Finance Memoir

Bob Pisani is senior markets correspondent for CNBC and has spent the past 25 years on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. He has been on the front line of finance for all the major events of the last quarter century, including the Asian Financial Crisis, the dot-com bubble and collapse, the terrorist attacks of 9/11, and the Great Financial Crisis. What was it like to witness these events firsthand, at the center of the financial world? In Shut Up and Keep Talking, Bob tells a series of captivating stories that reveal what he has learned about life and investing.

At the height of the roaring 20s, Swedish émigré Ivar Kreuger made a fortune raising money in America and loaning it to Europe in exchange for matchstick monopolies. His enterprise was a rare success story throughout the Great Depression. Yet after Kreuger's suicide in 1932, the true nature of his empire emerged.

Imagine a year without spending - or even touching - money. Former businessman Mark Boyle did just that and here is his extraordinary story. Going back to basics and following his own strict rules, Mark learned ingenious ways to eliminate his bills and discovered that good friends are all the riches you need.

Tracy Kidder, the “master of the nonfiction narrative” (The Baltimore Sun) and author of the bestselling classic The Soul of a New Machine, now tells the story of Paul English, a kinetic and unconventional inventor and entrepreneur, who as a boy rebelled against authority.

Over the course of nearly half a century, five American presidents - three Democrats and two Republicans - have relied on the financial acumen, and the integrity, of Paul A. Volcker. During his tenure as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, when he battled the Great Inflation of the 1970s, Volcker did nothing less than restore the reputation of an American financial system on the verge of collapse.

Through perseverance, solid ingenuity, and unwavering determination, family-run companies - dynasties - have dominated wealth and business throughout the last two centuries. One third of Fortune 500 firms are family owned and, in most cases, the ideal of the family business is one synonymous with continuity, watchful leadership, and dedication to success. But what happens when bad behavior, extravagance, and laziness, all very real enemies of industry, are allowed to proliferate?

Over the course of nearly two centuries, the innovations, mistakes, and scandals of different market participants have played an important role in shaping today's financial markets. Now, in 100 Minds that Made the Market, Ken Fisher delivers cameo biographies of these pioneers of American financial history. From Joe Kennedy's "sexcapades" to Jesse Livermore's suicide, this book details the drama, the dirt, and the financial principles of an amazingly inventive group of financial minds.

On the first day of high school, Kristina Ellis' mom - a single, working mother who lost her husband to cancer - informed her that she could not financially support her after graduation. Kristina would need to find her own way to pay for college. As an average student with less-than-impressive test scores, Kristina realized she would have to sell herself to scholarship committees if she wanted to stand out. That's when she devised the plan that led to her receiving over $500,000 in scholarships.

Gates' Business @ the Speed of Thought is one of audible.com's most popular programs. This is one investment that will pay consistent dividends. Download it for your commute.

During Wall Street's last big bull market, there were brokers in $3,000 suits, billion-dollar IPO's, and 30-year-olds making $100,000 a month. And then there was Louis Pasciuto, who came from Staten Island at the age of 19 and discovered one indelible truth about himself: He was born to steal. This is the astounding, true story of the rise and fall of this fast-talking, street-smart wiseguy, as well as the insidious ways the Mob infiltrates, then controls, Wall Street.

As cryptocurrency rose in popularity during the pandemic, new converts bought into the idea that crypto would not only make them rich, but would usher in imminent revolutions across art, finance, politics, and gaming. Cryptocurrency caught the zeitgeist through figures like FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, who only two years later would be convicted of one of the most calamitous acts of financial fraud in US history. Now, Cryptomania unfolds the tumultuous twenty months inside this male-dominated, overhyped industry that led to its downfall.

In this formative period, from 1941-78, Buffett developed and honed the investment philosophy that would lead him to become so successful as his career progressed. But it was not all plain sailing - Buffett made mistakes along the way - and Arnold shows how Buffett learned through success and failure how to select companies worth backing. Arnold also includes insightful "learning points" at the end of each chapter, which reveal how investors can learn from the craft of Warren Buffett to improve their own investing.

Here is a bold new history of economics, the dramatic story of how the great economic thinkers built a rigorous social science without peer.

Over the last three years, Forbes has published in depth profiles of this new batch of billionaires, including the founders of Spotify, Dropbox, Tumblr, and Twitter. Now, in a compilation introduced and updated by Forbes editor Randall Lane, fans and critics alike will get a comprehensive look at who these super-entrepreneurs are and what they say about their own success and their plans for the future.

In 1998, three Harvard Business School graduates - two men and one woman - turned down six-figure salaries at big corporations, bet on themselves, and launched their own new companies. By their 10-year reunion, their audacity had paid huge dividends. They'd made many millions of dollars, created hundreds of jobs and left their mark on the world. The Intelligent Entrepreneur tells the compelling and instructive story of how these three young founders did it.

When Ray Dalio, billionaire founder of Bridgewater Associates, the world's largest hedge fund, announced in October 2022 that he was stepping down from the company he founded 47 years ago, the news made headlines around the world. Dalio achieved worldwide fame thanks to a mystique of success cultivated in frequent media appearances, celebrity hobnobbing, and his bestselling book, Principles. In The Fund, Rob Copeland draws on hundreds of interviews with those inside and around the firm to reveal what really goes on with Dalio and his cohorts behind closed doors.

North Korea is one of the most troubled societies on earth. The country's 24 million people live under a violent dictatorship led by a single family, which relentlessly pursues the development of nuclear arms, which periodically incites risky military clashes with the larger, richer, liberal South, and which forces each and every person to play a role in the "theater state" even as it pays little more than lip service to the wellbeing of the overwhelming majority.

In the minds of historians and the American public alike, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was one of our greatest presidents, not least because he supposedly saved America from the Great Depression. But as historian Jim Powell reveals in this groundbreaking book, Roosevelt's New Deal policies actually prolonged and exacerbated the economic disaster.

Born into one of America's most illustrious trading families, Sam Israel was determined to strike out on his own. After apprenticing with one of the greatest traders of the 1980s, he founded his own fast-growing hedge fund, promising investors extraordinary returns. But it was all an elaborate charade.

Warren Buffett has repeatedly acknowledged Benjamin Graham, a man he personally studied and worked under, as the primary influence on his investment approach. Indeed, there is a direct line between the record-shattering investing performance of Buffett (and other value investors) and Graham's life. In six books and dozens of papers, Graham—widely known as the "Dean of Wall Street"—left an extensive account of an investing system that, as Buffett can attest to, actually works!