Business Biographies

The gripping and shocking story of three generations of the Sackler family and their roles in the stories of Valium, OxyContin and the opioid crisis.The Sackler name adorns the walls of many storied institutions — Harvard; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Oxford; the Louvre. They are one of the richest families in the world, known for their lavish donations in the arts and the sciences. The source of the family fortune was vague, however, until it emerged that the Sacklers were responsible for making and marketing OxyContin, a blockbuster painkiller that was a catalyst for the opioid crisis — an international epidemic of drug addiction which has killed nearly half a million people.In this masterpiece of narrative reporting and writing, award-winning journalist and host of the Wind of Change podcast Patrick Radden Keefe exhaustively documents the jaw-dropping and ferociously compelling reality.Empire of Pain is the story of a dynasty: a parable of twenty-first-century greed.EndorsementsWinner of the 2021 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-FictionShortlisted for the 2021 Financial Times/McKinsey Business Book of the Year AwardOne of Barack Obama’s Favorite Books of 2021‘Jaw-dropping... Beggars belief’ — Sunday Times‘You feel almost guilty for enjoying it so much’ — The Times

Gregory Zuckerman, author of The Greatest Trade Ever and The Frackers, answers the question investors have been asking for decades: How did Jim Simons do it?Jim Simons is the greatest money maker in modern financial history. No other investor — Warren Buffett, Peter Lynch, Ray Dalio, Steve Cohen, or George Soros — can touch his record. Since 1988, Renaissance's signature Medallion fund has generated average annual returns of 66 percent. The firm has earned profits of more than $100 billion; Simons is worth twenty-three billion dollars.Drawing on unprecedented access to Simons and dozens of current and former employees, Zuckerman, a veteran Wall Street Journal investigative reporter, tells the gripping story of how a world-class mathematician and former code breaker mastered the market. Simons pioneered a data-driven, algorithmic approach that's sweeping the world.As Renaissance became a market force, its executives began influencing the world beyond finance. Simons became a major figure in scientific research, education, and liberal politics. Senior executive Robert Mercer is more responsible than anyone else for the Trump presidency, placing Steve Bannon in the campaign and funding Trump's victorious 2016 effort. Mercer also impacted the campaign behind Brexit.The Man Who Solved the Market is a portrait of a modern-day Midas who remade markets in his own image, but failed to anticipate how his success would impact his firm and his country. It's also a story of what Simons's revolution means for the rest of us.EndorsementsShortlisted for the Financial Times/McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award.

Based on more than forty interviews with Steve Jobs conducted over two years—as well as interviews with more than 100 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, 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 the author, he asked for no control over what was written. He put nothing off-limits. He encouraged the people he knew to speak honestly. He himself spoke candidly about the people he worked with and competed against. His friends, foes, and colleagues offer 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. His tale is instructive and cautionary, filled with lessons about innovation, character, leadership, and values. Steve Jobs is the inspiration for the movie of the same name starring Michael Fassbender, Kate Winslet, Seth Rogen, and Jeff Daniels, directed by Danny Boyle with a screenplay by Aaron Sorkin.

The Snowball is the first and will be the only biography of the world's richest man, Warren Buffett, written with his full cooperation and collaboration.Warren Buffett is arguably the world's greatest investor. Even as a child he was fascinated by the concept of risk and probability, setting up his first business at the age of six. In 1964 he bought struggling Massachusetts textile firm Berkshire Hathaway and grew it to be the 12th largest corporation in the US purely through the exercise of sound investing principles — a feat never equalled in the annals of business.Despite an estimated net worth of around US$62 billion, Buffett leads an intriguingly frugal life, taking home a salary of only £50,000 a year. His only indulgence is a private jet, an extravagance he wryly acknowledges by calling it "The Indefensible". In 2006, he made the largest charitable donation on record, with most of it going to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.The Snowball provides a comprehensive, richly detailed insight into one of the world's most extraordinary and much loved public figures.Combining a unique blend of "The Sage of Omaha's" business savvy, life story and philosophy, The Snowball is essential reading for anyone wishing to discover and replicate the secrets of his business and life success.EndorsementsShortlisted for the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Prize 2008

The story of how one reclusive trading prodigy manipulated Wall Street and amassed millions from his childhood bedroom — then short-circuited the global market. A real-life financial thriller, Flash Crash gives panoramic insight into our economic landscape — its weaknesses, its crooks and its exploitable loopholes — and uncovers the remarkable, behind-the-scenes narrative of a mystifying market crash, a globe-spanning investigation into international fraud, and the man — Navinder Singh Sarao — at the centre of it all. Depending on whom you ask, Sarao was a scourge, a symbol of a financial system run horribly amok, or an outsider who took on the tyranny of Wall Street and the high-frequency traders.For fans of Bad Blood and The Big Short.Endorsements‘Not just a readable, pacey account of an extraordinary individual and his quixotic quest … but also a troubling exposé of the fragility of our entire financial system … I loved it’ — Oliver Bullough, author of Moneyland

In this candid and riveting memoir, for the first time ever, Nike founder and CEO Phil Knight shares the inside story of the company’s early days as an intrepid start-up and its evolution into one of the world’s most iconic, game-changing, and profitable brands.In 1962, fresh out of business school, Phil Knight borrowed $50 from his father and created a company with a simple mission: import high-quality, low-cost athletic shoes from Japan. Selling the shoes from the trunk of his lime green Plymouth Valiant, Knight grossed $8,000 his first year. Today, Nike’s annual sales top $30 billion. In an age of startups, Nike is the ne plus ultra of all startups, and the swoosh has become a revolutionary, globe-spanning icon, one of the most ubiquitous and recognizable symbols in the world today.But Knight, the man behind the swoosh, has always remained a mystery. Now, for the first time, in a memoir that is candid, humble, gutsy, and wry, he tells his story, beginning with his crossroads moment. At 24, after backpacking around the world, he decided to take the unconventional path, to start his own business—a business that would be dynamic, different.Knight details the many risks and daunting setbacks that stood between him and his dream—along with his early triumphs. Above all, he recalls the formative relationships with his first partners and employees, a ragtag group of misfits and seekers who became a tight-knit band of brothers. Together, harnessing the transcendent power of a shared mission, and a deep belief in the spirit of sport, they built a brand that changed everything.

Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In examines women and ambition. Ask most women whether they have the right to equality at work and the answer will be a resounding yes, but ask the same women whether they'd feel confident asking for a raise, a promotion, or equal pay, and some reticence creeps in. The statistics, although an improvement on previous decades, are certainly not in women's favour — of 197 heads of state, only twenty-two are women. Women hold just 20 percent of seats in parliaments globally, and in the world of big business, a meagre eighteen of the Fortune 500 CEOs are women. In Lean In, Sheryl Sandberg — Facebook COO — draws on her own experience of working in some of the world's most successful businesses and looks at what women can do to help themselves, and make the small changes in their life that can effect change on a more universal scale.EndorsementsAppeared on the cover of Time magazine.Named one of Fortune magazine's Most Powerful Women in Business.

Amazon.com started off delivering books through the mail. But its visionary founder, Jeff Bezos, wasn't content with being a bookseller. He wanted Amazon to become the everything store, offering limitless selection and seductive convenience at disruptively low prices. To do so, he developed a corporate culture of relentless ambition and secrecy that's never been cracked. Until now. Brad Stone enjoyed unprecedented access to current and former Amazon employees and Bezos family members, giving readers the first in-depth, fly-on-the-wall account of life at Amazon. Compared to tech's other elite innovators—Jobs, Gates, Zuckerberg—Bezos is a private man. But he stands out for his restless pursuit of new markets, leading Amazon into risky new ventures like the Kindle and cloud computing, and transforming retail in the same way Henry Ford revolutionized manufacturing.The definitive story of Amazon.com, one of the most successful companies in the world, and of its driven, brilliant founder, Jeff Bezos. The Everything Store will be the revealing, definitive biography of the company that placed one of the first and largest bets on the Internet and forever changed the way we shop and read.

Before slim laptops that fit into briefcases, computers looked like strange, alien vending machines. But Steve Wozniak invented the first true personal computer.Wozniak teamed up with Steve Jobs, and Apple Computer was born, igniting the computer revolution and transforming the world. Here, thirty years later, the mischievous genius with the low profile treats readers to a rollicking, no-holds-barred account of his life—for once, in the voice of the wizard himself.Endorsements"iWoz traces the life and times of a brilliant, gifted... individual whose contributions to the scientific, business and cultural realms are extensive." — Bookpage"the most staggering burst of technical invention by a single person in high-tech history" — BusinessWeek

Yvon Chouinard — legendary climber, businessman, environmentalist, and founder of Patagonia, Inc. — shares the persistence and courage that have gone into being head of one of the most respected and environmentally responsible companies on earth.From his youth as the son of a French Canadian blacksmith to the thrilling, ambitious climbing expeditions that inspired his innovative designs for the sport's equipment, Let My People Go Surfing is the story of a man who brought doing good and having grand adventures into the heart of his business life — a book that will deeply affect entrepreneurs and outdoor enthusiasts alike.

He’s an American legend, a straight-shooting businessman who brought Chrysler back from the brink and in the process became a media celebrity, newsmaker, and a man many had urged to run for president.The son of Italian immigrants, Lee Iacocca rose spectacularly through the ranks of Ford Motor Company to become its president, only to be toppled eight years later in a power play that should have shattered him. But Lee Iacocca didn’t get mad, he got even. He led a battle for Chrysler’s survival that made his name a symbol of integrity, know-how, and guts for millions of Americans.In his classic hard-hitting style, he tells us how he changed the automobile industry in the 1960s by creating the phenomenal Mustang. He goes behind the scenes for a look at Henry Ford’s reign of intimidation and manipulation. He recounts the miraculous rebirth of Chrysler from near bankruptcy to repayment of its $1.2 billion government loan so early that Washington didn’t know how to cash the check.Endorsements“Vintage Iacocca... He is fast-talking, blunt, boastful, and unabashedly patriotic. Lee Iacocca is also a genuine folk hero... His career is breathtaking.” — Business Week

New York Chef Tony Bourdain gives away secrets of the trade in his wickedly funny, inspiring memoir/exposé.Kitchen Confidential reveals what Bourdain calls "twenty-five years of sex, drugs, bad behavior and haute cuisine."

Sir Philip Green was once hailed one of Britain's best businessmen. As chairman of Arcadia Group, home to brands such as Topshop, Dorothy Perkins and Miss Selfridge, Green had prime ministers and supermodels on speed dial. But the retail magnate's reputation came crashing down when Shah, a Sunday Times journalist, uncovered the methods Green used to amass his gigantic offshore fortune, and the desperation that drove his doomed BHS deal.In 2015, Green sold British Home Stores for £1 to Retail Acquisitions, owned by Dominic Chappell, a charlatan who siphoned off BHS's remaining millions before filing for administration. By the time it went under in April 2016, BHS had debts of £1.3bn, including a pension deficit of £571m. Its collapse left 11,000 employees without jobs and 20,000 pension fund members facing the loss of their benefits, prompting the government to launch an inquiry into Green's sale of the company. While one of Britain's oldest department stores boarded up its shop fronts, former employees and shoppers protested in the streets and MPs rallied in parliament, demanding Green be stripped of his knighthood. The furore over the sale subsided in 2017 when Green agreed a £363m deal with the Pensions Regulator, but with revelations surrounding Topshop's pension deficit now surfacing, could tragedy strike again?Oliver Shah is Business Editor of the Sunday Times. He studied English at Cambridge University and journalism at City University before joining City AM in 2009 and the Sunday Times in 2010. Aged 34, Shah lives in east London.In this jaw-dropping expose, Oliver Shah uncovers the truth behind one of Britain's biggest business scandals, following Sir Philip Green's journey to the big time, the wild excesses of his heyday and his dramatic demise.EndorsementsOliver Shah is an award-winning Business Editor of the Sunday Times.He was named business journalist of the year at both the Press Awards and London Press Club Awards in 2017 for his investigation into Sir Philip Green.

As a young man, Ed Catmull had a dream: to make the world’s first computer-animated movie. He nurtured that dream first as a Ph.D. student at the University of Utah, where many computer science pioneers got their start, and then forged an early partnership with George Lucas that led, indirectly, to his founding Pixar with Steve Jobs and John Lasseter in 1986. Nine years later and against all odds, Toy Story was released, changing animation forever.Since then, Pixar has dominated the world of animation, producing such beloved films as Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Up, and WALL-E, which have gone on to set box-office records and garner twenty-seven Academy Awards. The joyousness of the storytelling, the inventive plots, the emotional authenticity: in some ways, Pixar movies are an object lesson in what creativity really is. Now, in this book, Catmull reveals the ideals and techniques, honed over years, that have made Pixar so widely admired—and so profitable.Creativity, Inc. is a book for managers who want to lead their employees to new heights, a manual for anyone who strives for originality, and the first-ever, all-access trip into the nerve center of Pixar Animation Studios—into the story meetings, the postmortems, and the ‘Braintrust’ sessions where art is born. It is, at heart, a book about how to build and sustain a creative culture—but it is also, as Pixar co-founder and president Ed Catmull writes, ‘an expression of the ideas that I believe make the best in us possible.’

'I asked him how much it would take for him to sell FTX and go do something other than make money. He thought the question over. "One hundred and fifty billion dollars," he finally said—though he added that he had use for "infinity dollars"...Sam Bankman-Fried wasn't just rich. Before he turned thirty he'd become the world's youngest billionaire, making a record fortune in the crypto frenzy. CEOs, celebrities and world leaders vied for his time. At one point he considered paying off the entire national debt of the Bahamas so he could take his business there.Then it all fell apart.Who was this Gatsby of the crypto world, a rumpled guy in cargo shorts, whose eyes twitched across TV interviews as he played video games on the side, who even his million-dollar investors still found a mystery? What gave him such an extraordinary ability to make money — and how did his empire collapse so spectacularly?Michael Lewis was there when it happened, having got to know Bankman-Fried during his epic rise. In Going Infinite he tells us a story like no other, taking us through the mind-bending trajectory of a character who never liked the rules and was allowed to live by his own. Both a psychological portrait of a preternaturally gifted "thinking machine" and a wild financial roller-coaster ride, this is a twenty-first-century epic of high-frequency trading and even higher stakes, of crypto mania and insane amounts of money, of hubris and downfall. No one could tell it better.

Japan’s Masayoshi Son has made and lost several fortunes, investing or controlling assets worth $1trn in the past two decades through his media-tech giant SoftBank. He bankrolled Alibaba, China’s internet colossus, before the world had heard about it; plotted with Steve Jobs to turn the iPhone into a wonder product; and financed hundreds of tech start-ups, fuelling the biggest boom Silicon Valley has ever seen.This book takes you on Masa’s wild ride, from his birthplace in a Korean slum in post-war Japan to the modern-day temples of power. It speeds through Donald Trump’s golden skyscraper in Manhattan, the royal palaces of Riyadh and the throne rooms of China’s Marxist rulers; all places where Masa has deployed his unique blend of techno-optimism, financial engineering and insane risk-taking.In his own estimation, Masa is the world’s craziest investor. He spent billions supporting the visions of founders like WeWork’s Adam Neumann only to lose everything. Yet, despite the reverses, he’s never abandoned his belief that technology, particularly artificial intelligence, will change our lives for the better.Masa’s story captures a 25-year span of hyper-globalisation in which money, technologies and ideas flowed freely. He’s made billions and lost billions during the dot-com bust, the global financial crisis, and the COVID-19 pandemic. His is a story of constant reinvention and perpetual motion, ever seeking the next big thing.As an ethnic Korean in Japan, Masa has overcome adversity and discrimination to become Japan’s best-known businessman and empire-builder, but he remains an elusive, intensely private figure, an enigma to the Western world. This book reveals the man behind the money, what drives him, why he matters, and what he plans for his next act.

This is the autobiography of iconic entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson, featuring his take on his latest business ventures, personal achievements and intrepid adventures.You'll discover how Sir Richard is committed to building a better world through responsible, holistic business practices and ventures such as the Virgin Health Bank, which is contributing to regenerative medicine, Virgin Fuels, which has pledged $200 million to renewable energy projects, and his company's charitable arm, Virgin Unite. You'll also learn about how Sir Richard and his company are reaching for the stars in a new era of commercial space travel with Virgin Galactic.This is an amazing memoir, motivational business guide and inspiring story that will capture your imagination.

“Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were when you woke up,” Charles T. Munger advises in Poor Charlie’s Almanack. Originally published in 2005, this compendium of eleven talks delivered by the legendary Berkshire Hathaway vice-chairman between 1986 and 2007 has become a touchstone for a generation of investors and entrepreneurs seeking to absorb the enduring wit and wisdom of one of the great minds of the 20th and 21st centuries.Poor Charlie’s Almanack draws on Munger’s encyclopedic knowledge of business, finance, history, philosophy, physics, and ethics—and more besides—to introduce the latticework of mental models that underpin his rational and rigorous approach to life, learning, and decision-making. Delivered with Munger’s characteristic sharp wit and rhetorical flair, it is an essential volume for any reader seeking to go to bed a little wiser than when they woke up.From the legendary vice-chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, lessons in investment strategy, philanthropy, and living a rational and ethical life.Endorsements“A timeless classic that will change how you approach life. There is a billion-dollar education inside this book.” — Shane Parrish, founder of Syrus Partners and Farnam Street

The real story of the crash began in bizarre feeder markets where the sun doesn't shine and the SEC doesn't dare, or bother, to tread: the bond and real estate derivative markets where geeks invent impenetrable securities to profit from the misery of lower- and middle-class Americans who can't pay their debts. The smart people who understood what was or might be happening were paralyzed by hope and fear; in any case, they weren't talking.Michael Lewis creates a fresh, character-driven narrative brimming with indignation and dark humor. Out of a handful of unlikely — really unlikely — heroes, Lewis fashions a story as compelling and unusual as any of his earlier bestsellers, proving yet again that he is the finest and funniest chronicler of our time.EndorsementsThe #1 New York Times bestseller."It is the work of our greatest financial journalist, at the top of his game. And it's essential reading." — Graydon Carter, Vanity Fair

"He either enchants or antagonizes everyone he meets. But even his enemies agree there are three things Ray Kroc does damned well: sell hamburgers, make money, and tell stories."Few entrepreneurs can claim to have radically changed the way we live, and Ray Kroc is one of them. His revolutions in food-service automation, franchising, shared national training, and advertising have earned him a place beside the men and women who have founded not only businesses, but entire empires. But even more interesting than Ray Kroc the business man is Ray Kroc the man. Not your typical self-made tycoon, Kroc was fifty-two years old when he opened his first franchise. In Grinding It Out, you'll meet the man behind McDonald's, one of the largest fast-food corporations in the world with over 32,000 stores around the globe.Irrepressible enthusiast, intuitive people person, and born storyteller, Kroc will fascinate and inspire you on every page.