Career Memoirs

An inspirational, practical guide to success in business and life learned through the opportunities and challenges of growing up as the daughter of NASCAR legend Dale Earnhardt, Sr., and becoming one of the most influential women in professional sports. A successful businesswoman shares her story of growing up in the world of NASCAR and the lessons she learned along the way.

In 2009, at the peak of the financial crisis, AIG - the American insurance behemoth - was sinking fast. It was the peg upon which the nation hung its ire and resentment during the financial crisis: the pinnacle of Wall Street arrogance and greed. When Bob Benmosche climbed aboard as CEO, it was widely assumed that he would go down with his ship. In mere months, he turned things around, pulling AIG from the brink of financial collapse and restoring its profitability.

Ten years ago the idea of getting into a stranger's car or walking into a stranger's home would have seemed bizarre and dangerous, but today it's as common as ordering a book online. Uber and Airbnb have ushered in a new era: redefining neighborhoods, challenging the way governments regulate business, and changing the way we travel. In the spirit of iconic Silicon Valley renegades like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, another generation of entrepreneurs is using technology to upend convention and disrupt entire industries.

A candid, colorful, and comprehensive oral history that reveals the secrets of Silicon Valley - from the origins of Apple and Atari to the present day clashes of Google and Facebook, and all the start-ups and disruptions that happened along the way. Drawing on over 200 in-depth interviews, Valley of Genius takes listeners from the dawn of the personal computer and the Internet, through the heyday of the web, up to the very moment when our current technological reality was invented.

The inspiring, unlikely, laugh-out-loud story of how one woman learned to lead - and how she ultimately succeeded, not despite her many mistakes, but because of them. This is the story of how Kristen Hadeed built Student Maid, a cleaning company where people are happy, loyal, productive, and empowered, even while they're mopping floors and scrubbing toilets.

Founder of The Boston Beer Company, brewer of Samuel Adams Boston Lager, and a key catalyst of the American craft beer revolution, Jim Koch offers his unique perspective when it comes to business, beer, and turning your passion into a successful company or career.

While building the Virgin Group over the course of forty years, Richard Branson has never shied away from tackling seemingly outlandish challenges that others (including his own colleagues on many occasions) considered sheer lunacy. He has taken on giants like British Airways and won, and monsters like Coca-Cola and lost. Now Branson gives an inside look at his strikingly different, swashbuckling style of leadership.

Inspiration. Success. Confidence. Passion. No one is born with these qualities, but they are the key ingredients for reaching goals, building careers, or taking a blueprint and turning it into a breathtaking skyscraper. In The Trump Card, Ivanka Trump recounts the compelling story of her upbringing as the ultimate apprentice, the daughter of Donald and Ivana Trump, and shares the life lessons and hard-won insights that have made her a rising star in the business world.

An inspiring personal story of redemption, second chances, and the transformative power within us all, from the founder and CEO of the nonprofit charity: water. In the tradition of such best-selling books as Shoe Dog and Mountains Beyond Mountains, Thirst is a riveting account of how to build a better charity, a better business, a better life - and a gritty tale that proves it’s never too late to make a change.

Today, more than ever before, the quality of a country’s governance and leadership determines whether it will succeed or fail. Now Tony Blair has written the manual on political leadership that he would have wanted back in 1997, sharing the insights he has gained from his personal experience and from observing other world leaders at first hand, both while he was in office and since, through his Institute’s work with political leaders and governments globally.

The way most white-collar crime works is by manipulating institutional psychology. That means creating something that looks as much as possible like a normal set of transactions. The drama comes later, when it all unwinds. Financial crime seems horribly complicated, but there are only so many ways you can con someone out of what’s theirs.

Miles Franklin began the candid, passionate, and contrary My Brilliant Career when she was only 16, intending for it to be the Australian answer to Jane Eyre. This thinly veiled autobiographical tale of a young girl hungering for life and love in the outback was so beyond its years when first released in 1901 that Franklin insisted it not be published again until 10 years after her death. My Brilliant Career is a coming of age story for all of the ages.

Today everyone - whether they know it or not - is in the emotional transportation business. More and more, success is won by creating compelling stories that have the power to move partners, shareholders, customers, and employees to action. Simply put, if you can’t tell it, you can’t sell it. And this book tells you how to do both. Peter Guber, whose executive and entrepreneurial accomplishments have made him a success in multiple industries, has long relied on purposeful story telling to motivate, win over, shape, engage, and sell.

This book is to help people avoid challenges, heartache, and pitfalls in life and business. You no longer have to learn these lessons The Hard Way like Brad did. This a collection of stories and the lessons Brad Lea has learned to help him build an incredible life and ultimately it is his bible on how to do sales, business, and life.

One of the most influential figures of our time, Elon Musk is the most talked about man in America who isn’t running for president (yet!). In The Leadership Genius of Elon Musk, veteran business journalist Dennis Kneale chronicles Musk’s extraordinary journey, presenting him as a beacon of inspiration. Musk’s unparalleled success as an innovator and entrepreneur is not just a testament to his genius, but a playbook for those daring to dream big.

Rarely does a week go by without a well-known executive being indicted for engaging in a white-collar crime. Perplexed as to what drives successful, wealthy people to risk it all, Harvard Business School professor Eugene Soltes spent seven years in the company of the men behind the largest corporate crimes in history - from the financial fraudsters of Enron, to the embezzlers at Tyco, to the Ponzi schemers Bernie Madoff and Allen Stanford.

Real estate titan, best-selling author, and TV impresario Donald J. Trump reveals the secrets of his success. Over the years, everyone has urged Trump to write on this subject, but it wasn't until NBC and executive producer Mark Burnett asked him to star in The Apprentice that he realized just how hungry people are to learn how great personal wealth is created and first-class businesses are run.

With over $500 million a year in sales, the Bassett Furniture Company was once the world's biggest wood furniture manufacturer. But beginning in the 1980s, the Bassett company suffered from an influx of cheap Chinese furniture as the first waves of Asian competition hit, and ultimately was forced to send its production offshore to Asia. Only one man fought back. That man is John Bassett III, a descendant of the Bassetts who is now chairman of Vaughan-Bassett Furniture Co, which employs more than 700 Virginians and has sales of over $90 million.

United Airlines, the iconic brand that invented the “Friendly Skies” and built modern aviation, found itself amid rough turbulence and was anything but united in 2015. With its reputation in freefall, operations and profits cratering, customer and employee trust fraying—and competitors pushing into coveted routes—United needed a new captain to turn things around, fast.

Federal agents never know what to expect from day to day. During his 25-year career with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, Special Agent Wayne M. Miller investigated dozens of remarkable and sometimes high-profile horrific gun, bombing, and arson cases. These accounts show true crime enthusiasts what federal investigators regularly face. All investigators could use this as a detailed textbook to see and feel the highs and lows, with the good and bad experienced by someone who has been through it.