Founders of the phenomenally successful publishing company Lonely Planet, Tony and Maureen Wheeler have produced travel guides to just about every corner of the globe.
Lonely Planet Publications was born in 1973 when the Wheelers self-published a quirky travel guide, "Across Asia on the Cheap." This was quickly followed by what soon became the backpackers' bible, "South-East Asia on a Shoestring." Going boldly where no other travel publisher had ventured, they catered to a new generation of independent, budget-conscious travelers long before the advent of mass tourism.
"Unlikely Destinations: The Lonely Planet Story" is a unique mix of autobiography, business history and travel book. It traces Tony and Maureen Wheeler's personal story as well as the often bumpy evolution of their travel guide business into the world's largest independent travel publishing company.
Not surprisingly, after thirty years in the business the Wheelers have an unrivalled set of anecdotes which they share in "Unlikely Destinations: The Lonely Planet Story." They have been hassled by customs, cheated by accountants, let down by writers, banned in Malawi, berated for their Burma guide and had books pirated in Vietnam. Tony has been gored by a cow in Benares, declared dead around the world in an assortment of gruesome and greatly exaggerated accounts and their company has been accused of the "Lonely Planetization" of the world.
Through it all, from the heady days of discovery in the '70s to the rocky patch after the September 11th terrorist attacks, the Wheelers' passion for the planet and traveling certainly hasn't diminished, and comes shining through in this enthralling travelogue. But above all, their memoir reveals the spirit of adventure that has made them, according to the "New York Daily News, " "the specialists in guiding weird folks to weird places."

The Pennsylvania and the New York Central railroads helped to develop central Pennsylvania as the largest source of bituminous coal for the nation. By the late 19th century, the two lines were among America's largest businesses and would soon become legendary archrivals. The PRR first arrived in the 1860s. Within a few years, it was sourcing as much as four million tons of coal annually from Centre County and the Moshannon Valley and would continue do so for a quarter-century. The New York Central, through its Beech Creek Railroad affiliate, invaded the region in the 1880s, first seeking a dependable, long-term source of coal to fuel its locomotives but soon aggressively attempting to break its rival's lock on transporting the area's immense wealth of mineral and forest products. Beginning around 1900, the two companies transitioned from an era of growth and competition to a time when each tacitly recognized the other's domain and sought to achieve maximum operating efficiencies by adopting new technology such as air brakes, automatic couplers, all-steel cars, and diesel locomotives. Over the next few decades, each line began to face common problems in the form of competition from other forms of transportation and government regulation; in 1968 the two businesses merged. Branch Line Empires offers a thorough and captivating analysis of how a changing world turned competition into cooperation between two railroad industry titans.

Diamond Warriors in Colonial Namibia enters into unchartered scholarly territory of illegal diamond smuggling at the largest diamond mining company in colonial Namibia-De Beers' Consolidated Diamond Mines of South West Africa (CDM). It details the underground activities of the natives (migrant workers) employed by the CDM and how these illicit activities accounted for rapid development in Owamboland.

Beyond this account, the book takes on the deterministic 'natural resource curse' theory that equates natural resource endowments to a curse resulting in underdevelopment and sometimes conflict. It is argued and proven herein, from a decolonial standpoint, that such an approach is an oversimplification of the political economy of natural resources in Africa in general and Namibia in particular.

The text also provides a contextual account of the contract labour system and details the symbiotic relationship between CDM and the colonial state before highlighting the remaining unanswered questions and areas of further research.

"An adulating biography of Apple's left-brained wunderkind, whose work continues to revolutionize modern technology." --"Kirkus Reviews"
In 1997, Steve Jobs discovered a scruffy British designer toiling away at Apple's headquarters, surrounded by hundreds of sketches and prototypes. Jony Ive's collaboration with Jobs would produce some of the world's most iconic technology products, including the iMac, iPod, iPad, and iPhone. Ive's work helped reverse Apple's long decline, overturned entire industries, and created a huge global fan base. Yet little is known about the shy, soft-spoken whiz whom Jobs referred to as his "spiritual partner."
Leander Kahney offers a detailed portrait of the English art school student with dyslexia who became the most acclaimed tech designer of his generation. Drawing on interviews with Ive's former colleagues and Apple insiders, Kahney "takes us inside the creation of these memorable objects." ("The Wall Street Journal")

From humble beginnings at Fairlie, Ayrshire, in the early years of the nineteenth century, William Fife and Son grew to become one of Britain's premier yacht-building yards, attracting commissions from as far afield as America, Canada and America. By the time the yard closed on the eve of the Second World War, three generations of the Fife family had been responsible for the design and building of almost a thousand yachts - crafts that were recognized world-wide as the epitome of elegance and design. This memorable story of enterprise and craftsmanship chronicles the development and progress of the Fife yard and its business during its 125-year history. It includes a vast wealth of information on the yachts themselves, and is interspersed with lively anecdotes about the family, their clients and their craftsmen, making it an essential addition to the literature on Scotland's maritime past. May Fife McCallum, a descendant of the founder, has had privileged access to private papers, business records and photographs. Over many years she has researched this archival material and also recorded the reminiscences of family friends and of local people personally associated with the yard and its workforce.

Fashion studies is a burgeoning field that often highlights the contributions of genius designers and high-profile brands with little reference to what goes on behind the scenes in the supply chain. This book pulls back the curtain on the global fashion system of the past 200 years to examine the relationship between the textile mills of Yorkshire - the firms that provided the entire Western world with warm wool fabrics - and their customers. It is a microhistory of a single firm, Abraham Moon and Sons Ltd, that sheds light on important macro questions about British industry, government policies on international trade, the role of multi-generational family firms and the place of design and innovation in business strategy. It is the first book to connect Yorkshire tweeds to the fashion system. Written in lively, accessible prose, this book will appeal to anyone who works in fashion or who wears fashion. There is nothing like it - and it will raise the bar for historical studies of global fashion. Here you'll find intriguing stories about a tweed theft from the Leeds Coloured Cloth Hall, debates on tariffs and global trade, the battle against synthetic fibres and the reinvention of British tweeds around heritage marketing. You won't be bored. -- .

An intimate portrayal of the stumbling giant that is Facebook by two New York Times journalists.

In November 2018, the New York Times published a bombshell in-depth investigation that exposed, with disturbing insider detail, how leadership decisions at Facebook enabled, and then tried to cover up, massive privacy breaches and Russian meddling in the 2016 election. The story quickly shot to the top of the paper's most emailed list. It would earn the team of Times reporters a prestigious Loeb award, the George Polk award, and a spot on the Pulitzer short list. But it only skimmed the surface.

The investigation's lead reporters, Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang, spent eighteen months piecing together the story of how one of the most powerful companies in the world tried to bury a damning truth-that Facebook has become a conduit for disinformation, hate speech, and political propaganda. The unrivalled sources of these two veteran journalists led them to perhaps the most recognizable names in the tech industry: Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg. Both have long existed as archetypes of uniquely 21st century executives-he, the tech "boy genius" turned billionaire, she, the ultimate woman in business, an inspiration to millions through her books and speeches.

An Ugly Truth is the definitive story of Facebook's fall from grace, following the embattled company from 2011, when its power and positive influence was undisputed, to 2020, when it will face its biggest test yet-the US presidential election. What are the ultimate ramifications when a few individuals are in charge of the technology used by half the world's population? Can they control the technology they've unleashed into the world? And if not, can we, as individuals and as a society, control them?

An examination of how the patent system works, imperfections and all, to incentivize innovation Do patents facilitate or frustrate innovation? Lawyers, economists, and politicians who have staked out strong positions in this debate often attempt to validate their claims by invoking the historical record-but they frequently get the history wrong. The Battle over Patents gets it right. Bringing together thoroughly researched essays from prominent historians and social scientists, this volume traces the long and contentious history of patents and examines how they have worked in practice. Editors Stephen H. Haber and Naomi R. Lamoreaux show that patent systems are the result of contending interests at different points in production chains battling over economic surplus. The larger the potential surplus, the more extreme are the efforts of contending parties-now and in the past-to search out, generate, and exploit any and all sources of friction. Patent systems, as human creations, are therefore necessarily ridden with imperfections. This volume explores these shortcomings and explains why, despite all the debate, historically US-style patent systems still dominate all other methods of encouraging inventive activity.

London merchant bankers emerged during the 1820s in the wake of financial turmoil caused by the wars of American Independence, the Napoleonic campaigns and the Anglo-American war of 1812. Though the majority of merchant bankers remained cautious in their affairs, Huth & Co established an impressive global network of trade and lending, dealing with over 6,000 correspondents in more than seventy countries. Based on archival research, this comparative study provides a new chronology of early nineteenth-century commercial and financial expansion. Huth & Co. were truly market-makers and key intermediaries of commodities and capital flows in the international economy. This is an important example of a firm shaping globalisation well before the transport and communication revolution of the last quarter of the nineteenth century. But rather than a case study, this is a comparative study concerned with the commercial and financial activities of the leading merchant-bankers of the period This book will be of great interest to business and economic historians interested in the nature of the early decades of the first globalization.

A fast-growing social media marketing company, TechCo encourages all of its employees to speak up. By promoting open dialogue across the corporate hierarchy, the firm has fostered a uniquely engaged workforce and an enviable capacity for change. Yet the path hasn't always been easy. TechCo has confronted a number of challenges, and its experience reveals the essential elements of bureaucracy that remain even when a firm sets out to discard them. Through it all, TechCo serves as a powerful new model for how firms can navigate today's rapidly changing technological and cultural climate. Catherine J. Turco was embedded within TechCo for ten months. The Conversational Firm is her ethnographic analysis of what worked at the company and what didn't. She offers multiple lessons for anyone curious about the effect of social media on the corporate environment and adds depth to debates over the new generation of employees reared on social media: Millennials who carry their technological habits and expectations into the workplace. Marshaling insights from cultural and economic sociology, organizational theory, economics, technology studies, and anthropology, The Conversational Firm offers a nuanced analysis of corporate communication, control, and culture in the social media age.

This is the definitive account of the Royal Bank of Scotland scandal. For a few brief months in 2007 and 2009, the Royal Bank of Scotland was the largest bank in the world. Then the Edinburgh-based giant - having rapidly grown its footprint to 55 countries and stretched its assets to GBP2.4 trillion under its hubristic and delinquent former boss Fred Goodwin - crashed to earth. In Shredded, Ian Fraser explores the series of cataclysmic misjudgments, the toxic internal culture and the 'light touch' regulatory regime that gave rise to RBS/NatWest's near-collapse. He also considers why it became the most expensive bank in the world to bail out and why a culture of impunity was allowed to develop in the banking sector. This new edition brings the story up to date, chronicling the string of scandals that have come to light since taxpayers rescued RBS and concluding with an evaluation of the attempts of the bank's post-crisis chief executives, Stephen Hester and Ross McEwan, to dismantle Goodwin's disastrous legacy and restore the damaged institutions to health. 'A gripping account - RBS was a rogue business, operating in what had become a rogue industry, with the connivance of government. Read it and weep' - Martin Woolf, Financial Times

Tenacious patterns of ethnic and economic inequality persist in the rural, largely minority regions of China's north- and southwest. Such inequality is commonly attributed to geography, access to resources, and recent political developments. In Corporate Conquests, C. Patterson Giersch provides a desperately-needed challenge to these conventional understandings by tracing the disempowerment of minority communities to the very beginnings of China's modern development. Focusing on the emergence of private and state corporations in Yunnan Province during the late 1800s and early 1900s, the book reveals how entrepreneurs centralized corporate power even as they expanded their businesses throughout the Southwest and into Tibet, Southeast Asia, and eastern China. Bringing wealth and cosmopolitan lifestyles to their hometowns, the merchant-owners also gained greater access to commodities at the expense of the Southwest's many indigenous minority communities. Meanwhile, new concepts of development shaped the creation of state-run corporations, which further concentrated resources in the hands of outsiders. The book reveals how important new ideas and structures of power, now central to the Communist Party's repertoire of rule and oppression, were forged, not along China's east coast, but along the nation's internal borderlands. It is a must-read for anyone wishing to learn about China's unique state capitalism and its contribution to inequality.

An ambitious and shocking expose of America's hidden empire in Liberia, run by the storied Firestone corporation, and its long shadow In the early 1920s, Americans owned 80 percent of the world's automobiles and consumed 75 percent of the world's rubber. But only one percent of the world's rubber grew under the U.S. flag, creating a bottleneck that hampered the nation's explosive economic expansion. To solve its conundrum, the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company turned to a tiny West African nation, Liberia, founded in 1847 as a free Black republic. Empire of Rubber tells a sweeping story of capitalism, racial exploitation, and environmental devastation, as Firestone transformed Liberia into America's rubber empire. Historian and filmmaker Gregg Mitman scoured remote archives to unearth a history of promises unfulfilled for the vast numbers of Liberians who toiled on rubber plantations built on taken land. Mitman reveals a history of racial segregation and medical experimentation that reflected Jim Crow America-on African soil. As Firestone reaped fortunes, wealth and power concentrated in the hands of a few elites, fostering widespread inequalities that fed unrest, rebellions and, eventually, civil war. A riveting narrative of ecology and disease, of commerce and science, and of racial politics and political maneuvering, Empire of Rubber uncovers the hidden story of a corporate empire whose tentacles reach into the present.

Investing-the commitment of resources to achieve a return-affects individuals, families, companies, and nations, and has done so throughout history. Yet until the sixteenth century, investing was a privilege of only the elite classes. The story behind the democratization of investing is bound up with some of history's most epic events. It is also a tale rich with lessons for professional and everyday investors who hope to make wiser choices. This entertaining history doubles as a sophisticated account of the opportunities and challenges facing the modern investor. It follows the rise of funded retirement; the evolution of investment vehicles and techniques; investment misdeeds and regulatory reform; government economic policy; the development of investment theory; and the emergence of new investment structures. Norton Reamer and Jesse Downing map these trends and profile the battle between low cost index and exchange-traded funds, on the one hand, and the higher-fee hedge funds and private equity, on the other. By helping us understand this history and its legacy of risk, Reamer and Downing hope to better educate readers about the individual and societal impact of investing and ultimately level the playing field.

HOW ONE MAN FOUGHT AGAINST LARGE-SCALE FINANCIAL CORRUPTION ...AND WON

When Carlos Legaspy, Mexican-American owner of a rising broker-dealer, uncovered the inner workings of a nine- figure Ponzi scheme, he thought he was doing the right thing by sounding the alarm. Instead, the fraud's perpetrators shifted blame onto him, touching o a two-year saga of betrayal, fraud, and high-stakes financial drama that would extend over international borders and impact some of Wall Street's biggest players--and bring Legaspy's own business and reputation to the brink of destruction.

Going for Broke chronicles Legaspy's rise from the grandson of a junkyard owner in Mexico to the head of a successful broker-dealer to becoming an overnight pariah facing $40 million in legal claims for malfeasance he did not commit. To clear his name, Legaspy wages a multifront war against conniving attorneys, scheming financial advisors, aggressive regulators, and deep-pocketed banks in a race to save his company before the scandal leaves him bankrupt and his company in ruins. Legaspy's tale reminds us that, even in a cutthroat industry where "guilty until proven innocent" takes the place of due process and allies are few and far between, you're not down for the count as long as you can get back up and throw one more punch.

"Splendid...the definitive history of the hedge fund, a compelling narrative full of larger-than-life characters and dramatic tales." -- "The Washington Post"
Wealthy, powerful, and potentially dangerous, hedge fund moguls have become the It Boys of twenty-first- century capitalism. Beating the market was long thought to be impossible, but hedge funds cracked its mysteries and made fortunes in the process. Drawing on his unprecedented access to the industry, esteemed financial writer Sebastian Mallaby tells the inside story of the hedge funds, from their origins in the 1960s to their role in the financial crisis of 2007 to 2009.

The first-person account of the family that changed the American retail landscape.

Longtime Dollar General CEO Cal Turner, Jr. shares his extraordinary life as heir to the company founded by his father, Cal Turner, Sr., and his grandfather, a dirt farmer turned Depression-era entrepreneur. Cal's narrative is at its heart a father-son story, from his childhood in Scottsville, Kentucky, where business and family were one, to the triumph of reaching the Fortune 300--at the cost of risking that very father/son relationship. Cal shares how the small-town values with which he was raised helped him guide Dollar General from family enterprise to national powerhouse.

Exploring three generations of a successful family with very different leadership styles, Cal Jr. shares a wealth of wisdom from a lifetime on the entrepreneurial front lines. He shows how his grandfather turned a third-grade education into an asset for success. He reveals how his driven father hatched the breakthrough dollar price point strategy and why it worked. And he explains how he found his own leadership style when he took his place at the helm--values-based, people-oriented, and pragmatic. Cal's story provides a riveting look at the family love and drama behind Dollar General's spectacular rise, pays homage to the working-class people whose no-frills needs helped determine its rock-bottom prices, and shares the life and business lessons of one of 20th-century America's most compelling business leaders.

From a long-time Alibaba executive and friend of Jack Ma, this is first book to articulate how Alibaba's unique culture and "tai chi" management principles are providing a business and economic development model for the rest of the world.If you took the economic might of Amazon, and added the penetration of Facebook, the ubiquity of Google, and the cultural significance of YouTube, you might have something starting to resemble Alibaba. Commonly mischaracterized as a kind of Chinese eBay for businesses, Alibaba and its interlinked network of products and services have exploded into global markets, disrupting conventional businesses and creating previously unimaginable opportunities for millions of small businesses worldwide. This book reveals the Tao of Alibaba-the company's "secret sauce"-a consciously cultivated ethos and spirit that has enabled Alibaba to weather tough times (including its recent setbacks with the Chinese government) and persist toward a common mission. It is a blueprint of the company's management philosophy, crystalized into the most important elements that have driven its success, and it provides a road map for how to incorporate these principles into any organization's operations. Wong distills his 20 years of experience inside the company to show readers how to align their organization's capabilities with performance-maximizing tools in order to achieve success. But most importantly, the Tao of Alibaba teaches the pursuit of greater purpose and meaning, steering entrepreneurs to view their ventures as a vehicle for having profound and lasting impacts on their communities. Ultimately, the lessons shared in The Tao of Alibaba will serve as timeless tools for any entrepreneur seeking to configure their organization toward purpose and impact.

Tells the story of how America's biggest companies began, operated, and prospered post-World War I This book takes the vantage point of people working within companies as they responded to constant change created by consumers and technology. It focuses on the entrepreneur, the firm, and the industry, by showing--from the inside--how businesses operated after 1920, while offering a good deal of Modern American social and cultural history. The case studies and contextual chapters provide an in-depth understanding of the evolution of American management over nearly 100 years. American Business Since 1920: How It Worked presents historical struggles with decision making and the trend towards relative decentralization through stories of extraordinarily capable entrepreneurs and the organizations they led. It covers: Henry Ford and his competitor Alfred Sloan at General Motors during the 1920s; Neil McElroy at Procter & Gamble in the 1930s; Ferdinand Eberstadt at the government's Controlled Materials Plan during World War II; David Sarnoff at RCA in the 1950s and 1960s; and Ray Kroc and his McDonald's franchises in the late twentieth century and early twenty-first; and more. It also delves into such modern success stories as Amazon.com, eBay, and Google. Provides deep analysis of some of the most successful companies of the 20th century Contains topical chapters covering titans of the 2000s Part of Wiley-Blackwell's highly praised American History Series American Business Since 1920: How It Worked is designed for use in both basic and advanced courses in American history, at the undergraduate and graduate levels.

A remarkable fifteen Nordic family businesses are among the 500 biggest companies in the world and the Nordic countries have more dynasties than most others per capita and in GDP terms. The willingness, often reluctant, of both the political system and labour movement to accept asset accumulation has helped these Nordic businesses survive. The top 1% of Swedes own close to 25% of the country's wealth, as opposed to 16.5% of Spaniards, where dynasties are also abundant. The pattern has held a firm grip on the Nordic countries since the Industrial Revolution and emergence of free enterprise. The trend is particularly pronounced in comparison with the Anglo-Saxon countries - somewhat less so relative to places like Italy, Japan, Germany and South-Asian countries. This book describes the factors and dynamics behind the ability of Nordic businesses to grow and thrive from one generation to the next in the process of becoming dynasties. Far from being commercial enterprises, they are a venue for power, philanthropy, passion, conflict, freedom and captivity. Like many other dynasties, the Nordic ones are a witch's brew of Machiavelli's Prince, Marx's belief in the potential of the meritocracy and Smith's baker who works to sustain his family. Topped by a spoonful of Weber's Protestant Ethic. This book will be key readings for students and scholars of entrepreneurship, corporate governance, business history, Scandinavian history, family business and enterprises and the related disciplines.