Staff Picks
Work, Retire, Repeat (and other new business books you may enjoy)
- Bland L.
- Thursday, April 11
Collection
Business books recently added to our collection cover such timely topics as post-retirement careers, inflation, crypto, and the revival of US manufacturing.
As Gods Among Men
A History of the Rich in the West
Published in 2023
"All human societies, from prehistory through to today, have been characterized by some degree of economic inequality. Arguably, complex societies would not have thrived if they had been unable to concentrate and redistribute resources effectively. We frequently talk about the top 5% or 1% today but, as Guido Alfani explains in this book, concerns about the rich and super-rich and their potential to influence contemporary politics and society are nothing new - just take the Medici family and Renaissance Tuscany as one example. The medieval theologian Nicole Oresme's fear of the super-rich individual acting "as God among men" resonates with much of what present-day economist Thomas Piketty cautioned against in his landmark Capital in the Twentieth Century.As Gods Among Men represents the first scholarly attempt to provide a general overview of role and significance of the rich and the super-rich in the long run of history. With a focus on the West, particularly Europe and North America, Alfani's researchspans a thousand years of history. He draws from a wealth of comparative data, as well as insights gleaned from the latest research in economic history, sociology, and anthropology, to show how society's problematic relationship with the super-rich cannotbe fully understood without a careful analysis of the ways in which they have built their enormous wealth, and how they have used that wealth to gain influence. Alfani highlights important aspects of their behavior, such as their attitudes toward savingand consumption, or their propensity to act as patrons of the arts and of the sciences or as benefactors of the weakest part of society, to build up a profile of the richest members of our society and to trace patterns throughout history, underlining elements of both continuity and change over the period"-- Provided by publisher.
Made Whole
The Practical Guide to Reaching Your Financial Goals
Published in 2023
"We all want to live within our means, save for retirement, invest a little, and yet still have some left over each month for fun. But as most people know, real life can get in the way of even our best intentions! To help us set realistic goals and keep us on track to meeting them, New York Times bestselling financial educator Tiffany "The Budgetnista" Aliche has an invaluable 10-step action plan: Made Whole. With her signature down-to-earth style, she offers worksheets, checklists, and action items for ten important building blocks-from the ins and outs of budgeting, investing, credit rating, and estate planning, to getting insurance and getting the flow of our money automated. A hardworking tool for getting our financial ducks in a row, it also includes: Clear explanations of intimidating
American Dream Come True
Why Affordable Housing is Good Policy, Good Business, and Good for America
Published in 2024
"What if there were one single way we could significantly improve the American economy, public health, and offer attractive investment opportunities, while also providing more homes for American families and workers? The American Dream has always been built on the notion that no matter where you come from, you can be successful. For the past century, housing has played a major role in making the American Dream a reality for millions of individuals. In short, the availability of affordable housing stands at the crossroads of capitalism and compassion. In American Dream Come True, Tony Bertoldi leverages over two decades-worth of experience in affordable housing to explain in clear and entertaining prose what affordable housing really is and who it impacts. Spoiler alert: all of us. By debunking the common misconceptions about affordable housing, Bertoldi shows how supporting affordable housing is a benefit for the entire American ecosystem, and where you fit in. From addressing inflation, job creation, and creative ESG strategy, to reducing health costs for American taxpayers, Bertoldi shows how the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC, pronounced LI-Tec) program creates a more balanced society where people from all backgrounds can work, live, and contribute to their community and to the health of the American economy. If there is any truth to the phrase "home is where the heart is," then the call to action for all of us is the same--to put our heart into creating more affordable homes. It's good for individuals. Good for families. Good for health. Good for business. Good for America."
The 12-week MBA
Learn the Skills You Need to Lead in Business Today
Published in 2024
"Getting an MBA takes time and money, making it inaccessible to many people who want to take charge in the business world. Now "The 12-Week MBA" offers an alternative way to learn business essentials, focusing on the skills and knowledge required to succeed as a manager and business leader. "The 12-Week MBA"'s unique premise is that there is a core set of business skills that entrepreneurs and future leaders of organizations can learn and will need regardless of their industry, function, or level. Those core skills-value creation, people skills, and decision-making-can be learned in less time and at lower cost than in a traditional two-year MBA, where the typical content becomes obsolete by the time students have graduated. Authors Bjorn Billhardt and Nathan Kracklauer, leaders of Abilitie, a leadership development provider, have customized and honed their virtual 12-week MBA course over the last 20 years. Now they bring you the key lessons from this curriculum in an accessible, engaging guide"-- Provided by publisher.
Shock Values
Prices and Inflation in American Democracy
Published in 2024
"How inflation fears shaped American society, then and now. For most of its history, the United States has benefited from price stability-a steady relationship between supply and demand, characterized by prices that don't inflate or deflate in unpredictable fashion. Across these long stretches, the US economy became famously free-market: prices did the job of stabilizing the economy so the government didn't have to. In this sweeping and revelatory history of American economy and democracy, Carola Conces Binder shows that American price-stability is no accident. From its colonial origins to today, the American state has been designed for, and continues to be shaped by, an unlimited effort to insulate the economy from the dangers of price fluctuations. Binder narrates an American history in which inflationary anxiety has informed everything from the reluctant establishment of paper money to the rise of the modern Federal Reserve as an omniscient actor in public policy. At every step, and with each historical brush with monetary instability, the US has been reinvented as a response to its most recent failings. Shock Values is the epochal history of the US as a monetary state. Binder recounts both the monetary interests at the dawn of the Republic; its decades-long experiments with price controls; the outsize role of agriculture and industry in its monetary apparatus; and how the rise of the all-powerful Federal Reserve was born out of crisis more than anything else. Expansive and erudite, Shock Values is a watershed telling of an old history: how American union's pledge to be more perfect was drawn along monetary lines. It is not to be missed"-- Provided by publisher.
Vulture Capitalism
Corporate Crimes, Backdoor Bailouts, and the Death of Freedom
Published in 2024
"In the vein of The Shock Doctrine and Evil Geniuses, this timely manifesto from an acclaimed journalist illustrates how corporate and political elites have used planned capitalism to advance their own interests at the expense of the rest of us-and how we can take back our economy for all. It's easy to look at the state of the world around us and feel hopeless. We live in an era marked by war, climate crisis, political polarization, and acute inequality-and yet many of us feel powerless to do anything about these profound issues. We've been assured that unfettered capitalism is necessary to ensure our freedom and prosperity, even as we see its corrosive effects proliferating daily. Why, in our age of unchecked corporate power, are most of us living paycheck to paycheck? When the economy falters, why do governments bail out corporations and shareholders but leave everyday people in the dust? Now, economic and political journalist and progressive star on the rise Grace Blakeley exposes the corrupt system that is failing all around us, pulling back the curtain on the free market mythology we have been sold, and showing how, as corporate interests have taken hold, governments have historically been shifting away from competition and democracy and towards monopoly and oligarchy. Tracing over a century of neoliberal planning and backdoor bailouts, Blakeley takes us on a deeply reported tour of the corporate crimes, political maneuvering, and economic manipulation that elites have used to enshrine a global system of "vulture capitalism"-planned capitalist economies that benefit corporations and the uber-wealthy at the expense of the rest of us-at every level, from states to empires. Blakeley exposes the cracks already emerging within capitalism, lighting a path forward for how we can democratize our economy, not just our politics, to ensure true freedom for all"-- Provided by publisher.
Starting a Business 101
From Creating a Business Plan and Sticking to a Budget to Marketing and Making a Profit, Your Essential Primer to Starting a Business
Published in 2023
This indispensable guide for those looking to start their own business provides all the essential information for overcoming any obstacle thrown in their way during the process.
Egyptian Made
Women, Work, and the Promise of Liberation
Published in 2024
"What happens to the women who choose to work in a country struggling to reconcile a traditional culture with the demands of globalization? In this sharply drawn, immersive portrait of Egyptian society, veteran reporter Leslie T. Chang follows three womenas they establish businesses and careers in a country that throws up obstacles at every step, from economic upheaval to conservative marriage expectations to a failing education system. Working in Egypt's centuries-old textile industry, Riham is a shrewdbusinesswoman who nevertheless struggles to attract workers at her garment factory and to create products that can compete in the global twenty-first-century marketplace. Rania, who works on an assembly line in an Upper Egyptian factory, attempts to climb to a management rank, but is held back by personal conflicts with coworkers and supervisors and the humiliation of an unhappy marriage. Her coworker Doaa, meanwhile, pursues an education and independence but sacrifices access to her own children in order to get a divorce. Through deep reporting over two years in farming villages and on factory floors, Chang shows how women resist the pressure to give up, despite living in a country where history and tradition confine them to narrow roles and a globalizing economy has led, counterintuitively, to a conservative turn of society that discourages women from entering the workforce at all. She shares with us the rarely heard voices of ordinary women in Egypt and why its economic history continues to fail them.Alongside these stories, Chang shares her own experience living and working in Egypt for five years, seeing through her own eyes the risks and prejudices that working women face. She also weaves in the history of Egypt's vaunted textile industry, colonization and independence, a century of political upheaval, and the social history of Islam in Egypt, all of which shaped the country it is today and the choices available to Riham, Rania, and Doaa. Following each woman between home and work, Chang powerfully observes the near-impossible balancing act that Egyptian women strike every day"-- Provided by publisher.
The Economic Government of the World
1933-2023
Published in 2023
"An epic history of the people and institutions that have built the global economy since the Great Depression"-- Provided by publisher.
Dealing with Problem Employees
How to Manage Performance & Personality Issues in the Workplace
Published in 2024
"This book tells business owners, managers, and supervisors everything they need to know about how to identify difficult employees, how to manage them during the employment relationship, and how to terminate them in a way that reduces the company's legal risk of a wrongful termination lawsuit. It will give them the confidence to deal with problem employees directly and make the tough decision to terminate when it's clear that the situation isn't improving. With legal and practical information you need to handle all kinds of issues. Includes sample policies, forms, and checklists." -- Description provided by publisher.
The Idea is the Easy Part
Myths and Realities of the Startup World
Published in 2023
"For those seduced by the myths of fame and fortune, as well as for those who don't realize what they're missing out on-The Idea Is the Easy Part is a reliable guide to navigating the entrepreneurial waters, replacing today's misleading notions with objective and actionable advice"-- Provided by publisher.
Barons
Money, Power, and the Corruption of America's Food Industry
Published in 2024
"Barons is the story of seven corporate titans, their rise to power, and the consequences for everyone else. Take Mike McCloskey, Chairman of Fair Oaks Farms. In a few short decades, he went from managing a modest dairy herd to running the Disneyland of agriculture, where school children ride trams through mechanized warehouses filled with tens of thousands of cows that never see the light of day. What was the key to his success? Hard work and exceptional business savvy? Maybe. But more than anything else, Mike benefitted from deregulation of the American food industry, a phenomenon that has consolidated wealth in the hands of select tycoons, and along the way, hollowed out the nation's rural towns and local businesses. Along with Mike McCloskey, readers will meet a secretive German family that took over the global coffee industry in less than a decade, relying on wealth traced back to the Nazis to gobble up countless independent roasters. They will discover how a small grain business transformed itself into an empire bigger than Koch Industries, with ample help from taxpayer dollars. And they will learn that in the food business, crime really does pay--especially when you can bribe and then double-cross the president of Brazil. These, and the other stories in this book, are simply examples of the monopolies and ubiquitous corruption that today define American food. The tycoons profiled in these pages are hardly unique: many other companies have manipulated our lax laws and failed policies for their own benefit, to the detriment of our neighborhoods, livelihoods, and our democracy itself. Barons paints a stark portrait of the consequences of corporate consolidation, but it also shows we can choose a different path. A fair, healthy, and prosperous food industry is possible--if we take back power from the barons who have robbed us of it."--Amazon.com.
The Algebra of Wealth
A Simply Formula for Financial Security
Published in 2024
"A must-have guide to optimizing your life for wealth and success, from bestselling author, NYU professor and co-host of the Pivot podcast Scott Galloway. Today's workers have more opportunities and mobility than any generation before. They also face unprecedented challenges, including inflation, labor and housing shortages, and climate volatility. Even the notion of "retirement" is undergoing a profound rethink, as our lifespans extend and our relationship with work evolves. In The Algebra of Wealth, Galloway lays bare the rules of financial success in today's economy. In characteristic unvarnished, no-BS style, he explains you what you need o know in order to better your chances for economic security no matter what. Bursting with practical, game-changing advice from one of the world's most popular business school professors, The Algebra of Wealth is the practical guidebook you need to win today's wealth game"-- Provided by publisher.
Work, Retire, Repeat
The Uncertainty of Retirement in the New Economy
Published in 2024
"The issue of the future of Social Security, on which millions of Americans depend, produced great political theater at the State of the Union address. That highlighted a bigger problem of financing retirement as baby boomers seek to retire, often with limited resources. Many argue that the solution to the problem is for people to work longer. Teresa Ghilarducci, a noted expert on retirement, argues that the "working longer" idea is wrong, unnecessary, and discriminates against people who work in lower wage occupations. Ghilarducci pushes for a national plan to finance retirement that would draw on contributions by both employers and employees to replace our privatized and ramshackle personal retirement system and make changes in the tax system that supports Social Security to give people a real choice whether to retire or continue to work in their later years. This book tells the stories of people locked into jobs later in life not because they love to work but because they must work. She demonstrates how relatively low-cost changes in the way we manage, and finance retirement will enable people in their so-called "golden years" to choose how to spend their time. Ghilarducci has a good public platform, writes for Bloomberg and other outlets, and is passionate about her ideas and reaching as broad a public as possible. The book is for the growing number of people in the public and policy community who are worried about their retirement and engaged in the renewed debate about Social Security and Medicare"-- Provided by publisher.
Your First Million
Why You Don't Have to Be Born into a Legacy of Wealth to Leave One Behind
Published in 2024
"Having lived nearly her entire life below the poverty line before going on to attain wealth and success as an entrepreneur and investor, Arlan Hamilton knows that entrepreneurship is the quickest path to money and power-particularly for those who haven't had much of it in the past. In Your First Million, she shows how anyone-no matter what they look like or how much money they have-can tap into all the new tools they already have at their disposal to get their million-dollar idea off the ground. Readers will learn: how to identify unmet needs, raise money, choose the right collaborators, create multiple income streams, and turn their unique knowledge and experience into a profitable businesses-while reinvesting in their communities and empowering others to do the same. If we can change who gets to decide what new ideas are worthy, and who gets to turn those ideas into reality, not only can we change our own circumstances-we can change the world"-- Provided by publisher.
Clean Economy Now
Stories from the Frontlines of an American Business Revolution
Published in 2024
"An Inspiring Look at the Clean Energy Revolution Combining the instincts of a journalist and the insight of the leader of a national business organization at the forefront of climate policy, Bob Keefe provides the first in-depth look at how the most important climate action in history is reshaping our economy, the way we live, and the future of our planet"-- Provided by publisher.
We Need to Talk About Inflation
14 Urgent Lessons from the Last 2,000 Years
Published in 2023
"From investors and monetary authorities to governments and policy makers, almost everyone had assumed inflation was dead and buried. But now people the world over are confronting a poisonous new economic reality and, with it, the prospect of vast and increasing wealth inequality. How have we arrived in this situation? And what, if anything, can we do about it? Celebrated economist Stephen D. King--one of the few to warn ahead of time about the latest inflationary upheaval--identifies key lessons from the history of inflation that policy makers chose not to heed. From ancient Rome through the American Civil War and up to the asset bubbles of today, inflation stems from policy error, sovereign greed, and a collective loss of faith in currencies. We Need to Talk About Inflation cuts through centuries of bad judgment and misunderstanding, offering a means to intervene now--so we can begin to tackle the political and social upheaval unleashed by inflation."--Amazon
American Flannel
How a Band of Entrepreneurs Are Bringing the Art and Business of Making Clothes Back Home
Published in 2024
"The little-engine-that-could story of how a band of scrappy entrepreneurs are reviving the enterprise of manufacturing clothing in the United States"-- Provided by publisher.
Innovation for the Masses
How to Share the Benefits of the High-tech Economy
Published in 2023
"From San Francisco to Shanghai, many of the world's most innovative places are highly unequal, with the benefits going to a small few. Rather than simply asking how we can create more high-tech cities and nations, Innovation for the Masses focuses on places that manage to foster innovation while also delivering the benefits more widely and equally. In this book, economist Neil Lee draws on case studies of Taiwan, Sweden, Austria, and Switzerland to set out how innovation can be successfully balanced toward equity. As high-tech economies around the world suffer from polarized labor markets and political realities that lock in these problems, this book looks beyond the United States to other models of distributing a leading-edge economy. Lee emphasizes theactive role of the state in creating frameworks to ensure that benefits are broadly shared, and he reveals that strong policies for innovation and shared prosperity are mutually reinforcing. Ultimately, Innovation for the Masses provides a vital window into alternative models that prioritize equity, the roadblocks these models present, and what other countries can learn from them going forward"-- Provided by publisher.
Your Best Financial Life
Save Smart Now for the Future You Want
Published in 2024
Drawing on her own personal experience, the latest research and case studies, the former head of retirement solutions for JPMorgan Asset Management provides actionable solutions for the unique challenges Millennials and Gen Z face while saving for their future to help them achieve their biggest life goals.
The Everything War
Amazon's Ruthless Quest to Own the World and Remake Corporate Power
Published in 2024
Sports Entrepreneurship
Beyond the Big Leagues
Published in 2023
"Now is the best time in human history to launch a sports startup. Many opportunities will be created given the combination of disruptive technologies, segmentation of entertainment and the low cost of starting businesses. While there are clear distribution channels to the fast growing entrepreneurship minors across campuses, this book is aimed at practitioners and mainstream audiences; most current books on sports entrepreneurship fall firmly into the academic textbook category. The Big Six Sports - NFL, NCAA, NBA, MLS, MLB and NHL - have limited startup opportunities, unless one has an extra $250 million in the bank. However, fields such as eSports, analytics, personal performance, and youth sports have more flexibility. The book explores entrepreneurship opportunities in seven such areas. In addition, it introduces a process to map out the reader's interests and goals, recognize opportunities, validate with users and accelerate growth. The DIVA process - Discover, Ideate, Validate, Accelerate - is a step-by-step approach for readers to turn ideas into enterprises. The author also draws on his own background as an initially-reluctant entrepreneur, sharing stories of his own sports startups and provides advice based on those experiences"-- Provided by publisher.
Limitarianism
The Case Against Extreme Wealth
Published in 2024
"An original, bold, and convincing argument for a cap on wealth by the philosopher who coined the term "limitarianism" that invites us to a radical reimagining of our world"-- Provided by publisher.
The Alternative
How to Build a Just Economy
Published in 2023
"Confronted by the terrifying trends of the early twenty-first century - widening inequality, environmental destruction, and the immiseration of millions of workers around the world - many economists and business leaders still preach dogmas that lack evidence and create political catastrophe: Private markets are always more efficient than public ones; investment capital flows efficiently to necessary projects; massive inequality is the unavoidable side effect of economic growth; people are selfish and will only behave well with the right incentives. But a growing number of people - academic economists, business owners, policy entrepreneurs, and ordinary people - are rejecting these myths and reshaping economies around the world to reflect ethical and social values. Though they differ in approach, all share a vision of the economy as a place of moral action and accountability. Journalist Nick Romeo has spent years covering the world's most innovative economic and policy ideas for The New Yorker. Romeo takes us on an extraordinary journey through the unforgettable stories and successes of people working to build economies that are more equal, just, and livable. Combining original, in-depth reporting with expert analysis, Romeo explores: The successful business owners organizing their companies as purpose trusts (as Patagonia recently did) to fulfill a higher mission, such as sharing profits with workers or protecting the environment The growing deployment of new models by venture capital funds to promote wealth creation for the poorest Americans and address climate change. How Oslo's climate budgeting program is achieving the emission reduction targets the rest of the world continues to miss, creating a model that will soon be emulated by governments around the world How Portugal strengths democratic culture by letting citizens make crucial budget decisions The way worker ownership and cooperatives foster innovation, share wealth, and improve the quality of jobs, offering an increasingly popular model superior to the traditional corporation The public-sector marketplace that offers decent work and real protections to gig workers in California The job guarantee program in southern Austria that offers high-quality meaningful jobs to every citizen Many books have exposed what's not working in our current system. Romeo reveals something even more essential: the structure of a system that could actually work for everyone. Margaret Thatcher was wrong: there is an alternative. This is what it looks like"-- Provided by publisher.
Slow Down
The Degrowth Manifesto
Published in 2024
"In SLOW DOWN, Kohei Saito delivers a bold and urgent call for a return to Marxism in order to stop climate change. Here he argues that by returning to a system of social ownership, we can restore abundance and focus on those activities that are essential for human life, effectively reversing climate change and saving the planet"-- Provided by publisher.
The War Below
Lithium, Copper, and the Global Battle to Power Our Lives
Published in 2024
Tough choices loom if the world wants to go green. The United States and other countries must decide where and how to procure the materials that make our renewable energy economy possible. To build electric vehicles, solar panels, cell phones, and millions of other devices means the world must dig more mines to extract lithium, copper, cobalt, rare earths, and nickel. But mines are deeply unpopular, even as they have a role to play in fighting climate change. These tensions have sparked a worldwide reckoning over the sourcing of these critical minerals, and no one understands the complexities of these issues better than Ernest Scheyder, whose exclusive access has allowed him to report from the front lines on the key players in this global battle to power our future.
Extremely Hardcore
Inside Elon Musk's Twitter
Published in 2024
"When Elon Musk took over Twitter, two versions of reality emerged. In one, he was a free-speech crusader, a fearless visionary who could grab back power from Twitter's entitled workforce, motivate them to get "extremely hardcore," and multiply Twitter's profit and potential by orders of magnitude. In the other reality, there was the truth. Pulled from hundreds of hours of inside interviews with more than sixty employees, thousands of pages of internal documents, Slack messages, presentations, as well as court filings and congressional testimony, Extremely Hardcore is the true story of how Musk reshaped the world's online public square into his own personal megaphone. Despite having workers with a decade and a half of experience confronting Twitter's most difficult problems - from massive engineering infrastructure challenges to tricky policy decisions that could sway elections - Musk decided there was only one voice that mattered: his own. You'll hear from those employees who witnessed the destruction of their workplace firsthand. There's the machine-learning savant who went all-in on Twitter 2.0 before getting betrayed by his new CEO, the father whose need for healthcare swept him into Musk's inner circle, the trust and safety expert who became the subject of a harassment campaign his former boss incited, and the many other employees who tried to save the company from their new boss's worst instincts, and paid the price. This is the story of Twitter, but it's also a chronicle of the post-pandemic labor movement, a war between reckless executives and a workforce newly awakened to their rights and needs. Juicy, character-driven, and filled with unbelievable revelations, Extremely Hardcore is the definitive, fly-on-the-wall story of how Elon Musk lit $44 billion on fire and burned down Twitter. It's the next best thing to being there, and you won't have to sleep in the Twitter office to get the scoop"-- Provided by publisher.
Making It in America
The Almost Impossible Quest to Manufacture in the U.S.A. (and How It Got That Way)
Published in 2024
"Meet Ben and Whitney Waxman, two tireless idealists attempting to do the impossible: produce an American-made, union-made, all American-sourced sweatshirt, an American hoodie. Ben spent a decade organizing workers in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Wisconsin, fighting for Americans at a time when national support for unions had sunk to an all-time low. Struggling with depression and a drug dependency, Ben lands back in his hometown of Portland, Maine, desperate to prove that ethical manufacturing is possible. There, he meets Whitney, a bartender wrestling with her own complicated past. In each other they see a better future, a version of the American dream they can build together. Making It in America is a deeply personal account of one couple's quest to change the world. As they navigate private struggles, international trade wars, and a global pandemic, their story carries us across the nation and across time, from the cotton fields of Mississippi to New York City's hollowed-out garment district to a family-owned zipper company in Los Angeles to the enormous knit-and-dye factories in North Carolina. Throughout, we grapple with what “Made in the USA” really means to Americans in the twenty-first century." -- Provided by publisher.
Token Supremacy
The Art of Finance, the Finance of Art, and the Great Crypto Crash of 2022
Published in 2024
"A New York Times investigative reporter wades into the murky, pixelated waters of the multibillion-dollar NFT market, a virtual casino of speculation and volatility that tests the nature of value itself. In 2021, when the gavel fell at Christie's on thesale of Mike Winkelmann's Everydays series-a compilation of 5,000 digital artworks-it made a thunderous announcement: Non-fungible tokens had arrived. The ludicrous world of CryptoKitties and Bored Apes had just produced a piece of art worth $69.3 million(at least according to the highest bidder). On that day, the traditional art market-the largest unregulated market in the world-put its stamp of approval on a very new and carnivalesque digital reality. But what did it mean for these two worlds to collide? Was it all just a money laundering scheme? And come on, what was that piece of digital flotsam really worth anyway? In Token Supremacy, Zachary Small works through these and other fascinating questions, tracing the crypto economy back to its origins inthe 2008 financial crisis and the lineage of NFTs back to the first photographic negatives. Small describes jaw-dropping tales of heists, publicity stunts, and rug pulls, before zeroing in on the role of "security tokens" in the FTX scandal. Detours through art history provide insight into the myth-making tactics that drive stratospheric auction sales and help the wealthy launder their finances (and reputations) through art. And we cast an eye toward the future of NFTs-in mortgages, restaurants, securities, and loans-that could outlive cryptocurrencies, becoming a new and dangerous shadow-banking system in its own right. A wild and spellbinding tour through a world that strains belief"-- Provided by publisher.
Your Journey to Financial Freedom
A Step-by-step Guide to Achieving Wealth and Happiness
Published in 2023
The founder of Journey to Launch and the host of an award-nominated podcast of the same name offers her seasoned expertise, providing readers with the resources they need for spending and saving responsibly as they embark on a journey to financial freedom and independence.
Invest Like a Girl
Jump into the Stock Market, Reach Your Money Goals, and Build Wealth
Published in 2024
"An approachable, empowering guide to investing that helps you level the financial playing field, move toward financial independence, and grow your money, from one of the internet's favorite personal finance educators"-- Provided by publisher.
The Friction Project
How Smart Leaders Make the Right Things Easier and the Wrong Things Harder
Published in 2024
"Every organization is plagued by destructive friction-the forces that make it harder, more complicated, or downright impossible to get anything done. Yet some forms of friction are incredibly useful, and leaders who attempt to improve workplace efficiency often make things even worse. Drawing from seven years of hands-on research, The Friction Project by bestselling authors Robert I. Sutton and Huggy Rao teaches readers how to become "friction fixers," so that teams and organizations don't squander the zeal, damage the health, and throttle the creativity and productivity of good people--or burn through cash and other precious resources. Sutton and Rao kick off the book by unpacking how skilled friction fixers think and act like trustees of others' time. They provide friction forensics to help readers identify where to avert and repair bad organizational friction and where to maintain and inject good friction. Then their help pyramid shows how friction fixers do their work, which ranges from reframing friction troubles they can't fix right now so they feel less threatening to designing and repairing organizations. The heart of the book digs into the causes and solutions for five of the most common and damaging friction troubles: oblivious leaders, addition sickness, broken connections, jargon monoxide, and fast and frenzied people and teams. Sound familiar? Sutton and Rao are here to help. They wrap things up with lessons for leading your own friction project, including linking little things to big things; the power of civility, caring, and love for propelling designs and repairs; and embracing the mess that is an inevitable part of the process (while still trying to clean it up)"-- Provided by publisher.
One Day I'll Work for Myself
The Dream and Delusion That Conquered America
Published in 2024
From side-hustlers to start-ups, freelancers to small business owners, Americans have a special affinity for people who make it on their own. But the dream has a dark side.
The Career Arts
Making the Most of College, Credentials, and Connections
Published in 2023
"Young people coming out of high school today can expect to hold many jobs over the course of their lives, which is why they need a range of essential skills. The Career Arts provides a corrective to the widespread and misleading notion that there is a direct trade-off between going to college and acquiring practical job skills. Ben Wildavsky cuts through the noise and anxiety surrounding this issue to offer sensible, clear-eyed guidance for anyone who is making decisions about education and career preparation with a view to getting ahead in the workforce. Drawing on evidence-based research, illuminating case studies, and in-depth interviews, Wildavsky shares the most vital lessons of what he calls the career arts, which include cultivating a mix of broad and targeted skills, taking advantage of employer-funded education benefits, and preparing for the world as it is, not as you wish it could be. He explains why college remains the gold standard of credentials, and presents the most promising high-quality supplements and alternatives to college that can help learners combine general and job-specific skills. He shows how building social capital is also critical to success, particularly for disadvantaged students. An invaluable guidebook for students, parents, counselors, and educators, The Career Arts reveals why college education and job preparation are not either-or propositions, and identifies the blend of education and networking needed to support real-world career aspirations"-- Provided by publisher.