Industries & Professions

Steve Jobs

Based on more than forty interviews with Jobs conducted over two years—as well as interviews with more than a hundred family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues—Walter Isaacson has written a riveting story of the roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing.

At a time when America is seeking ways to sustain its innovative edge, and when societies around the world are trying to build digital-age economies, Jobs stands as the ultimate icon of inventiveness and applied imagination. He knew that the best way to create value in the twenty-first century was to connect creativity with technology. He built a company where leaps of the imagination were combined with remarkable feats of engineering.  

Although Jobs cooperated with this book, he asked for no control over what was written nor even the right to read it before it was published. He put nothing off-limits. He encouraged the people he knew to speak honestly. And Jobs speaks candidly, sometimes brutally so, about the people he worked with and competed against. His friends, foes, and colleagues provide an unvarnished view of the passions, perfectionism, obsessions, artistry, devilry, and compulsion for control that shaped his approach to business and the innovative products that resulted.

Driven by demons, Jobs could drive those around him to fury and despair. But his personality and products were interrelated, just as Apple’s hardware and software tended to be, as if part of an integrated system. His tale is instructive and cautionary, filled with lessons about innovation, character, leadership, and values.

Price: $13.00

Platform Get Noticed in a Noisy World

Michael Hyatt, one of the top business bloggers in the world, provides down-to-earth guidance for building and expanding a powerful platform.

To be successful in the market today, you must possess two strategic assets: a compelling product and a meaningful platform. In this step-by-step guide, Michael Hyatt, former CEO and current Chairman of Thomas Nelson Publishers, takes readers behind the scenes, into the new world of social media success. He shows you what best-selling authors, public speakers, entrepreneurs, musicians, and other creatives are doing differently to win customers in today's crowded marketplace. Hyatt speaks from experience. He writes one of the top 800 blogs in the world and has more than 100,000 followers on Twitter. His large and growing platform serves as the foundation for his successful writing, speaking, and consulting practice.

In Platform, Hyatt will teach readers not only how to extend their influence, but also how to monetize it and build a sustainable career. The key? By building a platform. It has never been easier, less expensive, or more possible than right now. . .  The book includes:

  • proven strategies
  • easy-to-replicate formulas
  • practical tips

Social media technologies have changed everything. Now, for the first time in history, non-celebrities can get noticed-and win big!-in an increasingly noisy world.

Endorsements:

"I've known Michael Hyatt for more than a decade, and during thattime I've seen him master just about every social media platform that's hit thescene. He's used blogging, Facebook, Twitter and more to expand his personalplatform from a successful book publisher to a leading national brand of hisown. Trust me, this guy knows what he's talking about-so pay attention!" -DAVE RAMSEY, New York Times Best-selling Author, Host, "The Dave Ramsey Show"

"A generous book from a man who knows what he's talking about.Michael Hyatt has built a platform, and you can too." -SETH GODIN, New York TimesBest-selling Author, We Are All Weird

"Platform is absolutely essential to delivering value. As a big fanof Michael Hyatt, I'm excited he's sharing this with you. Your job? Learn aboutthis and implement it. Your success depends on it." -CHRISBROGAN, President, Human Business Works, New York Times Best-selling Author

"Michael Hyatt is the authority on creating aplatform in our crowded world, and Platform is the definitive,step-by-step guide to building a platform-from the ground up. If you're longingto become a true influencer in this world, Hyatt can teach you how. With Platform,Hyatt's done the near-impossible: create a guide even more useful thanhis wildly popular blog!" -CLAIRE DIAZ ORTIZ, SocialInnovation, Twitter, Inc.

"I have watched Michael Hyatt build his own platform from the groundup to become one of the largest in the world. And he has done so with thestrategies and tips he outlines in this very practical book. Any author,speaker, or small business owner who wants a blueprint for getting the attentionand visibility they want, needs to read this book." -JOHN C. MAXWELL, New York Times Best-sellingAuthor, and Leadership Expert

"Michael Hyatt is a pioneer in social media who is now generouslysharing his 'secrets' with those of us who have been marveling at his successfor many years. Whether you are a seasoned writer, blogger, speaker and socialmedia enthusiast, or just now starting out, this book will help you take thatnext step and begin to build a platform of your own." -DAN T.CATHY, President & COO, Chick-fil-A, Inc.

"In today's world, having an idea isn't enough to land a book orrecord deal, get a movie made or find funding for your startup.  You needa platform: A connected following that's ready to try, buy and spread the word.Final...

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Case Interview Secrets A Former McKinsey Interviewer ...

In Case Interview Secrets, you'll discover step-by-step instructions on how to dominate what many consider to be the most complex, most difficult, and most intimidating corporate job interview in the world—the infamous case interview. Victor Cheng, a former McKinsey management consultant, reveals his proven, insider's method for acing the case interview. Having personally secured job offers from McKinsey, Bain & Company, Monitor, L.E.K, Oliver Wyman, and A.T. Kearney, he has also been a McKinsey case interviewer—providing you with a hands-on, real-world perspective on what it really takes to land job offers.

Cheng’s protégées work in all the major strategy management consulting firms, including McKinsey, The Boston Consulting Group, Bain & Company, Monitor Company, A.T. Kearny, Oliver Wyman, L.E.K, Roland Berger, Accenture, and Deloitte, as well as in the strategic planning departments of numerous Fortune 500 companies. Whether you’re an undergraduate, MBA, PhD, or experienced-hire applicant candidate, you’ll discover:

  • What case interviewers really say about you behind closed doors but wouldn’t dare tell you—until now
  • The subtle yet specific performance differences that separate those who get management consulting offers from those who don’t
  • The 10 biggest mistakes candidates make in case interviews (and how to avoid them)
  • The 3 specific things interviewers expect in the first 5 minutes of a case that often decide the outcome on the spot
  • An insider’s take on what interviewers really look for and why—and how to give them what they want
Price: $21.70

Uplifting Service

A breakthrough book that will surprise, delight, and uplift you,your organization, and your team. Ron Kaufman takes you on a journey into the new world of service. Through dynamic case studies and best-practice examples, you will learn how the world’s leading companies have changed the game, and how you can successfully follow this path to an uplifting service transformation.
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Good to Great CD Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And ...

Destined to be the business publishing event of the year, or even the decade, this is the long awaited new book by the co-author of Built To Last. In it, Jim Collins shares his latest long-term research - and shows how even mediocre companies can become long-term world beaters.

Jim Collins has become a best-selling classic business author, with 590,000 copies sold to date, and has been translated into 17 languages.

Price: $4.95

Private Empire ExxonMobil and American Power

Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Steve Coll goes deep inside ExxonMobil Corp, the largest and most powerful private corporation in the United States

 

In Private Empire, Steve Coll investigates the notoriously secretive ExxonMobil Corporation, revealing the true extent of its power. ExxonMobil’s annual revenues are larger than the economic activity in the great majority of countries, equivalent to the GDP of Norway. In many of the countries where it conducts business, ExxonMobil’s sway over politics and security is greater than that of the United States embassy. In Washington, ExxonMobil spends more money lobbying Congress and the White House than any other corporation. Yet despite its outsized influence, it is a black box.

 

Private Empire begins with the Exxon Valdez accident in 1989 and closes with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. The narrative spans the globe, taking readers to Moscow, impoverished African capitals, Indonesia, and elsewhere

in heart-stopping scenes that feature kidnapping cases, civil wars, and high-stakes struggles at the Kremlin. At home, Coll goes inside ExxonMobil’s K Street office and corporation headquarters in Irving, Texas, where top executives in the “God Pod” (as employees call it) oversee an extraordinary corporate culture of discipline and secrecy.

 

The action is driven by larger than life characters, including corporate legend Lee “Iron Ass” Raymond, ExxonMobil’s chief executive until 2005. A close friend of Dick Cheney’s, Raymond was both the most successful and effective oil executive of his era and an unabashed skeptic about climate change and government in all its aspects. The

larger cast includes Raymond’s successor, Rex Tillerson, who broke with Raymond and tried to reset ExxonMobil’s public image; as well as the countless world leaders, plutocrats, dictators, guerrillas, and corporate scientists who are part of ExxonMobil’s colossal story.

 

The first hard-hitting examination of ExxonMobil, Private Empire is the masterful result of Steve Coll’s indefatigable reporting. He draws here on more than four hundred interviews; field reporting from the halls of Congress to the oil-laden swamps of the Niger Delta; more than one thousand pages of previously classified U.S. documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act; heretofore unexamined court records; and many other sources. A penetrating, news-breaking study, Private Empire will be the definitive portrait of ExxonMobil.

Price: $30.88

The Loyalty Leap Turning Customer Information into Customer ...

Collecting data is easy for marketers. Figuring out what to do with it is hard.
 
Technology has made it almost routine for com­panies to know exactly when, where, and how their customers shop, both online and off. As soon as someone pulls out a credit card—or even better, a membership rewards card—the data floodgates open. United Airlines knows if you think it’s worth $25 to check a suitcase. Verizon knows how often you call your mom. Hilton knows if you prefer a higher floor and a room away from the elevator.
 
But after gathering and crunching all this cus­tomer data most companies have little or no idea how to use it. They either let it go to waste or abuse it with ill-considered, irrelevant, or even creepy marketing pitches. There’s a much better option, as Bryan Pearson has discovered after twenty years of studying the hidden patterns of consumer behavior. It really is possible to turn customer information into customer intimacy— systematically, efficiently, and without invading anyone’s privacy. And intimacy is the key to long-term loyalty, growth, and profits. As Pearson writes:
 
Customers can only be acquired, churned, and reactivated so many times before they tire of your brand. There is a proven marketing equation in which customers willingly share information with you in the expectation of being better served and valued during future transactions. Capitaliz­ing on that equation is our business responsibility.
 
The Loyalty Leap will give you the tools to per­suade customers to share more information in their own best interests. And it will help you make sense of all that data to build strong cus­tomer relationships. It also shares compelling examples, including:
  • How Shell increased sales while reducing its network of gas stations by giving its best customers incentives to buy from another location.
  • How GameStop offers its PowerUp Rewards members access to such events as the Comic-Con convention.
  • How McDonald’s in Finland used location-based marketing to send special offers to customers near one of its locations, with a 40 percent response rate.
  • How Caesars Entertainment uses data from its 40 million Total Rewards members to draw complete customer profiles, resulting in increased visits.
 
Pearson believes this is one of the most exciting times in the history of marketing, and that loyalty marketing will be increasingly essential for years to come. His book will take you behind the cur­tain to show how the best companies are doing it.
Price: $7.84

Freedom's Forge How American Business Produced Victory in ...

Remarkable as it may seem today, there once was a time when the president of the United States could pick up the phone and ask the president of General Motors to resign his position and take the reins of a great national enterprise. And the CEO would oblige, no questions asked, because it was his patriotic duty.
 
In Freedom’s Forge, bestselling author Arthur Herman takes us back to that time, revealing how two extraordinary American businessmen—automobile magnate William Knudsen and shipbuilder Henry J. Kaiser—helped corral, cajole, and inspire business leaders across the country to mobilize the “arsenal of democracy” that propelled the Allies to victory in World War II.
 
“Knudsen? I want to see you in Washington. I want you to work on some production matters.” With those words, President Franklin D. Roosevelt enlisted “Big Bill” Knudsen, a Danish immigrant who had risen through the ranks of the auto industry to become president of General Motors, to drop his plans for market domination and join the U.S. Army. Commissioned a lieutenant general, Knudsen assembled a crack team of industrial innovators, persuading them one by one to leave their lucrative private sector positions and join him in Washington, D.C. Dubbed the “dollar-a-year men,” these dedicated patriots quickly took charge of America’s moribund war production effort.
 
Henry J. Kaiser was a maverick California industrialist famed for his innovative business techniques and his can-do management style. He, too, joined the cause. His Liberty ships became World War II icons—and the Kaiser name became so admired that FDR briefly considered making him his vice president in 1944. Together, Knudsen and Kaiser created a wartime production behemoth. Drafting top talent from companies like Chrysler, Republic Steel, Boeing, Lockheed, GE, and Frigidaire, they turned auto plants into aircraft factories and civilian assembly lines into fountains of munitions, giving Americans fighting in Europe and Asia the tools they needed to defeat the Axis. In four short years they transformed America’s army from a hollow shell into a truly global force, laying the foundations for a new industrial America—and for the country’s rise as an economic as well as military superpower.
 
Featuring behind-the-scenes portraits of FDR, George Marshall, Henry Stimson, Harry Hopkins, Jimmy Doolittle, and Curtis LeMay, as well as scores of largely forgotten heroes and heroines of the wartime industrial effort, Freedom’s Forge is the American story writ large. It vividly re-creates American industry’s finest hour, when the nation’s business elites put aside their pursuit of profits and set about saving the world.
Price: $16.80

Delivering Happiness A Path to Profits Passion and Purpose

In Delivering Happiness, Tony Hsieh - the hip, iconoclastic, and widely-admired CEO of Zappos, the online shoe retailer - - explains how he created a corporate culture with a commitment to service that aims to improve the lives of its employees, customers, vendors, and backers. Using anecdotes and stories from his own life experiences, and from other companies, Hsieh provides concrete ways that companies can achieve unprecedented success. He details many of the unique practices at Zappos, such as their philosophy of allocating marketing money into the customer experience, the importance of Zappos's Core Values ("Deliver WOW through Service"), and the reason why Zappos's number one priority is company culture and his belief that once you get the culture right, everything else - great customer service, long-term branding - will happen on its own. Finally, Delivering Happiness explains how Zappos employees actually apply the Core Values to improving their lives outside of work, proving that creating happiness and record results go hand-in-hand.
Price: $11.98

Moneyball

“You need know absolutely nothing about baseball to appreciate the wit, snap, economy . . . and incisiveness of [Moneyball]. Lewis has hit another one out of the park.” —Janet Maslin, New York Times

Billy Beane, the Oakland A’s general manager, is leading a revolution. Reinventing his team on a budget, he needs to outsmart the richer teams. He signs undervalued players whom the scouts consider flawed but who have a knack for getting on base, scoring runs, and winning games. Moneyball is a quest for the secret of success in baseball and a tale of the search for new baseball knowledge—insights that will give the little guy who is willing to discard old wisdom the edge over big money.
Price: $5.49