing research since that very first conversation led to this book--a blistering exposé of a trusted American institution and the largest healthcare conglomerate in the world. Harris takes us light-years away from the company's image as the child-friendly "baby company" as he uncovers reams of evidence showing decades of deceitful and dangerous corporate practices that have threatened the lives of millions. He covers multiple disasters: lies and cover-ups regarding the link of Johnson's Baby Powder to cancer, the surprising dangers of Tylenol, a criminal campaign to sell antipsychotics that have cost countless lives, a popular drug used to support cancer patients that actually increases the risk that cancer tumors will grow, and deceptive marketing that accelerated opioid addictions through their product Duragesic (fentanyl) that rival even those of the Sacklers and Purdue Pharma. Filled with shocking and infuriating but utterly necessary revelations, No More Tears is a landmark work of investigative journalism that lays bare the deeply rooted corruption behind the image of babies bathing with a smile.
ISBN: 9780593229866
Publication Date: 2025-04-08
Power Corrupts: Cleaning Up American's Biggest Industry
by
Richard Munson
An investigation into the corruption of the electric industry and its role in polluting our planet. Electric utilities have faced a few scandals over the past century or so, but corruption is growing as the power industry's conventional business model is falling apart. Modern technologies challenge their monopoly mindsets and outmoded generators. Threatened utilities, in turn, gun for taxpayer- and ratepayer-funded subsidies, which they increasingly seek through fraud-filled, underhanded schemes. Corruption, however, can be challenged. In Power Corrupts: Cleaning Up America's Biggest Industry, Richard Munson reports on blocked bailouts and options for increased transparency and ethics by exploring well-known scandals that have dominated headlines about the energy sector. Munson highlights how power corruption proliferates, enabling outmoded generators to waste money, spew unnecessary pollution, and block clean-energy innovations.Legal cases profiled include Chuck Jones of FirstEnergy, Anne Pramaggiore of Commonwealth Energy, and more. How did we get here? While reviewing the history of utility regulation, Munson argues misconduct is on the rise because modern technologies threaten power monopolies' reliance on large nuclear and coal units. As solar and wind costs fall, power monopolies use bribes to survive. Customers and citizens are paying not only for the electricity they use but also the taxes that pay to regulate, subsidize, and investigate utility companies. They should demand more power. Power Corrupts calls for competition and transparency, serving as an essential primer for readers interested in the dark history of the electric industry.
ISBN: 9781538199398
Publication Date: 2025-09-04
She's the Boss: The Rise of Women's Entrepreneurship Since World War II.
by
Debra Michals
In the years after World War II, as women were being pushed from wartime jobs for returning soldiers, government and business leaders--and women themselves--saw small business ownership as a viable economic solution. In just five years, US women owned nearly a million of the nation's businesses. In the decades since, women have moved increasingly into business ownership, often outpacing male start-ups so that today, they own more than fourteen million businesses, 40 percent of all US companies. She's the Boss chronicles the forces that made entrepreneurship attractive to women. In rich detail, Debra Michals shares the stories of the countless women of all races, ethnicities, genders, and abilities who contributed to this important history. The book also explores the intersection of women's personal choices within changing social, political, and economic factors, such as the rising divorce rates of the 1960s and 1970s, ongoing workplace and credit discrimination, civil and women's rights activism and activist entrepreneurs, the 1970s recession and 1980s "Reagan Revolution," and more recently, the internet, crowd-funding, and social entrepreneurship.
ISBN: 9781978818163
Publication Date: 2025-04-15
Sweet and Deadly: How Coca-Cola Spreads Misinformation and Makes Us Sick
by
Murray Carpenter
How Coca-Cola makes Americans sick-and makes sure we don't know it. If we knew that Coca-Cola was among the deadliest products in our diet, would we continue drinking it in such great quantities? The Coca-Cola Company has gone to extraordinary lengths to make sure we don't find out, as this damning expose makes patently clear. Marshaling the findings of extensive research and deep investigative reporting, Murray Carpenter describes in Sweet and Deadly the damage Coke does to America's health-and the remarkable campaign of disinformation conducted by the company to keep consumers in the dark. Sugar-sweetened beverages are the single item in the American diet that most contributes to the epidemic of chronic disease-in particular, obesity, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease-and Coca-Cola is America's favorite sugar-sweetened beverage, by far. Carpenter details how the Coca-Cola corporation's sophisticated shadow network has masterfully spread disinformation for decades to hide the health risks of its product from consumers-risks disproportionately borne by Black, brown, and low-income communities. Working from a playbook of obfuscation and pseudoscience that has worked well for other harmful products, from tobacco and trans fats to opioids, Coca-Cola has managed to maintain an aura of goodness and happiness. This eye-opening book finally and fully reveals the truth behind that aura.
ISBN: 9780262049504
Publication Date: 2025-03-25
Uncredited: Women's Overlooked, Misattributed, and Stolen Work
by
Allison Tyra
Containing the histories of over 600 overlooked or disregarded women, Uncredited is a testament to women's perseverance and the recognition they deserve for their accomplishments. Women's accomplishments across history are showcased as aberrations or surprising facts. Little thought is often given to the reasons why most of our lauded scientists, reporters, sports stars, politicians, and businesspeople all seem to be men. Uncredited proves that not only have there been hundreds of ground-breaking women in all professions, but that their accomplishments have been overlooked, denigrated, or downright repressed by their male colleagues or historians. Uncredited explores why women have not been properly acknowledged for their accomplishments, both historically and today. This book combines research and statistics with the stories of more than 600 women, and is both an academic source and a fascinating read. Prepare to be frustrated with the history you've been denied but also inspired by these hidden trailblazers.
ISBN: 9781998076635
Publication Date: 2025-05-06
Other Requests
Pattern Breakers: Why Some Start-Ups Change the Future
by
Mike Maples; Peter Ziebelman; Mike Maples
Based on extensive research and real-world examples, this book upends accepted wisdom about how to achieve success when launching a startup or creating a new product. The breakthrough concepts of Pattern Breakers come from the observations of Mike Maples Jr., a seasoned venture capitalist, who noticed something strange. Start-ups like Twitter, Twitch, and Lyft had achieved extraordinary success despite their disregard for "best practices." In contrast, other startups deemed highly promising often failed, even when they seemed to do everything right. Seeking answers, Maples and coauthor Peter Ziebelman set out to discover the hidden forces that drive extraordinary start-up success. Pattern-breaking success, they reveal, demands a different mindset and actions to harness developments others miss or that may, at first, seem crazy. Pattern Breakers is filled with firsthand storytelling about initial interactions with some of the most transformative start-ups of recent times. Maples and Ziebelman challenge us to rethink how to transcend the ordinary and achieve the extraordinary.
ISBN: 9781541704350
Publication Date: 2024-07-09
Reimagining Business History
by
Philip Scranton; Patrick Fridenson
A vigorous call for rethinking the field of business history. Business history needs a shake-up, Philip Scranton and Patrick Fridenson argue, as many businesses go global and cultural contexts become critical. Reimagining Business Historyprods practitioners to take new approaches to entrepreneurial intentions, company scale, corporate strategies, local infrastructure, employee well-being, use of resources, and long-term environmental consequences. During the past half century, the history of American business became an unusually active and rewarding field of scholarship, partly because of the primacy of postwar American capital, at home and abroad, and the rise of a consumer culture but also because of the theoretical originality of Alfred D. Chandler. In a field long given over to banal company histories and biographies of tycoons, Chandler took the subject seriously enough to ask about the large patterns and causes of corporate success. Chandler and his students found the richest material for theorizing about the course of business history in large companies and their institutional structures and cultures. Meantime, Scranton and others found smaller firms, those specializing in batch work as opposed to mass-produced goods, far closer to the norm and more telling. Scranton and Fridenson believe that the time has come for a sweeping rethinking of the field, its materials, and the kinds of questions its practitioners should be asking. How can this field develop in an age of global markets, growing information technology, and diminishing resources? A transnational collaboration between two senior scholars, Reimagining Business Historyoffers direction in forty-four short, pithy essays.
ISBN: 9781421408637
Publication Date: 2013-04-15
Thrive : Maximizing Well-Being in the Age of AI.
by
Ravi Bapna; Anindya Ghose
How AI can positively impact so many aspects of our daily lives, from health and wellness to work, education, and home life. Artificial intelligence (AI) is a powerful general-purpose technology that is reshaping the modern economy, but misperceptions about AI stand in the way of harnessing it for the betterment of humanity. In Thrive, Ravi Bapna and Anindya Ghose counter the backlash by showcasing how AI is positively influencing the aspects of our daily lives that we care about most- our health and wellness, relationships, education, the workplace, and domestic life. In the process the authors help explain the underlying technology and give people the agency they need to shape the debate around how we should regulate AI to maximize its benefits and minimize its risks. Bringing over two decades of experience with cutting-edge research, consulting, executive coaching, and advising to bear on the subject, Bapna and Ghose demystify the technology of AI itself. They offer a novel "House of AI" framework that encompasses traditional analytics, generative AI, and fair and ethical deployment of AI. Using examples from everyday life, they showcase how the modern AI-powered ecosystem fundamentally improves the emotional, physical, and material well-being of regular people across the globe. Thrive's mission is to educate the public about AI, shape realistic expectations, and foster informed discussions about a fast-emerging AI-shaped society.
ISBN: 9780262049313
Publication Date: 2024-10-08
BUSN 4897W. Honors Leadership Seminar
Chilies and Chances: Lao Gan Ma and Her Spicy Empire
by
Hua Wu
Chilies and Chances: Lao Gan Ma and Her Spicy Empire invites you into the fascinating world of Tao Huabi, the visionary entrepreneur behind China' s iconic chili sauce brand, Lao Gan Ma. In a richly detailed narrative spanning twelve chapters, this authoritative account delves into the untold story of Tao Huabi' s journey from a modest beginning to the helm of a chili sauce empire. From the origins of the name Lao Gan Ma to the daring entry into the chili oil industry, the book chronicles the triumphs and challenges of turning Lao Gan Ma into a global sensation, unlocking the secrets behind its unprecedented success. Witness the evolution from a street-side stall to a privately-owned enterprise with a staggering revenue exceeding 20 billion yuan, transforming from a traditional " small workshop" into a globally acclaimed spice empire. Tao Huabi' s legendary odyssey and the metamorphosis of Lao Gan Ma weave a tapestry of China' s private enterprise, encapsulating over three decades of growth, resilience, and grandeur.
ISBN: 9781487812645
Publication Date: 2024-09-30
Dirtbag Billionaire: How Yvon Chouinard Built Patagonia, Made A Fortune and Gave It All Away
by
David Gelles
New York Times reporter and bestselling author David Gelles reveals how Patagonia became a global leader in doing well by doing good and how other companies are adopting its principles. This is the inside story of one of the most extraordinary brands in the corporate world, the rare company that is driven by environmental activism instead of cutthroat capitalism. Founded in 1973, Patagonia has grown into a wildly popular producer of jackets, hats, and fleece vests, with a cultlike following among hardcore alpinists and Wall Street traders alike, posting sales of more than $1 billion a year. But it's not just the clothes that make Patagonia unique. For decades, the company has distinguished itself as a singular beacon for socially responsible business, the rare company that can legitimately claim to be doing its damnedest to make the world a better place, while also making a profit. From its early efforts to take exemplary care of its employees, to its extensive work trying to clean up its supply chain, to its controversial activism, Patagonia has set itself apart from its peers with one unorthodox decision after another, proving that there is another way to do capitalism. At the heart of the story is Patagonia's founder, the legendary rock climber Yvon Chouinard. A perennial outsider who forged one of the most impressive resumes in the outdoor world, Chouinard also established himself as a pivotal figure in the history of American business. Guided by his anti-authoritarian streak and his unwavering commitment to preserving the natural world, Patagonia came to exert a powerful influence on other companies, paving the way for a new era of social and environmental responsibility. He started out as a dirtbag--a term affectionately bestowed on poor, itinerant outdoorsmen so uninterested in material possessions they are happy to sleep in the dirt--and he became a billionaire. Chouinard also proved that there was another way to be a philanthropist. In the twilight of his career, he gave away Patagonia, renouncing his wealth and committing all its future profits to fighting the climate crisis. Drawing on exclusive access to Chouinard and the Patagonia team, Dirtbag Billionaire offers new insights into the key moments that informed their priorities, shaped the company, and sent ripples across the corporate world.
ISBN: 9781668032268
Publication Date: 2025-09-09
The Mysterious Mr. Nakamoto: A Fifteen-Year Quest to Unmask the Secret Genius Behind Crypto
by
Benjamin Wallace
A "highly entertaining" (The Wall Street Journal) investigation into the mysterious identity of Bitcoin's creator and a deep dive into crypto's utopian origin story--from The New York Times bestselling author of The Billionaire's Vinegar "Could be the best mystery story of the past twenty years."--James Patterson "Superb."--David Grann, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Wager, Killers of the Flower Moon, and The Lost City of Z In October 2008, someone going by the name Satoshi Nakamoto posted a white paper outlining "a peer-to-peer electronic cash system" called Bitcoin to an arcane listserv populated by Cypherpunks. No one in the community had heard of Nakamoto, and just as people were starting to wonder who he was, he vanished. As the years passed, and the scope of Nakamoto's achievement became clear, the truth of his identity grew into the greatest unsolved mystery of our time. The Mysterious Mr. Nakamoto traces Benjamin Wallace's attempt to unmask the figure behind the currency and the world it wrought. Nakamoto's Bitcoin at first seemed destined to fulfill the dreams of fringe 1990s utopians for a currency set free from governments and big banks. Yet after he disappeared, his creation took on a strange new life in the financial markets, where rampant speculation fueled a vision of crypto as a potential windfall, inviting charlatans and scammers and opening a vast gulf between Bitcoin's idealistic origins and its troubled reputation. But who was Nakamoto? Whoever he was could rightly claim to have invented one of the most important technologies of the new century. And Nakamoto was a billionaire--his Bitcoin wallet held an untouched eleven-figure fortune waiting to be claimed. With the same propulsive-narrative flair that made his New York Times bestseller The Billionaire's Vinegar an instant success, Benjamin Wallace presents a page-turning work of investigative journalism. Tracking leads from London to Oslo to Los Angeles, from coastal Australia to the Arizona desert, he takes readers through a rogues' gallery tour of Nakamoto suspects--from benevolent geniuses like cryptographer Hal Finney to difficult ones like a reclusive polymath known to his followers only as Jim; from the mercurial Australian Craig Wright, who claims to be Nakamoto, to a secret team at the National Security Agency. With the forensic skill of Sherlock Holmes and the storytelling verve of Arthur Conan Doyle, Wallace follows the trail of computer code and personal writings to the heart of the Nakamoto mystery while interrogating the very nature of mystery itself.
ISBN: 9780593594025
Publication Date: 2025-03-18
Riding the Roller Coaster: A History of the Chrysler Corporation
by
Hyde, Charles K., 1945-
Chrysler has had an impressive list of technological "firsts" throughout the years?including the Chrysler Six of 1924 and front-wheel-drive vehicles in the '70s and '80s, to name just two. While the company has catered well to a variety of consumers, it has also come to the brink of financial ruin more than once in its seventy-five-year history.
ISBN: 9780814352205
Publication Date: 2025
Source Code: My Beginnings
by
Bill Gates
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * The origin story of one of the most influential and transformative business leaders and philanthropists of the modern age "A surprisingly candid memoir of the Microsoft mogul's early years...Reading this book feels like watching someone take a well-known black-and-white sketch, fill in the details, and paint it in vivid color." --GeekWire Everyone is programmed a little differently, and Bill Gates' unique insight led to business triumphs that are now widely known: the twenty-year-old who dropped out of Harvard to start a software company that became an industry giant and changed the way the world works and lives; the billionaire many times over who turned his attention to philanthropic pursuits to address climate change, global health, and U.S. education. Source Code is not about Microsoft or the Gates Foundation or the future of technology. It's the human, personal story of how Bill Gates became who he is today: his childhood, his early passions and pursuits. It's the story of his principled grandmother and ambitious parents, his first deep friendships and the sudden death of his best friend; of his struggles to fit in and his discovery of a world of coding and computers in the dawn of a new era; of embarking in his early teens on a path that took him from midnight escapades at a nearby computer center to his college dorm room, where he sparked a revolution that would change the world. Bill Gates tells this, his own story, for the first time: wise, warm, revealing, it's a fascinating portrait of an American life.
ISBN: 9780593801581
Publication Date: 2025-02-04
Notes
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