* Instant Bestseller * New York Times Editors' Choice * A "deeply reported...bracingly written" (Walter Isaacson, bestselling author of Code Breaker) and "gripping account of PayPal's origins and a vivid portrait of the geeks and contrarians who made its meteoric rise possible" (The Wall Street Journal)--including Elon Musk, Amy Rowe Klement, Peter Thiel, Julie Anderson, Max Levchin, Reid Hoffman, and many others whose stories have never been shared. Today, PayPal's founders and earliest employees are considered the technology industry's most powerful network. Since leaving PayPal, they have formed, funded, and advised the leading companies of our era, including Tesla, Facebook, YouTube, SpaceX, Yelp, Palantir, and LinkedIn, among many others. As a group, they have driven 21st-century innovation and entrepreneurship. Their names stir passions; they're as controversial as they are admired. Yet, for all their influence, the story of where they first started has gone largely untold. Before igniting the commercial space race or jumpstarting social media's rise, they were the unknown creators of a scrappy online payments start-up called PayPal. In building what became one of the world's foremost companies, they faced bruising competition, internal strife, the emergence of widespread online fraud, and the devastating dot-com bust of the 2000s. Their success was anything but certain. In The Founders: The Story of PayPal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley, award-winning author and biographer Jimmy Soni explores PayPal's turbulent early days. With hundreds of interviews and unprecedented access to thousands of pages of internal material, he shows how the seeds of so much of what shapes our world today--fast-scaling digital start-ups, cashless currency concepts, mobile money transfer--were planted two decades ago. He also reveals the stories of countless individuals who were left out of the front-page features and banner headlines but who were central to PayPal's success. Described as "an intensely magnetic chronicle" (The New York Times) and "engrossing" (Business Insider), The Founders is a story of iteration and inventiveness--the products of which have cast a long and powerful shadow over modern life. This narrative illustrates how this rare assemblage of talent came to work together and how their collaboration changed our world forever.

'A fascinating page-turner... An indispensable guide to modern innovation and entrepreneurship.' Walter Isaacson, no. 1 bestselling author of Steve Jobs Perfect for readers of Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance and Zero to One by Peter Theil Out of PayPal's ranks have come household names like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Max Levchin and Reid Hoffman. Since leaving Paypal, they have formed, funded, and advised the leading companies of our era, including Tesla, Facebook, YouTube, SpaceX, Yelp, Palantir, and LinkedIn, among many others. Yet for all their influence, the incredible story of where they started has gone largely untold. In The Founders, award-winning author Jimmy Soni narrates how a once-in-a-generation collaboration turned a scrappy start-up into one of the most successful businesses of all time. Facing bruising competition, internal strife, the emergence of widespread online fraud, and the devastating dot-com bust of the 2000s, their success was anything but certain. But they would go on to change our world forever. Informed by hundreds of interviews and unprecedented access to thousands of pages of internal material, The Founders explores how the seeds of so much of what drives the internet today were planted two decades ago.

Single mother and small-business owner Judy Henderson's world fell apart when she was sentenced to life in prison for a crime she did not commit, separating her from her three-year-old son and thirteen-year-old daughter.

During three decades in the inhospitable prison system, she faced violence, mistreatment, and even live snakes and scorpions, all the while pleading her case to the legal system and passionately parenting her children from a prison phone. Never giving up hope that she would be set free, she committed to self-education and self-healing, worked with nonprofit prison programs, earned her GED then paralegal degree, participated in the passing of the first battered women's bill in MO, and shepherded women and mothers through the clemency process. With the help of the prosecutor on her case and the Missouri governor, Judy was granted clemency and received a full pardon after almost thirty-five years behind bars.

Filled with keen insights into how Judy overcame incredible obstacles, the power of faith and the "coincidences" that fortified her, When the Light Finds Us is compelling narrative nonfiction from an award-winning writer that will motivate readers to persevere through hard times and bolster their confidence in redemption, faith, and the power of a mother's love.

The story of one woman's remarkable 25-year odyssey to restore the beloved carousel at Brooklyn Bridge Park In 1983 a dream to revive the Dumbo area of Brooklyn was underway. Part of that plan was a carousel and it fell to Jane Walentas to find one. After extensive research, she located an intact 1922 example with 48 exquisitely carved horses—and then embarked on a two-plus decade restoration mission to return the historic attraction to its original elegance. After painstaking work, Walentas's next hurdle was to secure a spot in Brooklyn Bridge Park. Finally, in September 2011, Jane's Carousel opened to the public and has since become a beloved New York City destination.

Winner of the Neumann Prize for the History of Mathematics.

In their second collaboration, biographers Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman present the story of Claude Shannon—one of the foremost intellects of the twentieth century and the architect of the Information Age, whose insights stand behind every computer built, email sent, video streamed, and webpage loaded. Claude Shannon was a groundbreaking polymath, a brilliant tinkerer, and a digital pioneer. He constructed the first wearable computer, outfoxed Vegas casinos, and built juggling robots. He also wrote the seminal text of the digital revolution, which has been called “the Magna Carta of the Information Age.”

In this elegantly written, exhaustively researched biography, Soni and Goodman reveal Claude Shannon’s full story for the first time. With unique access to Shannon’s family and friends, A Mind at Play brings this singular innovator and always playful genius to life.