Aeschylus

Aesop lived in the early sixth century BC on the island of Samos, which lies off the coast of modern Turkey. He originally came from Thrace which was a separate country in those days, though it now forms part of Greece and Bulgaria. Very little is known about his life except that he worked as a slave on Samos for a master called Iadmon, and that he became a very famous storyteller. He was so famous that almost any fable which could have been told by him became attributed to him.

Aesop

Afsaneh Knight

Afsaneh Moqadam

Afua Hirsch is a writer, filmmaker, and journalist. She is the author of Brit(ish), the Sunday Times bestseller that explores Britishness, identity and belonging, for which she was awarded the Royal Society of Literature Jerwood Prize for Non-Fiction. She co-presented Enslaved, a 6-part series about the transatlantic slave trade with Samuel L Jackson. She is the presenter of the Audible podcast series We Need To Talk About the British Empire, and Africa Rising, an ongoing flagship series about art and culture for the BBC, through her production company Born in Me Productions. She is a longtime columnist for the Guardian and is a professor of journalism at the University of Southern California.

Afua Hirsch

AGAPI STASSINOPOULOS is an author, blogger and international speaker who inspires audiences around the world. She has spoken at many corporations and conferences, such as Nike Women, Starbucks,Time Inc., Virgin, Johnson &amp; Johnson and the American Heart Foundation. She was born in Athens and trained in London at RADA before gaining a Master’s in psychology at the University of Santa Monica. She has collaborated with her sister, Arianna Huffington, to develop talks and seminars, and has worked with the Oprah Winfrey network. She is currently hosting a new podcast series in collaboration with The Huffington Post, entitled ‘Sundays with Agapi’, which includes guided meditations and interviews with prominent guests. She lives in Los Angeles.

Agapi Stassinopoulos

Agatha Christie

Aggie MacKenzie

Aghnia Mardiyah is a London-based Illustrator and Character Designer with a passion for children's books and animation. She is drawn to fun, bright and vibrant colours. When she isn't disappearing under piles of work, she loves to travel! Exploring foreign places, exciting new sights and sensations is what inspires her the most!

Aghnia Mardiyah

Agnes Callard is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Chicago. Her primary areas of specialization are ancient philosophy and ethics. She has written for The New York Times, New Yorker, Atlantic, Harper’s, Boston Review, and penned a monthly column for the Point. From 2019 to 2020, she held a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship for the research that contributes to this book.

Agnes Callard

Agnes Jekyll

Agnes Bertha Marshall (24 August 1855-29 July 1905) was an English culinary entrepreneur who became a leading cookery writer, dubbed the 'Queen of Ices'. Her 1888 cookery book included a recipe for 'cornets with cream', possibly the earliest publication of the edible ice cream cone. Marshall was born in Walthamstow. She wrote four books: Ices Plain and Fancy: The Book of Ices (1885), Mrs A B Marshall's Book of Cookery (1888), Mrs A B Marshall's Larger Cookery Book of Extra Recipes (1891) and Fancy Ices (1894).

Agnes Marshall

Agnes Prus

Agri Ismaïl is a Kurdish author based in Sweden who has worked as a corporate lawyer in London, Dubai, and Iraqi Kurdistan. His work has been published in The White Review, The Rumpus, Litro, 3:AM Magazine, and Asymptote amongst other places. His piece 'Haunted Home' won the 2016 Stack award for best non-fiction for The Outpost, runner-up in the Lifted Brow &amp; RMIT non/fictionLab Prize for Experimental Non-Fiction, and he was longlisted for the 2017/2018 Galley Beggar Press Short Story Prize. Hyper is his first novel.

Agri Ismaïl

Aharon Appelfeld authored more than 45 acclaimed works of fiction and nonfiction and received many international awards including the MLA Commonwealth Award, the Independent Foreign Fiction prize, the prix Médicis étranger, the Israel prize, and the Nelly Sachs prize. Born in Czernowitz, Bukovina (now part of Ukraine) in 1932, he survived the Holocaust and passed away in Israel in 2018.

Aharon Appelfeld

Ahmadou Kourouma

Ahmed Alnaouq is a Palestinian journalist and human rights activist based in London. He is the co-founder and director of We Are Not Numbers and a journalist with Palestine Deep Dive. Ahmed holds a degree in English Literature from Al-Azhar university in Gaza, and an MA in International Journalism from Leeds University, where he was a Chevening Scholar. 
 
Pam Bailey is a social-justice activist and journalist based in Washington DC. She lived and worked in the Gaza Strip following the 2008/9 Israeli assault, and co-founded We Are Not Numbers. Today, in addition to her ongoing dedication to the Palestinian cause, she dedicates herself to two nonprofits that advocate for people detained in American prisons -- including one she co-founded in 2020, called More Than Our Crimes.

Ahmed Alnaouq

Ahmed Errachidi

Ahmed Rashid

Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar

Ahron Bregman is the author of four books about Israel and the Arabs: The Fifty Years War (with Jihan el Tahri), Israel's Wars, A History of Israel and Elusive Peace. He teaches at the Department of War Studies, King's College London.

Ahron Bregman

Ai Qing is regarded as one of the finest modern Chinese poets, whose free verse was influential in the development of new poetry in China.

Ai Qing

Ai Weiwei

Aidan Chambers was born in County Durham in 1934. After national service in the Royal Navy he became a teacher and then, for seven years, a monk. His young adult novels have been widely acclaimed, with POSTCARDS FROM NO-MAN'S LAND winning the prestigious Carnegie Medal and the US Michael L Printz Award. With his wife Nancy he ran Signal magazine and he has served as the president of the School Library Association. His devoted services to children's literature were recognised by his receipt of the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2002.

Aidan Chambers

Aidan Higgins was born in 1927. Langrishe Go Down, his first novel, won the James Tait Black memorial Prize and the Irish Academy of Letters Award, and was later filmed for television with a screenplay by Harold Pinter. His second novel, Balcony of Europe, was shortlisted for the 1972 Booker Prize. The novel Lions of the Grunewald appeared in 1993 and a collection of shorter fiction, Flotsam and jetsam, in 1996. Donkey's Years and Dog Days were the first two volumes of the Higgins Bestiary which concludes with this volume.

Aidan Higgins

Aidan Mathews

Aidan Potts

Aidan Smith

Aidan Storey

Aidan Trimble is the Chief Instructor to the Federation of Shotokan Karate and a former British, European and World Karate Champion, winning the world title in Tokyo - the home of Karate. Aidan has trained with some of the world's leading teachers of 'traditional' and 'sport' karate and is now an award-winning instructor and teacher who is in demand throughout the world. He can be contacted via www.fsk-karate.com.

Aidan Trimble

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Steven Johnson

What connects the "miracle on the Hudson" to the planning of the French railway system, or the mysterious outbreak of strange smells in downtown Manhattan to the invention of the Internet? With his characteristic flair for multidisciplinary storytelling, Steven Johnson shows in Future Perfect that what lies behind these and many other fascinating human stories is the concept of networked thinking. 
 
Exploring a new vision of progress, Johnson argues that networked thinking holds the key to an incredible range of human achievements, and can transform everything from local government to drug research to arts funding and education. Future Perfect paints a compelling portrait of a new model of political change that is already on the rise, and shows that despite Western political systems hopelessly gridlocked by old ideas, change for the better can happen, and that new solutions are on the horizon.

Future Perfect

The Case For Progress In A Networked Age

John David Mann

Bob Burg

'A manifesto for twenty-first-century leadership packaged in a fun and engaging story. Buy this book and get it in the hands of everyone in your company' Darren Hardy, publisher, Success magazine 
 
Ben is a young manager who has been charged with persuading 500 employees to agree to a merger. Facing an impossible battle, he seeks the advice of an old friend, who introduces him to eccentric Aunt Elle. 
 
In the week leading up to the crucial employee vote, Aunt Elle teaches Ben about the power of influence and positive persuasion. Ben also meets with the company's top executives, coming back with a new leadership lesson each time. Ben finally learns the critical principle so many people in power fail to grasp: it's not about me, it's about you. 
 
Written with a light touch and filled with practical advice, this book will resonate with all who aspire to influential leadership.

It's Not About You

A Little Story About What Matters Most In Business

Richard L. Brandt

Buy now with one-click. Amazon's business model is deceptively simple: make online shopping so easy and convenient that customers won't think twice. Yet Amazon's success is largely down to CEO and founder Jeff Bezos, a man described as both a 'happy-go-lucky mogul' and a 'notorious micromanager'. His high energy, passionate approach to retailing has driven Amazon to the top. 
 
Jeff Bezos is smart. Originally a computer geek, he had the vision to capitalise on the untapped online market for books. He's also a calculating machine who creates 'deal-flow' charts for every major decision, from what business to create to how to choose a spouse. One Click explores what makes Bezos Bezos. Through detailed research and interviews with Amazon employees, competitors and observers, Richard Brandt has deciphered how Bezos thinks, what drives his actions and how he makes his business decisions. 
 
Amazon.com was waiting to be discovered. It took Bezos's unique character and strategy to make it happen. Anyone in the business world can learn from his reinvention of the retail landscape.

One Click

Jeff Bezos and the Rise of Amazon.com

Simon Carswell

The Number 1 Bestseller - The definitive history of the bank that brought Ireland to ruin 
 
As late as 2007, Anglo Irish Bank was a darling of the markets, internationally recognized as one of the fastest growing financial institutions in the world. By 2008, it was bust. The Irish government's hopeless attempts to save Anglo have led the state to ruin - culminating in a punitive IMF bailout in late 2010 and threatening the future of the euro. 
 
Now, for the first time, the full story of the bank the Sunday Times described as 'a building society on crack' is being told - by the journalist who has led the way in coverage of Anglo and its many secrets. Drawing on his unmatched sources in and around Anglo, Simon Carswell of the Irish Times shows how the business model that brought Anglo twenty years of spectacular growth was also at the heart of its - and Ireland's - downfall. He paints a vivid and disturbing picture of life inside Anglo - the credit committee meetings, the lightning-quick negotiations with property developers, the culture of lavish entertainment - and of the men who presided over its dizzying rise and fall: Sean FitzPatrick, David Drumm, Willie McAteer and many others. This is not only the first full account of the Anglo disaster; it will also be the definitive one.

Anglo Republic

Inside the bank that broke Ireland

Paul Allen

What's it like to start a revolution? 
How do you build the biggest tech company in the world? 
And why do you walk away from it all? 
 
Paul Allen co-founded Microsoft. Together he and Bill Gates turned an idea - writing software - into a company and then an entire industry. This is the story of how it came about: two young mavericks who turned technology on its head, the bitter battles as each tried to stamp his vision on the future and the ruthless brilliance and fierce commitment.

Idea Man

A Memoir by the Co-founder of Microsoft

William D. Cohan

'If they could screw you over, they totally would ...' 
 
Goldman Sachs are the investment bank all other banks - and most businesses -want to emulate; the firm with the best talent, the best clients, the best strategy. But is their success just down to the gilded magic of the 'Goldman way'? 
 
William D. Cohan has gained unprecedented access to Goldman's inner circle - both on and off the record. In an astonishing story of clashing egos, backstabbing, sex scandals, private investigators, court cases and government cabals, he reveals what really lies beneath their gold-plated image.

Money and Power

How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World

Guy Kawasaki

Enchantment 
 
n: 1) To charm, delight, enrapture 
 
How do companies such as Apple create such enchanting products? And how do some people always seem to enchant others? 
 
According to bestselling business guru Guy Kawasaki, anyone can learn the art of enchantment. It transforms situations and relationships, turns cynics into believers and changes hearts and minds. 
 
The book explains all the tactics you need to enchant. Kawasaki's lessons are drawn from his tenure at Apple, as well as his decades of experience as an entrepreneur. Few people in the world are more qualified to teach you how to enchant.

Enchantment

How to Charm, Influence and Persuade

The Economist Publications (PUK Rights)

The Penguin Economist Special reports delve into the most pressing economic issues of the day: from national and global economies, to the impact of trade, industry and jobs. Written to be read on a long commute or in your lunch hour - be better informed in under an hour. 
 
Twenty years ago one gigabyte of memory cost $200,000. Now, a terabyte (1000 gigabytes) costs a mere $100. 
 
Technology permeates our everyday lives and never more so than with our portable, personal devices. Businesses are struggling to keep up with their employees' technological abilities and demands. 
 
In Personal Technology, Martin Giles unpicks the changing landscape of technology, examining apps, new devices and their effect on world trade. In the following sections, he explains how technology and the economy are becoming inextricably linked and how this has resulted in the birth of the new, digital age. 
 
Beyond the PC 
 
Consumerisation: The power of many 
 
Apps on tap 
 
Personal technology at work: IT's Arab spring 
 
Adapting personal IT for business: The consumer-industrial complex 
 
Droid wars 
 
Ubiquitous computing: Up close 
 
Technology and society: Here comes anyware

The Economist: Personal Technology

Beyond the PC

David Novak

You'll never accomplish anything big if you try to do it alone. 
 
We all need people to help us along the way. If you want to start a business, launch a product, move your company in a new direction, or raise money for a good cause, you need help from your team. 
 
Very few people get as much help from their team as David Novak. As the CEO of the world's largest restaurant company, with a staggering 1.4 million employees, he has spent the last ten years developing a program for creating effective leaders at every level. 
 
In Taking People With You, he shows exactly how to keep your teams motivated and on track: never stop learning, always celebrate achievement and never tolerate poor performance.

Taking People With You

The Only Way to Make Big Things Happen

James Caan

Before rising to fame on the BBC's Dragons' Den, James Caan spent thirty years setting up and running recruitment companies, placing hundreds of thousands of candidates in the jobs they really wanted. 
 
Now in Get The Job You Really Want James brings his experience to bear to help everyone from recent graduates to CEOs in their hunt for their dream job, from identifying the opportunity to making yourself stand out at interview and finally closing the deal on the job offer, 
 
Since publishing the first edition James has been inundated with testimonials from real readers who have used the tricks and tools in this definitive guide to jobhunting to finally land the job that they really wanted.

Get The Job You Really Want

John Gapper

The definitive, classic account of the fall of the House of Baring and the ultimate rogue trader Nick Leeson. 
 
John Gapper, Associate Editor of the Financial Times, and his co-author Nicholas Denton, now founder of Gawker Media, interviewed all the major players involved in the collapse of one of England's oldest banks. 
 
All That Glitters reveals the faustian deal struck between the whizz-kid traders who seemed to be bringing in huge profits and the grandies who were happy to pocket them without asking too many questions. For the first time, the actions and motives of all the participants are explained, including the final days when politicians and bankers made a last-ditch attempt to save the bank, as well as Nick Leeson's actions and motives.

All That Glitters

The Fall of Barings

Bruce Patton

Douglas Stone

Sheila Heen

We've all been there: We know we must talk to a colleague, our boss or even a friend about something we know will be at least uncomfortable and at worst explosive. So we repeatedly mull it over until we can no longer put it off, and then finally stumble through a confrontation when we could have had a conversation. 
 
Difficult Conversations is the definitive work on handling these unpleasant exchanges, based on 15 years of research at the Harvard Negotiation Project. It teaches us to work through them by understand that we're not engaging in one dialogue but three: the "what happened" conversation (what do we believe was said and done), the "feelings" conversation (the emotional impact on everyone involved), and the "identity" conversation (what does this mean for everyone's opinion of themselves). 
 
In a world where asking for a pay rise, saying 'no' to your boss, asking a favour or apologizing for a mistake can be a horrendous nightmare, Difficult Conversations deserves its position as a business classic.

Difficult Conversations

How to Discuss What Matters Most

Where do good ideas come from? And what do we need to know and do to have more of them? In Where Good Ideas Come From, Steven Johnson, one of our most innovative popular thinkers, explores the secrets of inspiration. 
 
He identifies the seven key principles to the genesis of great ideas, from the cultivation of hunches to the importance of connectivity and how best to make use of new technologies. Most exhilarating is his conclusion: with today's tools and environment, radical innovation is extraordinarily accessible to those who know how to cultivate it. By recognizing where and how patterns of creativity occur - whether within a school, a software platform or a social movement - he shows how we can make more of our ideas good ones.

Where Good Ideas Come From

The Seven Patterns of Innovation

Kay-Yut Chen

Marina Krakovsky

Sensational books like Freakonomics have shown how human behaviour follows predictable patterns. But how do you take these radical ideas and apply them to your business? How do you make money from them? 
 
Secrets of the Moneylab sets out what business can learn from the findings of the new economics and social psychology. It shows how you can shape desires, use incentives and reduce risks to consistently improve the bottom line. 
 
In his experimental lab at Hewlett-Packard, chief economist Kay-Yut Chen is running groundbreaking research into human behaviour. He packs Secrets of the Moneylab with insights into the invisible forces controlling the world of business. 
 
These findings, which defy conventional wisdom and traditional economic theory, will help you engineer your business for success.

Secrets of the Moneylab

How Understanding People Will Increase Your Profits

Bethany McLean

Joe Nocera

As soon as the financial crisis erupted, the finger-pointing began. Should the blame fall on greedy traders, lazy regulators, or clueless home buyers? 
 
According to Bethany McLean, author of the bestselling Enron book The Smartest Guys in the Room, and Joe Nocera, the star New York Times columnist, the real answer is all of the above. Many devils helped bring hell to the economy. 
 
Yet despite all the analysis of the crash, no one has put all the pieces together and named those responsible. Until now.

All The Devils Are Here

Unmasking the Men Who Bankrupted the World

Scott Belsky

Thomas Edison famously said that genius is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration. Every day new solutions, revolutionary cures, and artistic breakthroughs are conceived and squandered by smart people. Along with the gift of creativity come the obstacles to making ideas happen: lack of organisation, lack of accountability and a lack of community support. 
 
Scott Belsky has interviewsed hundreds of the most productive creative people and teams in the world, revealing one common trait: a carefully trained capacity for executing ideas. Implementing your ideas is a skill that can be taught, and Belsky distills the core principles in this book. 
 
While many of us obsess about discovering great new ideas, Belsky shows why it is better to develop the capacity to make ideas happen - using old-fashioned passion and perspiration. Making Ideas Happen reveals the practical yet counterintuitive techniques of 'serial creatives' - those few who make their visions a reality.

Making Ideas Happen

Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality

Michael O'Malley

'It seemed to me that the bees were working on the very same kinds of problems we are trying to solve. How can large, diverse groups work together harmoniously and productively? Perhaps we could take what the bees do so well and apply it to our institutions.' 
 
When Michael O'Malley first took up beekeeping he thought it would be a nice hobby to share with his son. But he noticed that bees not only work together to achieve a common goal but, in the process, create a remarkably productive organization, like a miniature but incredibly successful business. 
 
O'Malley also realized that bees can teach managers a lot, identifying 25 powerful insights such as: 
 
* Distribute authority: the queen bee delegates relentlessly and worker bees make daily decisions 
* Keep it simple: bees exchange only relevant information 
* Protect the future: when a lucrative vein of nectar is discovered, the entire colony doesn't rush off to mine it 
 
Blending practical advice with interesting facts about the hive, The Wisdom of Bees is a useful and entertaining guide for any manager looking to get the most out of his or her organization.

The Wisdom of Bees

What the Hive Can Teach Business about Leadership, Efficiency, and Growth

Where do good ideas come from? And what do we need to know and do to have more of them? In Where Good Ideas Come From, Steven Johnson, one of our most innovative popular thinkers, explores the secrets of inspiration. 
 
Steven Johnson has spent twenty years immersed in creative industries, was active at the dawn of the internet and has a unique perspective that draws on his fluency in fields ranging from neurobiology to new media. Why have cities historically been such hubs of innovation? What do the printing press and Apple have in common? And what does this have to do with the creation and evolution of life itself? Johnson presents the answers to these questions and more in his infectious, culturally omnivoracious style, using examples from thinkers in a range of disciplines - from Charles Darwin to Tim Berners-Lee - to provide the complete, exciting, and encouraging story of inspiration. 
 
He identifies the five key principles to the genesis of great ideas, from the cultivation of hunches to the importance of connectivity and how best to make use of new technologies. Most exhilarating is his conclusion: with today's tools and environment, radical innovation is extraordinarily accessible to those who know how to cultivate it. By recognizing where and how patterns of creativity occur - whether within a school, a software platform or a social movement - he shows how we can make more of our ideas good ones.

The Natural History of Innovation

Stuart Diamond

You're always negotiating. Whether making a business deal, talking to friends or booking a holiday, negotiation is going on. And most of us are terrible at it. 
 
Experts tell us to negotiate as if we live in a rational world. But people can be angry, fearful and irrational. To achieve your goals you have to be able to deal with the unpredictable. 
 
In Getting More, negotiation expert Stuart Diamond reveals the real secrets behind getting more in any negotiation - whatever more means to you. Getting More is accessible, jargon-free, innovative ... and it works.

Getting More

How You Can Negotiate to Succeed in Work and Life

Philip Delves Broughton

Graduates of Harvard Business School run many of the world's biggest and most influential banks, companies and countries. But what kind of person does it take to succeed at HBS? And what do they learn there? 
 
Philip Delves Broughton's enlightening and hilarious memoir of his two years at Harvard takes us from first class to graduation, encompassing the case studies, the guest lectures, the Apprentice-style tasks, the booze-luge, the burn-outs and high flyers, as well as all the advice, wisdom and folly he found in this 'factory for unhappy people'. 
 
If you've always wanted to know how to get to the top, but wondered what it takes and exactly what it costs, this book will tell you.

What They Teach You at Harvard Business School

The Internationally-Bestselling Business Classic

Stephen Green

Stephen Green - current Chairman of HSBC and ordained priest - believes above all that our lives should be lived with integrity. And more than that: these beliefs should not be left at the boardroom door. 
 
In Good Value, he argues that our businesses have a duty to society and explores how those of us who work in a profit-making workplace can combine our spiritual and ethical selves with our everyday work. 
 
Examining money markets across the globe and through the ages in a fascinating study of history, politics, religion and economics, Stephen Green shows how financial progress shouldn't mean an end to ethics at work.

Good Value

Choosing a Better Life in Business

The sequel to the international bestseller The Go-Giver, applying its inspirational approach to real-world challenges. 
The Go-Giver took the business world by storm with its message that giving is the simplest, most fulfilling, and most effective path to success. It has inspired hundreds of thousands of readers; but some have wondered how the story's lessons stand up to the tough challenges of everyday, real-world business. 
Bob Burg and John David Mann answer that question in Go-Givers Sell More, a practical guide that turns giving into the cornerstone of a powerful and effective approach to selling. 
Most of us think of sales as a struggle to make people do something they don't really want to do. But that cut-throat mentality makes the process much harder than it has to be - especially in an economic downturn when customers are more suspicious and defensive than ever. 
It's far more effective (and satisfying) when salespeople think like Go-Givers and focus on creating value for the customer. Cultivate a trusting relationship and provide outstanding service, and great results will follow automatically. 
Illustrating their points with a wide range of real-life examples, Burg and Mann offer tips and strategies that anyone in sales can start applying right away.

Go-Givers Sell More

Erin Arvedlund

Take the combined fortunes of Bill Gates, Tiger Woods and Roman Abramovich. Now imagine someone stealing that much money - and being hailed as a financial genius. 
 
That man is Bernard Madoff. Backed by governments and global banks, Madoff defrauded $65 billion from charities and individual investors including Stephen Spielberg. Finally turned in by his own sons, Madoff opened his door in his dressing gown to be arrested by the FBI. Eleven charges and eleven guilty verdicts later he swapped his penthouse for a prison cell. Only $1 billion was left. 
 
Madoff is the first definitive account of the rise and fall of the biggest fraudster ever. It's a story of greed, betrayal and lies, of remorseless risk-taking, family tragedy and financial disaster. 
 
Investigative reporter Erin Arvedlund was the first to expose Madoff back in 2001, but Wall Street and the world didn't listen. In this astonishing book she answers the crucial unsolved questions: why and when did Madoff turn his business into a massive fraud? How did he fool so many investors for so long? Who knew the truth? And who, ultimately, is Bernard Madoff?

Madoff

The Man Who Stole $65 Billion

Ram Charan

According to business guru Ram Charan, the process of selling is broken. Demand for competitive pricing is ever on the increase, and customers want more than great products at great prices; they want you to know how their business works, so that you can make it work better. It is time for companies to re-think their selling processes, and that's where Charan's concept of Value Creation Selling fits in. It is a new approach that while radical is nonetheless practical and produces stronger customer relationships and long term rewards. VCS will enable you to:Gain a deeper knowledge of your customer's businessUse this knowledge to improve your customer's marginsShow how your product and expertise is a winning combination 
 
Someday, every company will listen more closely to the customer. . .

What the Customer Wants You to Know

How Everybody Needs to Think Differently About Sales

How should we create wealth in societies, and why is it necessary to do so? What improves the lives of the largest number of people? And how do we, living in a globalised world caught in an age of financial and ecological turbulence, respond to the differing needs of individuals and institutions? 
 
Stephen Green, Chairman of HSBC, reflects on how the human desires for exploration and exchange have led us into a globalised, urban world, and considers why it is that capitalism is the best system by which to improve material human wealth. As the world's financial order is in a state of flux, how do we align these drives, and capitalism, with our spiritual and psychological needs? And how should the financial sector respond not only to the current crisis but to the wider needs of the people it serves. Do businesses - and banks in particular - have a duty to society that goes beyond the creation of profit? Does open market capitalism remain our best hope for creating wealth that benefits all of society? Encompassing history, politics, religion and economics, Good Value offers new perspectives on how we can live in a richer, more dynamic world.

Reflections on money, morality and an uncertain world

Neal Lawson

'Stabbing at battle of Ikea' Sun 
'Most expensive house has £390m price tag' Daily Telegraph 
'Financier runs up £36,000 bar bill' Independent 
 
Diamond-encrusted phones, waiting lists for handbags, 7-star hotels - in the summer of 2007, the UK economy finally reached its giddy peak. But it wasn't just celebrities and bankers wanting to spend, spend, spend. Whipping out our cheap credit cards, the whole nation developed one obsessive, unsustainable habit: shopping. 
 
Now the cash has dried up and we've consumed our way to financial disaster. But were rich times really happy times? And if shopping got us in to this mess, should we really be encouraged to shop our way out of it? 
 
With finances in flux, now is our chance to break this all-consuming cycle. Offering everyday ways to start kicking the habit, Neal Lawson shows us how to put the basket down for good, and why we'll be happier for it.

All Consuming

David Nasaw

Celebrated historian David Nasaw, whom The New York Times Book Review has called &quot;a meticulous researcher and a cool analyst,&quot; brings new life to the story of one of America's most famous and successful businessmen and philanthropists&mdash;in what will prove to be the biography of the season. 
 
Born of modest origins in Scotland in 1835, Andrew Carnegie is best known as the founder of Carnegie Steel. His rags to riches story has never been told as dramatically and vividly as in Nasaw's new biography. Carnegie, the son of an impoverished linen weaver, moved to Pittsburgh at the age of thirteen. The embodiment of the American dream, he pulled himself up from bobbin boy in a cotton factory to become the richest man in the world. He spent the rest of his life giving away the fortune he had accumulated and crusading for international peace. For all that he accomplished and came to represent to the American public&mdash;a wildly successful businessman and capitalist, a self-educated writer, peace activist, philanthropist, man of letters, lover of culture, and unabashed enthusiast for American democracy and capitalism&mdash;Carnegie has remained, to this day, an enigma. 
 
Nasaw explains how Carnegie made his early fortune and what prompted him to give it all away, how he was drawn into the campaign first against American involvement in the Spanish-American War and then for international peace, and how he used his friendships with presidents and prime ministers to try to pull the world back from the brink of disaster. 
 
With a trove of new material&mdash;unpublished chapters of Carnegie's Autobiography; personal letters between Carnegie and his future wife, Louise, and other family members; his prenuptial agreement; diaries of family and close friends; his applications for citizenship; his extensive correspondence with Henry Clay Frick; and dozens of private letters to and from presidents Grant, Cleveland, McKinley, Roosevelt, and British prime ministers Gladstone and Balfour, as well as friends Herbert Spencer, Matthew Arnold, and Mark Twain&mdash;Nasaw brilliantly plumbs the core of this facinating and complex man, deftly placing his life in cultural and political context as only a master storyteller can.

Andrew Carnegie

Don Keough

&ldquo;After a lifetime in business, I&rsquo;ve never been able to develop a set of rules or a step-by-step formula that will guarantee success in anything, much less in a field as dynamic and changing as business. What I can do, however, is talk about how to lose. I guarantee that anyone who follows my formula will be a highly successful loser.&rdquo; 
 
The Ten Commandments for Business Failure is a lighthearted cautionary bible for leaders from a hugely admired elder statesman who is sought out for advice by a wide circle of luminaries. Plenty of speakers and writers are happy to dispense advice on how to succeed in business. From football coaches to ex-CEOs to psychologists to preachers, success gurus are everywhere. But none of them can offer any guarantees; the true path to success can&rsquo;t be laid out as a simple step-by-step plan. The same cannot be said of failure, however. Failure is easy. In fact, there are ten serious blunders companies and individuals make over and over again, leading to failure so consistently that the list ought to be written in stone. Don Keough, who has seen and heard a lot in his six decade career, calls them his Ten Commandments for Business Failure. They include such reliable bad advice as Quit Taking Risks, Be Inflexible, Assume Infallibility, Put All Your Faith in Experts, and Be Afraid of the Future.

The Ten Commandments for Business Failure

Matt Mason

What&rsquo;s the connection between the nun who invented disco, and the effect of file sharing? How does hip-hop manage to be an underground movement and a multi-billion dollar business - at the same time? And how are pirates, of the kind who started commercial radio in the twentieth century, changing society in the 21st? 
 
The Pirate&rsquo;s Dilemma tells the stories of youth culture uncovering, for the first time, what it is that transforms underground scenes into global industries. Matt Mason, successful entrepreneur, argues that that from youth `culture, out on the edges of the mainstream, come the ideas that ultimately change the mainstream itself &ndash; whether it&rsquo;s graffiti, piracy, hacking, open source culture or remixing. In the course of doing so he unravels some of our most basic assumptions about business and society and pinpoints trends to look out for in our future. 
 
Because right now, everyone, from the ceo of a mainstream company to a teenager wanting to start the next youth culture revolution, is struggling with a new dilemma: that we can all &ndash; companies and individuals alike &ndash; be pirates now. And as piracy increasingly changes the way we find, use and sell information, how should we respond? Do we fight pirates, or do we learn from them? Should piracy be treated as a problem, or a whole new solution?

The Pirate's Dilemma

How hackers, punk capitalists, graffiti millionaires and other youth movements are remixing our culture and changing our world

David Landes

Rothschilds &bull; Morgans &bull; Fords &bull; Toyoda &bull; Agnellis &bull; Rockefellers &bull; Guggenheims 
 
Dynastic family businesses have everything: extraordinary success, bizarre eccentricity, bitter rivalry &ndash; as well as pots of money and power. Yet almost no one has looked closely enough to see what it is that really makes them tick. 
 
In Dynasties, award-winning author David Landes casts his eye over some of the most powerful family businesses in Europe, Japan and America. On the way, he provides thrilling histories of the characters who have made their mark on the world and passed on a legacy &ndash; sometimes benign and sometimes not &ndash; to their descendants.

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