While the entire world knows Mark Twain as the renowned author of many classic American novels, few people are aware that he was also a highly successful businessman. In fact, more than half of his life was consumed by moneymaking pursuits, which often resulted in writing projects being neglected--but at the same time, these adventures were the inspiration behind many of the characters found in his books. In Ignorance, Confidence, and Filthy Rich...

Tracing the full arc of the Venetian imperial saga for the first time, City of Fortune is framed around two of the great collisions of world history: the ill-fated Fourth Crusade, which culminated in the sacking of Constantinople and the carve-up of the Byzantine Empire in 1204, and the Ottoman-Venetian War of 1499–1503, which saw the Ottoman Turks supplant the Venetians as the preeminent naval power in the Mediterranean. In between were three centuries...

'Amazon Unbound' is an unvarnished picture of Amazon's unprecedented growth and its billionaire founder, Jeff Bezos, revealing the most important business story of our time. From the author of 'The Everything Store'.

This book is about trading posts. Old trading posts. Trading posts that are still operating and ones that are long gone without a trace, except for a crumbling wall or foundation. The book describes the present condition of each post, examines its history, and provides directions to even the hard-to-find posts. Indian trading posts are rapidly becoming a thing of the past, and, although many still occupy the original buildings, few of today's so-called...

When the world's largest search engine/social media company, the Circle, merges with the planet's dominant e-commerce site, it creates the richest and most dangerous--and, oddly enough, most beloved--monopoly ever known: the Every. Delaney Wells is an unlikely new hire. A former forest ranger and unwavering tech skeptic, she charms her way into an entry-level job with one goal in mind: to take down the company from within.

A wild story of a family across four generations centered on the girl who becomes the woman who founds a business dynasty and becomes a matriarch in her own right. Betrayal, treachery, the loss of innocence and the scars of love, pave the road in this intense emotional and human comedy about becoming a true boss of family and enterprise facing a world of unforgiving commerce.

America is a smuggler nation. Our long history of illicit imports has ranged from West Indies molasses and Dutch gunpowder in the 18th century, to British industrial technologies and African slaves in the 19th century, to French condoms and Canadian booze in the early 20th century, to Mexican workers and Colombian cocaine in the modern era. Contraband capitalism, it turns out, has been an integral part of American capitalism. Providing a sweeping...