The first book to tell the story of one of the world’s most influential media businesses, The Family Business draws on more than 70 interviews with company insiders as well as book-industry luminaries to present the Ingram story and how a little-known Nashville-based company grew to play a pivotal role in transforming book publishing around the world. The history of the Ingram Content Group is one of the most important and remarkable business stories that almost no one knows. Launched as a favor to a family friend, it started as a local textbook distributor—one tiny division within a thriving corporation focused on oil, construction supplies, and shipping. It grew into the world’s largest book wholesaler, then into the most influential and innovative supplier of infrastructure and services to publishers around the world. Over the past 50 years, from its headquarters in Nashville, Tennessee, Ingram has played a pivotal role in modernizing the book business. Two members of the founding family have led the way: Bronson Ingram, a tough-minded industrialist who instinctively recognized a golden opportunity to apply modern efficiencies to antiquated logistical systems, and Bronson’s son John Ingram, an “intrapreneur� with a keen understanding of both the opportunities and the risks created by the new digital technologies. Led by these two brilliant managers, Ingram has used its unparalleled industry-wide connections to help transform book publishing from a tradition-bound business into a dynamic, global twenty-first century powerhouse. Now, for the first time, The Family Business captures the whole story. In its pages, readers will learn about: The introduction of the Ingram microfiche reader in 1972 and how it catapulted book retailing into the electronic era Ingram’s network of coast-to-coast distribution centers turning U.S. book publishing into a truly national business for the first time Ingram using fast-growing video, software, magazine, and international wholesaling operations to create a phenomenal record of expansion, growing from a million-dollar company into a billion-dollar giant in just two decades Two of book publishing’s most powerful organizations—Ingram and Barnes & Noble—almost coming within a hair’s breadth of merging, and how the deal fell apart at the eleventh hour Ingram’s unparalleled ability to rapidly fulfill product orders empowering Amazon’s unique customer service model and enabling its explosive growth Lightning Source, a technological marvel spawned by Ingram, converting the “long tail� of niche books from a costly headache for publishers and retailers into a steady source of profitable sales Ingram’s transformation of the book supply chain enabling countless booksellers and publishers to survive and even thrive in the disruptive era of Covid-19 Today, with Ingram’s expanding portfolio of service and infrastructure businesses playing an ever-growing role in the world of publishing, the company stands ready to help lead the industry into an era of even more dramatic change. The Family Business is the first book to recount the story of this strategic powerhouse that everyone in the publishing industry does business with, and that practically everyone admires—but that few people really understand. A must-read for people in the book business and the world of media, and anyone else who wants to understand how this vastly influential industry really works, this book fascinates with the story of the ways today’s electronic information technologies are transforming the world.

The Road Within is a very different kind of travel book, a venture into the hidden territories of the human spirit and heart. A book of transformation, of lessons learned, maps drawn and burned, and spiritual blessings bestowed by that great and hard teacher: travel. It will show you what the great mystics and saints have always known—that you are closer to yourself, the world, and the divine, than you can possibly imagine, and that wondrous things await you on your journeys. In this book you will discover the Garden of Paradise in the human heart with Natalie Goldberg; get swept up in a dance of dervishes with Paul William Roberts in Cairo; and feel the chill that accompanies Annie Dillard with a long-time Communist Party member in China. You will meet an angel in Paris, have strange sexual encounters on Asian seas, play a vomiting game in an African initiation ceremony, get a taste of satori, and discover the strange and haunting beauty of Mother Meara in Germany. You will go on a worldwide quest at the invitation of a Shinto priest and have your sins forgiven, but most important, you will encounter the ultimate stranger—you.

The Road Within is a very different kind of travel book, a venture into the hidden territories of the human spirit and heart. A book of transformation, of lessons learned, maps drawn and burned, and spiritual blessings bestowed by that great and hard teacher: travel. It will show you what the great mystics and saints have always known--that you are closer to yourself, the world, and the divine, than you can possibly imagine, and that wondrous things await you on your journeys. In this book you will discover the Garden of Paradise in the human heart with Natalie Goldberg; get swept up in a dance of dervishes with Paul William Roberts in Cairo; and feel the chill that accompanies Annie Dillard with a long-time Communist Party member in China. You will meet an angel in Paris, have strange sexual encounters on Asian seas, play a vomiting game in an African initiation ceremony, get a taste of satori, and discover the strange and haunting beauty of Mother Meara in Germany. You will go on a worldwide quest at the invitation of a Shinto priest and have your sins forgiven, but most important, you will encounter the ultimate stranger--you.

Questions about the physical world, the mind, and technology in conversations that reveal a rich seam of interacting ideas. Science today is more a process of collaboration than moments of individual "eurekas." This book recreates that kind of synergy by offering a series of interconnected dialogues with leading scientists who are asked to reflect on key questions and concepts about the physical world, technology, and the mind. These thinkers offer both specific observations and broader comments about the intellectual traditions that inform these questions; doing so, they reveal a rich seam of interacting ideas. The persistent paradox of our era is that in a world of unprecedented access to information, many of the most important questions remain unsolved. These conversations (conducted by a veteran science writer, Adolfo Plasencia) reflect this, with scientists addressing such issues as intelligence, consciousness, global warming, energy, technology, matter, the possibility of another earth, changing the past, and even the philosophical curveball, "is the universe a hologram?" The dialogues discuss such fascinating aspects of the physical world as the function of the quantum bit, the primordial cosmology of the universe, and the wisdom of hewn stones. They offer optimistic but reasoned views of technology, considering convergence culture, algorithms, "Beauty ? Truth," the hacker ethic, AI, and other topics. And they offer perspectives from a range of disciplines on intelligence, discussing subjects that include the neurophysiology of the brain, affective computing, collaborative innovation, and the wisdom of crowds. Conversations with Hal Abelson, Ricardo Baeza-Yates, John Perry Barlow, Javier Benedicto, Jose Bernabeu, Michail Bletsas, Jose M. Carmena, David Casacuberta, Yung Ho Chang, Ignacio Cirac, Gianluigi Colalucci, Avelino Corma, Bernardo Cuenca Grau, Javier Echeverria, Jose Hernandez-Orallo, Hiroshi Ishii, Pablo Jarillo-Herrero, Henry Jenkins, Anne Margulies, Mario J. Molina, Tim O'Reilly, John Ochsendorf, Paul Osterman, Alvaro Pascual-Leone, Rosalind W. Picard, Howard Rheingold, Alejandro W. Rodriguez, Israel Ruiz, Sara Seager, Richard Stallman, Antonio Torralba, Bebo White, Jose Maria Yturralde