From Wall Street to Main Street, John Brooks, longtime contributor to the New Yorker, brings to life in vivid fashion twelve classic and timeless tales of corporate and financial life in America. What do the $350 million Ford Motor Company disaster known as the Edsel, the fast and incredible rise of Xerox, and the unbelievable scandals at General Electric and Texas Gulf Sulphur have in common? Each is an example of how an iconic company was defined...

The historic quest to rekindle the human exploration and colonization of space led by two rivals and their vast fortunes, egos, and visions of space as the next entrepreneurial frontier. The Space Barons is the story of a group of billionaire entrepreneurs who are pouring their fortunes into the epic resurrection of the American space program. Nearly a half-century after Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, these Space Barons-most notably Elon Musk...

Livingston presents a collection of interviews with founders of famous technology companies about what happens in the very earliest days. Includes interviews with Steve Wozniak (Apple), Max Levchin (PayPal), and others.

A powerful true story of one small group of workers overcoming corporate greed to end slavery and abuse in America's fields.

Economist Thorstein Veblen saw the United States as a business civilization, and President Calvin Coolidge declared, "The chief business of the American people is business." How did business come to have such power and cultural centrality in the United States? Why did American businesses assume such massive scale? How have American companies competed with one another and with foreign firms? Why did business shift from a culture that prized hierarchy...

"How could General Electric-perhaps America's most iconic corporation-suffer such a swift and sudden fall from grace?"-- Since its founding in 1892, General Electric has been more than just a corporation: it was job security, a solidly safe investment, and an elite business education for top managers. GE electrified America, from lightbulbs to turbines, and became fully integrated into the American societal mindset as few companies ever had. And...