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Books > History > History of specific subjects > History of specific institutions
On April 20, 2010, the "Deepwater Horizon" oil rig exploded, killing eleven workers and creating the largest oil spill in the history of U.S. offshore drilling. But this wasn't the first time British Petroleum and its cost-cutting practices destroyed parts of the natural world. It also was not the first time that BP's negligence resulted in the loss of human life, ruined family businesses, or shattered dreams. From Alaska to Kansas to the Gulf, journalist Mike Magner has been tracking BP's reckless path for years, and in "Poisoned Legacy" he focuses, for the first time, on the human price of BP's rise to power.
"Gelding Goliath: An Insider's Account of the Destruction of AT&T" AT&T, once the most powerful company in the world, died in 2005. Another company bought what was left of it and now uses its name. The series of "colossal failures" by internal managers as well as the inane government policies that contributed to the collapse are collected for the first time in this personal journey through corporate hell by a former high-ranking AT&T attorney.
Originally Published as Bulletin 22 from the Idaho Bureau of Mines and Geology, Gold Camps and Silver Cities is the most historically significant publication on Nineteenth Century Mining in Central and Southern Idaho. The Author describes the history and production of the districts in vivid detail and over 130 historical photo's many never seen before this publication help to give the reader an accurate history of what mining was like back then. Must have book for the Mining Historian and modern prospector alike. Now back in Print by Miningbooks.com
In this unique, well-illustrated book, readers learn how fifty financial corporations came to dominate the U.S. banking system and their impact on the nation's political, social, and economic growth. A story that spans more than two centuries of war, crisis, and opportunity, this account reminds readers that American banking was never a fixed enterprise but has evolved in tandem with the country. More than 225 years have passed since Alexander Hamilton created one of the nation's first commercial banks. Over time, these institutions have changed hands, names, and locations, reflecting a wave of mergers, acquisitions, and other restructuring efforts that echo changes in American finance. Some names, such as Bank of America and Wells Fargo, will be familiar to readers. The origins of others, including Zions Bancorporation, founded by Brigham Young and owned by the Mormon Church until 1960, are surprising. Exploring why some banks failed and others thrived, this book wonders, in light of the 2008 financial crisis, whether recent consolidations have reached or even exceeded economically rational limits. A key text for navigating the complex terrain of American finance, this volume draws a fascinating family tree for projecting the financial future of a nation.
Forbes: the legendary name in finance journalism. Synonymous with wealth, grand excess, glamour, and fun as well as style, insight, gossip, and hard-nosed reporting, the media empire and the family behind it form a remarkable story that has never been told. Now, in The Fall of the House of Forbes, veteran journalist Stewart Pinkerton reveals the hidden machinations, disastrous decisions, and personal foibles of a century-old dynasty that rose to glittering heights and crashed just as spectacularly. Writing from an insider's perspective and first-hand sources developed over his twenty years as a writer and editor at Forbes, Pinkerton takes us to the ritualized formal lunches inside the mansion-like headquarters at 60 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan; the lavish advertiser parties on board the family yacht, The Highlander; the sybaritic private life of Malcolm Forbes and the family's increasing discomfort with its patriarch; and the glory days of the magazine, with its news-making stories, high-rolling expense accounts, and bar-setting standards for anyone who aspired to wealth and its trappings. But as the media business changed, Forbes was slow to react, and found itself burdened by Malcolm's immense personal expenses, Steve Forbes's bumbling, self-financed presidential campaigns, and the family's hubris and hesitation in the face of reality. A series of devastating business decisions and an internecine struggle for power forced the sale of the Faberge eggs, the vintage toy collection, the homes, the private island, the yacht, and finally the sale of 40% of the company itself to outside investors...a collapse of shocking speed after decades of unsurpassed success. A compelling narrative account of a powerful family's dysfunction, The Fall of the House of Forbes is a parable of capitalism at its best and worst, and a metaphor for the current state of digital turmoil in media.
E Pluribus Kinko's describes how a highly democratic business structure helped Kinko's grow and profit for thirty years, and how the loss of democracy contributed to the company's decline and disappearance. From 1970 to 1999, Kinko's grew from a one-hundred-square-foot copy shop to a two-billion-dollar industry leader with over 1,000 branches worldwide, with thousands of engaged and participative citizen-coworkers. The foundations of our democracy were The Philosophy, which was like a constitution that clearly articulated stakeholder rights and expectations, our Partnership Ethos, which used profit sharing to spread the benefits and responsibilities of citizenship throughout the organization, and our habit of Pot-Stirring, which produced the frequent revolutions Thomas Jefferson believed were necessary in a healthy democracy. It was very messy - and very profitable.
In September 1869, two young speculators, Jay Gould and Jim Fisk, Jr., undertook perhaps the most audacious financial operation in American history - the cornering of the national gold supply. Fisk and Gould manipulated prices to the point that legitimate commerce froze to a halt. When the federal Treasury finally broke the corner on Black Friday, September 24, the price of $100 gold coin fell from $160 to $130 in fifteen minutes, sparking a national financial panic, a stock market depression, and the bankruptcy of major trading houses. The scandal reached the very household of President Ulysses Grant, and only the intervention of their friend, Boss Tweed of Tammany Hall, saved Fisk and Gould from personal ruin.
"Toyota is becoming a double threat: the world's finest manufacturer and a truly great innovator . . . that formula, a combination of production prowess and technical innovation, is an unbeatable recipe for success." -- "Fortune," February 2006 For the first time, an insider reveals the formula behind Toyota's unceasing quest to innovate and do more with less, a philosophy that has made it one of the ten most profitable companies in the world (and worth more than GM, Ford, DaimlerChrysler, and Honda combined). In a rare look into Toyota's ability to consistently achieve breakthroughs that outperform the competition, "The Elegant Solution" explains what Toyota associates have known all along: it's not about the cars. Rather, Toyota's astounding success is just the visible result of a hidden creative process that begins with a seven-digit number. "One million." That's how many new ideas the Toyota organization implements every year. These ideas come from every level of the organization -- from the factory floors to the corporate suites. And organizations all over the world want to learn how it's done. Now senior University of Toyota advisor Matthew May shows how any company can achieve an environment of everyday innovation and discover the kinds of elegant solutions that hold the power to change the game forever. World-class benchmarks like Lexus, Prius, Scion -- even Toyota's vaunted production system -- are simply shining examples of elegant solutions. A tactical playbook for team-based innovation, "The Elegant Solution" delivers powerful lessons in breakthrough thinking in a provocative yet practical guide to the three core principles and ten key practices that shape successful business innovation. Innovation isn't just about technology -- it's about value, opportunity, and impact. When a company embeds a real discipline around tapping ingenuity in the pursuit of perfection, the sky is the limit. Dozens of case studies (from Toyota and other companies) illustrate the universal power and applicability of these concepts. A unique "clamshell strategy" prepares managers to successfully lead and sustain the innovation effort. At once a thought-starter and a taskmaster, "The Elegant Solution" is a vital prescription for anyone wanting to truly master business innovation.
The pharmaceutical revolution that gathered pace in the 1930s delivered a plethora of almost magical new drugs such as penicillin, streptomycin, cortisone, and the birth control pill. This revolution grew from academic-business relationships in five countries: USA, Germany, Great Britain, Switzerland, and France. Many other countries tried and failed to replicate this success, yet a handful of Scandinavia companies made important breakthroughs in a narrow band of specialities. This is the story of how one Norwegian company- Nyegaard & Co. -achieved international success from the 1970s onwards with a breakthrough product facilitating X-ray pictures of the soft tissues of the body. The company succeeded by harnessing research skills and creating scientific and business alliances abroad, building its own momentum step by step: the corporation as entrepreneur. It thereby broke with the conventional way a national medical ecosystem facilitated the crucial scientific progress. This is a story both of personal initiatives and great organizational transformations in several stages. In the 1950s, Nyegaard & Co. was a small hierarchical home market-oriented generics company. By the end of the 1990s, it had developed into a fairly large and multinational hierarchical company, preoccupied as much with shareholder value as scientific progress. It has also become a company that no longer had the same ability to innovate as before and therefore became merged into another one.
This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.
In September 1910, the activist Roger Casement arrived in the Amazon jungle on a mission for the British government: to investigate reports of widespread human-rights abuses in the forests along the Putumayo River. Casement was outraged by what he uncovered: nearly thirty thousand Indians had died to produce four thousand tons of rubber for Peruvian and British commercial interests, under the brutal rubber baron Julio Cesar Arana. In 1912, Casement's seven-hundred-page report of the Putumayo violence set off reverberations throughout the world. Drawing on a wealth of original research, "The Devil and Mr. Casement" is a haunting story of modern capitalism with enormous contemporary political resonance.
"Magnificently and heartbreakingly told. . . . Hudson] shows vividly that really filthy, face-to-face fraud and hard-sell bullying . . . brought the economy down around our ears."--"The Boston Globe" In this page-turning, true-crime expose, award-winning reporter Michael W. Hudson reveals the story of the rise and fall of the biggest subprime lender and Wall Street's biggest patron of subprime: Ameriquest and Lehman Brothers. They did more than any other institutions to produce the biggest financial scandal in American history. It's a tale populated by a remarkable cast of characters: a shadowy billionaire who created the subprime industry out of the ashes of the 1980s S&L scandal; insatiable Wall Street executives; ensnared home owners; investigators who tried to expose the fraud; politicians who turned a blind eye; and, most of all, the drug-snorting, high-living salesman who tell all about the money they made, the lies they told, the deals they closed. Provocative and gripping, "The Monster" is a searing look at the bottom-feeding fraud and top-down greed that fueled the financial collapse.
The Lockheed Plant in Marietta has been building many of the world's most legendary aircraft for the past 60 years--and that doesn't even count its service building B-29 bombers for the Bell Aircraft Company during World War II. Lockheed's six decades have seen the plant build jet bombers, like the B-47 Stratojet; the world's most dominant fighter jet (the F-22 Raptor); and the most vaunted cargo planes (C-130 Hercules, C-141 StarLifter, and C-5 Galaxy). In Images of America: The Lockheed Plant, readers will learn about those planes, the people who designed and assembled them, and the plant in which they were built. The striking images in this book were shared by Lockheed Martin and the Marietta Daily Journal and depict the plant from its construction through today.
THIS 20 PAGE ARTICLE WAS EXTRACTED FROM THE BOOK: Pamphlets: Elbert Hubbard's Selected Writings: Part 1, by Elbert Hubbard. To purchase the entire book, please order ISBN 0766103846.
The world of CEOs and boards has become an entitled insiders'
club--virtually free of accountability--and the abject failure of
our corporate leaders to police themselves is costing Americans
trillions and seriously undermining the strength of our economy.
Whereas boards are supposed to act as watchdogs, guarding
shareholders' interests, they have become enabling lapdogs to CEOs,
who are aided and abetted in their pursuit of outrageous pay and
unfettered power by a bevy of supporting players, including
compensation consultants who justify exorbitant pay packages and
accountants and attorneys who see no evil. |
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