Picking up where Liar’s Poker left off (literally, in the bond dealer’s desks of Salomon Brothers) the story of Long-Term Capital Management is of a group of elite investors who believed they could beat the market and, like alchemists, create limitless wealth for themselves and their partners. Founded by John Meriweather, a notoriously confident bond dealer, along with two Nobel prize winners and a floor of Wall Street’s brightest and best, Long-Term Captial Management was from the beginning hailed as a new gold standard in investing. It was to be the hedge fund to end all other hedge funds: a discreet private investment club limited to those rich enough to pony up millions. It became the banks’ own favourite fund and from its inception achieved a run of dizzyingly spectacular returns. New investors barged each other aside to get their investment money into LTCM’s hands. But as competitors began to mimic Meriweather’s fund, he altered strategy to maintain the fund’s performance, leveraging capital with credit on a scale not fully understood and never seen before. When the markets in Indonesia, South America and Russia crashed in 1998 LCTM’s investments crashed with them and mountainous debts accumulated. The fund was in melt-down, and threatening to bring down into its trillion-dollar black hole a host of financial instiutions from New York to Switzerland. It’s a tale of vivid characters, overwheening ambition, and perilous drama told, in Roger Lowenstein’s hands, with brilliant style and panache.

The Way of Nowhere is a business book by the UK’s hottest change management consultancy who have led transformations in some of Britain’s biggest and best known organisations. An invaluable resource for anyone who wants to make a creative difference in their lives and the lives of people around them. Inspired by the unique practice of 'nowhere', a community of companies that specialise in co-creation, this is an inspirational book that will help you break through to a more creative and strategic future Renowned for their world-class approach to innovation, the nowhere group works with a wide range of businesses, government agencies and individuals to develop their creativity to its full potential. Now, their book maps out the groundbreaking ways that anyone can become more productive, playing a more creative role in your organisation while simultaneously nurturing your own growth along the way. It contains eight breakthrough questions designed to stimulate and enrich our creative capacity, both as an individual and as part of a team. Using examples and tools from their work with some of the UK’s largest and best known businesses, The Way of Nowhere shows us how to unlock the underlying and invisible forces at play within organisations, communities and cultures. With practice, you will discover how these questions and insights can release the latent creativity that exists within - a place where magic can happen - out of nowhere!

An engaging and incisive look at today's top business leaders – visionary and creative mavericks who are changing the way we do business. Inspiring and accessible, ‘Mavericks at Work’ is for anyone who wants to succeed in business – from the entry-level employee to the CEO. In ‘Mavericks at Work’, two high-profile journalists introduce an inspiring group of entrepreneurs and executives who are building great businesses by challenging business as usual. From break-the-mould innovators such as HBO, Pixar, and Netflix to global giants such as IBM and Procter & Gamble, these mavericks are winning big by devising new answers to the oldest (and toughest) challenges of competition and leadership. Their stories are exciting – and their ideas are truly powerful. Real mavericks know that: ? Big, original ideas pay big dividends ? Being different makes all the difference ? Nobody is as smart as everybody ? Cheaper is better, but value is priceless ? Great leaders are insatiable learners ‘Mavericks at Work’ is a relentlessly useful how-to book. But it is also an eye-opening what-if book – with insights that showcase the power of business at its best and set a positive agenda for the future.

7 simple steps to help you get what you want from networking Networking: get it right, and it provides an opportunity for learning and expanding your business contacts. But there are so many ways to get it wrong. Maybe you’ve learnt this the hard way, or maybe you don’t know where to start. Whether you’re setting out into the world of business for the first time, planning a return visit or want to be the best in the job you’re in, this is the book for you. Follow these 7 simple steps to pick your way through the minefield that is networking. We’ll take you from creating new opportunities to maintaining valuable relationships, and show you how to survive any difficult moments along the way.

Only our limited idea of money is keeping us poor. David Boyle introduces us to alternative cash and people who can conjure money – that is, spending power – out of nothing. Until recently, the growth of alternative cash had been the province of big business: phone cards, stamps, air miles and Tesco’s clubcard points all have purchasing power, yet are not cash as we know it. Now, locally created money systems like ‘time dollars’, ‘Womanshare’ and ‘Ithaca hours’ are being invented by communities for communities. With clarity and great humour, Boyle tells the story of this extraordinary revolution: he travels to the USA to visit the people behind local money systems; relates their vision of the future; and describes how to set up your own currency. This is no dry theoretical tome: Boyle writes about his subject in a way that is concrete, illuminating, often very funny and always highly readable. This paperback edition includes a new epilogue with an update on the latest alternative currency ideas: ‘You just have to cast doubt on the real existence of the money markets and they could just shrivel away. Anything could happen.’ A revolution is underway now: this book tells the story of its leaders and the ideas that inspired them.

The management secrets that experts and top professionals use. Get results fast with this quick, easy guide to the fundamentals of Management. Includes how to: ? Build a goal-oriented team ? Successfully manage individuals, teams and projects ? Set clear goals and give quality feedback ? Get things done on time and on budget ? Deal with difficult situations

The project management secrets that experts and top professionals use. Get results fast with this quick, easy guide to the fundamentals of Project Management. Includes how to: ? Deliver a successful project from start to finish ? Communicate effectively with people at all levels ? Manage changes and control scope creep ? Identify and deal with risks ? Work with common project management methodologies

The negotiating secrets that experts and top professionals use. Get results fast with this quick, easy guide to the fundamentals of Negotiating. Includes how to: ? Set clear goals and limits ? Understand your potential adversary or partner ? Use and interpret body language ? Deal with difficult people ? Close brilliant deals

What is talent? How do you get the best out of yourself? What are the secrets of leadership?In Edge, Ben Lyttleton gets unprecedented access to some of the world’s top football clubs to discover their innovative methods for developing talent – and reveals how we can use them in our everyday lives. Elite teams now look for an edge by improving the intangible skills of their players ‘above the shoulder’. Liverpool’s approach to talent will make you more creative. Chelsea’s culture will improve your resilience. Didier Deschamps will improve your leadership skills. Xavi Hernandez will help you make better decisions. But how?Football is the most hot-housed, intense, financially profitable talent factory on the planet. It’s time we woke up to the lessons it can provide.We all want to have an edge. This is your chance to find one…

Tim Jackson is the author of Turning Japanese and a biography of Richard Branson and Virgin, Virgin King. He is currently working on a book about the Sainsbury family.

Sally Garratt has been an independent consultant since 1978 and is a prominent member of the Institute of Personnel Management. She has worked on numerous development programmes for senior professional and executive women. She is the author of Manage Your Time, which has sold over 32,000 copies in paperback.

As scandal and the aftershocks of the crash rock the financial world, former Wall Street trader John Coates investigates why our financiers are driven to take risks. Now shortlisted for the 2012 Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award and the Wellcome Trust Book Prize, this startling and unconventional book sees neuroscientist and former Wall Street trader John Coates explain something we have long suspected: that we think with our body as well as our brain. And this only intensifies when we take risks; at work, in sport and on the financial markets. Making and losing money provokes an overwhelming biological response, and this can alter the way we behave. Could this bodily turmoil lead to the kind of irrational behaviour that so regularly upsets the global economy? In a series of groundbreaking experiments, Coates has shown that under the pressure of risk our biology transforms us into different people. Traders and investors are especially prone, becoming revved-up and testosterone-driven when on a winning streak, and tentative and risk-averse when cowering from losses. Revealing the biology of bubbles and crashes, The Hour Between Dog and Wolf sheds new and surprising light on issues that affect us all.

Two world-renowned marketing consultants and bestselling authors present the definitive rules of marketing.

A classic since its publication in 1954, The Practice of Management was the first book to look at management as a whole and being a manager as a separate responsibility. The Practice of Management created the discipline of modern management practices. Readable, fundamental, and basic, it remains an essential book for students, aspiring managers, and seasoned professionals.

The provocative follow-up to the New York Times bestseller Predictably Irrational Why can large bonuses make CEOs less productiveHow can confusing directions actually help usWhy is revenge so important to usWhy is there such a big difference between what we think will make us happy and what really makes us happyIn his groundbreaking book Predictably Irrational , social scientist Dan Ariely revealed the multiple biases that lead us into making unwise decisions. Now, in The Upside of Irrationality , he exposes the surprising negative and positive effects irrationality can have on our lives. Focusing on our behaviors at work and in relationships, he offers new insights and eye-opening truths about what really motivates us on the job, how one unwise action can become a long-term habit, how we learn to love the ones we're with, and more. Drawing on the same experimental methods that made Predictably Irrational one of the most talked-about bestsellers of the past few years, Ariely uses data from his own original and entertaining experiments to draw arresting conclusions about how and why we behave the way we do. From our office attitudes, to our romantic relationships, to our search for purpose in life, Ariely explains how to break through our negative patterns of thought and behavior to make better decisions. The Upside of Irrationality will change the way we see ourselves at work and at home and cast our irrational behaviors in a more nuanced light.

A lively insider's guide to starting a successful small business selling items old and new on eBay, written with personal anecdotes, well kept secrets, and insider tips by Adam Ginsberg, eBay's most successful private salesperson. This is the insider's guide to making money on eBay. Adam Ginsberg is the most successful seller on eBay, moving around a million dollars' worth of merchandise every month. Not only will he impart his personal secrets on how to sell on eBay learned through years of experience and his tips on expanding your small business using eBay as a global market, but he'll also give fun side notes and anecdotes, keeping the book lively and making it a fun and interesting read. This book will be a must have for all current and aspiring eBay sellers, all small business owners, and anyone who wants to learn how to start a million dollar company.

From the world leading high-tech strategist comes the definitive road map to help established companies create next-generation growth. Geoffrey Moore now-classic Crossing the Chasm became a must-read book by presenting an innovative framework to address the make-or-break obstacle facing all high-tech companies: how to gain market share from early adopters and from mainstream consumers. Based on twenty years’ experience advising the top leaders of many of the world most successful enterprises, Moore Escape Velocity offers a pragmatic plan to engage the most critical challenge that established enterprises face in the twenty-first-century economy: how to move beyond past success and drive next-generation growth from new lines of business. As he worked with senior management teams, Moore repeatedly found that executives were trapped by short-term performance-based compensation schemes. The result was critical decision-makers overweighting their legacy commitments, an embarrassingly low success rate in new-product launches, and a widespread failure to sustain any kind of next-generation business at scale. In Escape Velocity , Moore presents a cogent strategy for generating future growth within an established enterprise. Organized around a hierarchy of powers category power, company power, market power, offer power, and execution power this insightful work shows how each level of power can be orchestrated to achieve overall success. Moore explains how to use mergers and acquisitions as well as organic innovation to systematically migrate an enterprise portfolio out of lower-growth and into higher-growth categories; how to reallocate resources across an enterprise in deliberately asymmetrical ways to create a powerful and sustainable foundation for a long-term competitive advantage; how to leverage target-market initiatives as accelerants to growth and as stepping-stones to broad overall category success; how to create unmatchable offerings by being swift to neutralize competitors’ innovations and laser-focused on driving in-house innovations to make a business impervious to competitors; how to fundamentally change the execution cadence of an organization, pushing change from innovation to broad deployment, creating an irreversible tipping point along the way. Drawing from thousands of hours spent face-to-face with CEOs and their teams, Moore presents case examples and best practices. While his experience is deeply rooted in the high-tech sector, his models and techniques apply well beyond this arena, including to the public sector. At a time when the world is looking to established enterprises for growth and stability, Moore analysis is penetrating and his pre*ions are right on the mark. Escape Velocity gives executives and their teams a practical way forward to take advantage of the opportunities amid industry and economic disruptions.

They were a band of outsiders unable to get jobs with New York's gilded financial establishment. They would go on to corner the world's multitrillion-dollar oil market, reaping unimaginable riches while bringing the economy to its knees. Meet the self-anointed kings of the New York Mercantile Exchange. In some ways, they are everything you would expect them to be: a secretive, members-only club of men and women who live lavish lifestyles; cavort with politicians, strippers, and celebrities; and blissfully jacked up oil prices to nearly $150 a barrel while profiting off the misery of the working class. In other ways, they are nothing you can imagine: many come from working-class families themselves. The progeny of Jewish, Irish, and Italian immigrants who escaped war-torn Europe, they take pride in flagrantly spurning Wall Street. Under the thumb of an all-powerful international oil cartel, the energy market had long eluded the grasp of America's hungry capitalists. Neither the oil royalty of Houston nor the titans of Wall Street had ever succeeded in fully wresting away control. But facing extinction, the rough-and-tumble traders of Nymex led by the reluctant son of a producemerchant went after this Goliath and won, creating the world's first free oil market and minting billions in the process. Their stunning journey from poverty to prosperity belies the brutal and violent history that is their legacy. For the first time, The Asylum unmasks the oil market's self-described "inmates" in all their un*ed and dysfunctional glory: the happily married father from Long Island whose lust for money and power was exceeded only by his taste for cruel pranks; the Italian kung fu fighting gasoline trader whose ferocity in the trading pits earned him countless millions; the cheerful Nazi hunter who traded quietly by day and ambushed Nazi sympathizers by night; and the Irish-born femme fatale who outsmarted all but one of the exchange's chairmen the Hungarian emigre who, try as he might, could do nothing to rein in the oil market's unruly inhabitants. From the treacherous boardroom schemes to the hookers and blow of the trading pits; from the repeat terrorist attacks and FBI stings to the grand alliances and outrageous fortunes that brought the global economy to the brink, The Asylum ventures deep into the belly of the beast, revealing how raw ambition and the endless quest for wealth can change the very nature of both man and market. Showcasing seven years of research and hundreds of hours of interviews, Leah McGrath Goodman reveals what really happened behind the scenes as oil prices topped out and what choice the traders ultimately made when forced to choose between their longtime brotherhood and their precious oil monopoly.

The riveting true story of John and Aileen Crowley's race to find a cure for Pompe disease that inspired the movie Extraordinary Measures With three beautiful children, a new house, and financial security, John and Aileen Crowley were on top of the world until their two youngest children, fifteen-month-old Megan and five-month-old Patrick, were diagnosed with Pompe disease and given only months to live. Refusing to accept a death sentence, John quit his financial consultant job and invested his life savings in a biotechnology start-up to research the disease and find a cure. Battling scientific setbacks, conflict of interest accusations, and business troubles, John and Aileen would be tested to their limits as they valiantly fought, and succeeded, in finding revolutionary new treatment for the disease offering hope to Megan, Patrick, and the many children and families affected by Pompe disease around the world. The inspiration for the captivating film Extraordinary Measures , starring Brendan Fraser and Harrison Ford, The Cure is a remarkable true story of cutting-edge science, business acumen and daring, and one family's indomitable spirit.

How do we think about moneyWhat caused bankers to lose sight of the economyWhat caused individuals to take on mortgages that were not within their meansWhat irrational forces guided our decisionsAnd how can we recover from an economic crisisIn this revised and expanded edition of the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller Predictably Irrational , Duke University's behavioral economist Dan Ariely explores the hidden forces that shape our decisions, including some of the causes responsible for the current economic crisis. Bringing a much-needed dose of sophisticated psychological study to the realm of public policy, Ariely offers his own insights into the irrationalities of everyday life, the decisions that led us to the financial meltdown of 2008, and the general ways we get ourselves into trouble. Blending common experiences and clever experiments with groundbreaking analysis, Ariely demonstrates how expectations, emotions, social norms, and other invisible, seemingly illogical forces skew our reasoning abilities. As he explains, our reliance on standard economic theory to design personal, national, and global policies may, in fact, be dangerous. The mistakes that we make as individuals and institutions are not random, and they can aggregate in the market with devastating results. In light of our current economic crisis, the consequences of these systematic and predictable mistakes have never been clearer. Packed with new studies and thought-provoking responses to readers' questions and comments, this revised and expanded edition of Predictably Irrational will change the way we interact with the world from the small decisions we make in our own lives to the individual and collective choices that shape our economy.

Donald J. Trump is an icon: the very definition of the American success story. The star of The Apprentice and developer of some of the planet's most prestigious real estate, he's been on the bottom and risen to become one of the world's wealthiest men. Bill Zanker started The Learning Annex with $5,000 and grew it into a $5 million a year company. That was before he met Donald Trump. Thirty months later, after Zanker learned to think BIG himself, The Learning Annex is generating over $100 million a year in sales and still growing. Together, they're living examples of how thinking BIG and knowing when to back up your opinions aggressively regardless of what your critics or opponents might say can help you maximize your personal and professional achievements. For the first time ever, you too can learn Trump's secrets to thinking BIG and kicking ass! Learn: Momentum: the Big Mo. How to get it and how to get it back. Revenge: how and when to get it (and why it's so sweet). "I love you, now sign this!" Why contracts in business and personal life are so important. Real-life stories from people who've applied the think BIG formula in their own lives. These strategies are proven and attested to by those who've learned to think BIG from Donald Trump and found success in their own lives. Bill Zanker used Donald's strategies to grow the revenues of The Learning Annex twenty times in under three years. Both of them have been down and out, and know what it's like to feel the whole world's against you and both have risen to dizzying heights of success by thinking BIG and kicking ass! It is an attitude that can be easily learned.