More than ten years after his first bestselling book The EMyth changed the lives of hundreds of thousands of small business owners Michael Gerber trepreneur author and speaker extraordinaire res the next salvo in his highly successful EMyth Revolution. Drawing on lessons learned from working with more than 15000 small medium sized and very large organisations Gerber has discovered the truth behind why management doesn't work and what to do about it. Unearthing the arbitrary origins of commonly held doctrines such as the omniscience of leader (Emperor) and the most widely embraced myth of all EMyth Manager offers a fresh provocative alternative to management as we know it. It explores why every manager must take charge of his own life reconcile his own personal vision with that of the organisation and develop an entrepreneurial mind set to achieve true success.

Josh Altman, one of the stars of Bravos hit TV series Million Dollar Listing Los Angeles, has achieved extraordinary success in a traditional industry and in the most competitive real estate market in the country all without being discovered or catching the proverbial big break. He worked for it. He figured it out. He failed. He learned. He wrote his own *.The key to his successConfidence informed, intelligent, calculated confidence. Calculated confidence means training yourself in your chosen field, knowing it so well that you can trust your gut instincts to guide you toward the best possible option. When key opportunities present themselves, you are ready to seize them.In It's Your Move, Altman shares his method for building calculated confidence and trusting your gut to outsmart the competition:You have to be READY. Life is short. To get what you want, you have to be prepared to make big choices.You have to FIRE. Life is about making decisions. When an opportunity presents itself, don't waste time make a move.You have to AIM. Life is about course correcting. If you trust your gut and something goes wrong, don't freeze up: learn from your mistakes and recalibrate your aim so you don't make the same mistakes again.Altman draws on his experiences negotiating multimillion dollar deals and offering impeccable service to celebrity and high-profile clients, and shares tips and street-smart strategies for turning this method into action.Grounded in a positive approach to life and relationships, It's Your Move will show you all the right moves to help you become better, stronger, and more effective whatever your profession or ambitions.

Going against conventional wisdom, Absolute Value reveals what really influences customers today and offers a new framework the Influence Mix for thinking about consumer decision making, which should help managers develop more effective marketing strategies.How people buy things has changed profoundly yet the fundamental thinking about consumer decision making and marketing has not. Most marketers still believe that they can shape consumers' perceptions and drive their behaviors. In this provocative book, Stanford professor Itamar Simonson and best-selling author Emanuel Rosen show why current mantras about branding and loyalty are losing their relevance. When consumers base their decisions on reviews from other users, easily accessed expert opinions, price comparison apps, and other emerging technologies, everything changes. Contrary to what we frequently hear, consumers will (on average) make better choices and act more rationally. Absolute Value answers the pressing question of what influences customers in this new age. Simonson and Rosen identify the old-school marketing concepts that need to change and explain how a company should design its communication strategy, market research program, and segmentation strategy in the new environment. Filled with deep analysis, case studies, and cutting-edge research, this forward-looking book provides an entirely new way of thinking about marketing.

Between 1968 and 1976, Bill Gates, Andy Grove, and Steve Jobs launched three companies that would define the world of high technology, create more than a trillion dollars in value, and transform our lives. How did they realize these incredible achievementsStrategy Rules examines these three individuals collectively for the first time their successes and failures, comonalities and differences revealing the business strategies and practices they pioneered while building their firms.Eminent business professors David Yoffie and Michael Cusumano have studied these three leaders and their companies for nearly thirty years, while teaching business strategy, innovation, and entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School and the MIT Sloan School of Management. In this enlightening guide, they show how Gates, Grove, and Jobs became masters of strategy. As CEOs, each approached strategy and execution in remarkably similar ways yet markedly differently from their erstwhile competitors keeping their focus on five rules: Look Forward, Reason Back: They determined where they want their companies to be in the future and could reason back to identify the moves that would take them there. Make Big Bets, Without Betting the Company: All three men made enormous strategic bets but rarely took gambles that put the financial viability of their companies at undue risk. Build Platforms and Ecosystems: Technology leaders have to create industry platforms that enable other firms to create complementary products and services that make the platforms increasingly valuable. Exploit Leverage and Power: Gates, Grove, and Jobs often turned opponents strengths into weaknesses and used enormous resources (once they had them) to dominate competitors. Shape the Company around Your Personal Anchor: From Gates understanding of software to Grove's devotion to process discipline and Jobs obsession with design, all three built their companies around their personal strengths while compensating for their weaknesses. Strategy Rules brings together the best practices in strategic management and high-tech entrepreneurship, providing unique insights for start-up executives as well as the heads of modern multinationals.

A groundbreaking book that sheds new light on the vital importance of teams as the fundamental unit of organization and competition in the global economy. Teams—we depend on them for both our professional success and our personal happiness. But isn't it odd how little scrutiny we give themThe teams that make up our lives are created mostly by luck, happenstance, or circumstance—but rarely by design. In trivial matters—say, a bowling team, the leadership of a neighborhood group, or a holiday party committee—success by serendipity is already risky enough. But when it comes to actions by fast-moving start-ups, major corporations, nonprofit institutions, and governments, leaving things to chance can be downright dangerous. Offering vivid reports of the latest scientific research, compelling case studies, and great storytelling, Team Genius shows managers and executives that the planning, design, and management of great teams no longer have to be a black art. It explores solutions to essential questions that could spell the difference between success and obsolescence. Do you know how to reorganize your subpar teams to turn them into top performersCan you identify which of the top-performing teams in your company are reaching the end of their life spanDo you have the courage to shut them downDo you know how to create a replacement team that will be just as effective—without losing time or damaging moraleAnd, most important, are your teams the right size for the jobThroughout, Rich Karlgaard and Michael S. Malone share insights and real-life examples gleaned from their careers as journalists, analysts, investors, and globetrotting entrepreneurs, meeting successful teams and team leaders to reveal some "new truths": The right team size is usually one fewer person than what managers think they need. The greatest question facing good teams is not how to succeed, but how to die. Good "chemistry" often makes for the least effective teams. Cognitive diversity yields the highest performance gains—but only if you understand what it is. How to find the "bliss point" in team intimacy—and become three times more productive. How to identify destructive team members before they do harm. Why small teams are 40 percent more likely to create a successful breakthrough than a solo genius is. Why groups of 7 (± 2), 150, and 1,500 are magic sizes for teams. Eye-opening, grounded, and essential, Team Genius is the next big idea to revolutionize business.

Three-time New York Times bestselling author Dan Ariely teams up with legendary The New Yorker cartoonist William Haefeli to present an expanded, illustrated collection of his immensely popularWall Street Journal advice column, “Ask Ariely”. Behavioral economist Dan Ariely revolutionized the way we think about ourselves, our minds, and our actions in his books Predictably Irrational, The Upside of Irrationality, and The Honest Truth about Dishonesty. Ariely applies this scientific analysis of the human condition in his “Ask Ariely” Q & A column in the Wall Street Journal, in which he responds to readers who write in with personal conundrums ranging from the serious to the curious: What can you do to stay calm when you’re playing the volatile stock market What’s the best way to get someone to stop smoking How can you maximize the return on your investment at an all-you-can-eat buffet Is it possible to put a price on the human soul Can you ever rationally justify spending thousands of dollars on a RolexIn Ask Ariely, a broad variety of economic, ethical, and emotional dilemmas are explored and addressed through text and images. Using their trademark insight and wit, Ariely and Haefeli help us reflect on how we can reason our way through external and internal challenges. Readers will laugh, learn, and most importantly gain a new perspective on how to deal with the inevitable problems that plague our daily life.

Do you feel you don't have enough time to manage your people?Do you avoid interacting with some employees because you hate the dreaded confrontations that often follow?Do you have some great employees you really cannot afford to lose?Do you secretly wish you could be more in control but don't know where to start?Managing people is harder and more high-pressure today than ever before. There's no room for downtime, waste, or inefficiency. You have to do more with less. And employees have become high maintenance. Not only are they more likely to disagree openly and push back, but they also won't work hard for vague promises of long-term rewards. They look to you their immediate boss to help them get what they need and want at work. How do you tackle this huge management challengeIf you are like most managers, you take a hands-off approach. You "empower" employees by leaving them alone, unless they really need you. After all, you don't want to "micromanage" them and don't have the time to hold every employee's hand. Of course, problems always come up and often snowball into bigger problems. In fact, you probably spend too much of your time solving problems and falling behind on your work . . . which leaves even less time for managing people . . . which opens the door for even more problems!In It's Okay to Be the Boss, Bruce Tulgan puts his finger on the biggest problem in corporate America an undermanagement epidemic affecting managers at all levels of the organization and in all industries and offers another way. His clear, step-by-step guide to becoming the strong manager employees need challenges bosses everywhere to spell out expectations, tell employees exactly what to do and how to do it, monitor and measure performance constantly, and correct failure quickly and reward success even more quickly. Now that's how you set employees up for success and help them earn what they need. Tulgan opens our eyes to the undisciplined workplace that is overwhelming managers and frustrating workers and invites bosses everywhere to accept the sacred responsibility of managing people. His message: It's okay to be the boss. Be a great one!

You.That's Right. YOU.You've got a problem.You've got a product that's not first in its class.It's not even second.You've got to find a way to market that product. What Are You Going To Do?You're going to read this book, that's what.Let's face it. There comes a time in the life of every business when a product or service does not sell up to expectations.Maybe your product is outmoded. Or hasn't been positioned correctly. Or is competing in a crowded market. Whatever the reason, Ice to the Eskimos is dedicated to helping you reclaim that lost ground. It's about taking a product or service and turning it into a winner. If you've got a product that is not the best in its field, then you will love Ice to the Eskimos. Take the principles Jon Spoelstra writes about and run hard with them you'll be amazed by the results.Written by the former president of the hapless New Jersey Nets, Jon Spoelstra is the man responsible for tripling that team's lagging revenues in just three years and increasing the season-ticket holders base by 250 percent. This guy knows what he's talking about. What everyone else had seen as a lost cause, Spoelstra saw as an outstanding opportunity to reawaken a tired and beaten product to achieve unprecedented profitability.Not just for sports marketers, this lively, entertaining book successfully makes the jump from sports to whatever your product may be. The techniques Spoelstra perfected while working for teams in the NHL and NBA from innovative packaging to image overhaul apply to any product in any company. The numerous winning examples are sure to make Ice to the Eskimos a must-read for anyone with a product or service to sell.Ice to the Eskimos is sure to be an instant marketing classic. It will show millions of readers how to market their product...sometimes even after they've given up hope. By using the powerful techniques in this book, you too can learn to achieve the impossible and market ice to the Eskimos.

Your business can take a lesson from the American military's fighter pilots. At Mach 2, the instrument panel of an F-15 is screaming out information, the horizon is a blur, the wingman is occupied, the jet is hanging on the edge -- and yet fighter pilots routinely handle the stress. It's not much different in today's unforgiving business world. One slipup and your company is bankrupt before your employees know what hit them.What works on the squadron level for F-15 pilots will also work for your marketing team, sales force, or research and development group. By analyzing the work environment and attacking its centers of gravity in parallel, you'll begin to utilize the Plan-Brief-Execute-Debrief-Win cycle that will rapidly impact your business's future success. U.S. fighter squadrons have been using this program for nearly fifty years to reduce their mistake rate, cut casualties and equipment losses, and rack up an envious victory record. Now, with Flawless Execution, your business can too.

After years of TV and radio coverage, gallons of newsprint ink, and billions of scholarly opinions on the blogosphere, do we really understand the financial engineering that brought the global economy to the brink?The terms and acronyms that make up the language of economics are enough to cause the layman's head to start spinning: leverage, securitization, futures, options, MBS, CDS, CDO. Luckily, we have veteran journalist Paddy Hirsch senior producer at APM's Marketplace and acknowledged Whiteboard Guru to help us crack the code. In Man vs. Markets, he proves that it's not impossible to understand what's going on in the glass-and-steel canyons of Wall Street; that most international financial transactions aren't all that different from those taking place every day in stores, in car dealerships, even on the playgrounds of Main Street.BondsThey're basically loans. FuturesYou probably used one when you ordered your Thanksgiving turkey last year. OptionsEver bought a fully transferable, returnable airline ticketThat's pretty much the same thing.With a winning combination of acquired wisdom, common sense, market savvy, and an outrageous sense of humor, Hirsch clearly explains and defines the instruments that power our financial system and very nearly caused its demise. Clever, insightful, hugely educational, and always entertaining, Man vs. Markets translates the often confusing language of finance, enabling every one of us to truly comprehend what makes the markets tick.

In a perfect corporate world, intellect, hard work, and professionalism would be recognized and rewarded regardless of the color of your skin. Kenneth Arroyo Roldan is here to tell you that nobody works in a perfect corporate world. Stellar performance alone will not determine corporate advancement—minorities need to learn and follow the rules of corporate politics. As one African American employee who started as a systems analyst at Xerox observed, "The reality was that despite your ability, if you weren't playing politics correctly, you would be derailed." In Minority Rules, Roldan gives a dose of tough love to minorities in corporate America while educating their majority counterparts. As the CEO of the top U.S. head-hunting firm specializing in placing minorities in fast track jobs, Roldan watched as minority superstars hired at Fortune 500 companies bailed out, disappointed and rejected after only a few years. The problem, Roldan says, is that minorities are not adequately prepared psychologically or culturally for corporate careers. In a six-step plan, he explains how to surmount the obstacles, play corporate hardball, and succeed as a minority in the workplace. Corporate culture is unforgiving to minorities, but it is possible to rise to the top with Roldan as your guide. With refreshing candor, Roldan prepares minorities both psychologically and culturally for corporate careers. Forget about using affirmative action and discrimination lawsuits to level the playing field. The only way to win is to know the landscape and master the rules of the game—from finding the right mentor to learning the art of networking to focusing on self-reliance, patience, and most of all, performance. Roldan shows minorities how to climb to the top jobs—and keep them.

An entertaining, must-have guide to the indicators most investors aren't following but should be!To make the best possible investment decisions, savvy investors know that they should pay close attention to economic indicators. But while most are looking at conventional barometers like unemployment rates and housing starts, the smartest investors are following the often ignored, sometimes curious, but always interesting indicators that offer a true sense of where the economy is and where it's going. They provide the vital information needed to beat the market. In The Wall Street Journal Guide to the 50 Economic Indicators That Really Matter, Simon Constable and Robert E. Wright offer investors powerful new tools to guide them through the markets. Whether it's the VIX index (which tracks the level of anxiety among investors) or the Vixen index (which tracks the number of attractive waitresses in your hometown), this essential guide includes in-depth analyses of 50 valuable economic indicators, as well as what to watch for, what to do when movement happens, and the risk level involved in taking action. This must-have guide entertains and enlightens while offering essential advice on navigating the global economic climate.

The gripping story of Helena Rubinstein, Eugne Schueller, and the dark side of the beauty business they helped to create Helena Rubinstein and L'Oral's Eugne Schueller both started out in the beauty business during the first years of the twentieth century, and, by the time World War II broke out, had come to dominate it. However, their motivations could not have been more different. Rubinstein, a Polish Jew, claimed the world of paid work for women, and working women's enthusiasm for her products made her the first self-made female millionaire. Schueller, a French conservative in the Henry Ford mold, thought women belonged in the home, and during the Nazi Occupation he used his company as a source of cash to buy economic and political influence.Schueller eventually won the long fight for supremacy: in 1988 his company swallowed Rubinstein's. But the victory cost him his reputation when, in the wake of the takeover, he was exposed as a Nazi collaborator. Deepening the scandal, his wartime activities were shown to have been abetted and condoned by a cadre of young men who, by the time the news broke, had scaled the peaks of wealth and power in postwar France.By then Schueller and Rubinstein were both long dead. But cultural historian and biographer Ruth Brandon argues that the battle they began continues to this day. She examines their conflict to ask important contemporary questions about beauty standards and the often murky intersection of individual political aims and the role of business. Filled with remarkable twists, turns, and larger-than-life characters, Ugly Beauty is a riveting true story about what lies beneath the flawless exterior of the cosmetics industry.

Being an NFL coach is the ultimate high-pressure job. Every Sunday a coach makes split-second decisions that will not only decide the fate of a game, but also his team's season and, ultimately, his own job.Meet Mike Holmgren, Jon Gruden, John Fox, Andy Reid, and Mike Sherman -- top NFL head coaches whose careers rest on their ability to lead other men to win in the fiercely competitive world of professional football.In this extraordinary collaboration with their agent Bob LaMonte, each of these five coaches shares his leadership principles. LaMonte takes you behind the scenes, where you'll be a fly on the wall as these men reveal how to win beyond the X's and O's. You will see how these successful leaders communicate with different personalities, develop vision, build trust in their people, and win loyalty, as well as overcome adversity and adapt to change.Through their colorful and motivational anecdotes, you'll gain unprecedented insights into the minds of some of the best coaches today and valuable lessons on what it means to be a leader and a champion.

In October 1985, at age twenty-seven, Danny Meyer, with a good idea and scant experience, opened what would become one of New York City's most revered restaurants Union Square Cafe. Little more than twenty years later, Danny is the CEO of one of the world's most dynamic restaurant organizations, which includes eleven unique dining establishments, each at the top of its game. How has he done itHow has he consistently beaten the odds and set the competitive bar in one of the toughest trades around?In this landmark book, Danny shares the lessons he's learned while developing the winning recipe for doing the business he calls "enlightened hospitality." This innovative philosophy emphasizes putting the power of hospitality to work in a new and counterintuitive way: The first and most important application of hospitality is to the people who work for you, and then, in descending order of priority, to the guests, the community, the suppliers, and the investors. This way of prioritizing stands the more traditional business models on their heads, but Danny considers it the foundation of every success that he and his restaurants have achieved. Some of Danny's other insights: Hospitality is present when something happens for you. It is absent when something happens to you. These two simple concepts for and to express it all. Context, context, context, trumps the outdated location, location, location. Shared ownership develops when guests talk about a restaurant as if it's theirs. That sense of affiliation builds trust and invariably leads to repeat business. Err on the side of generosity: You get more by first giving more. Wherever your center lies, know it, name it, believe in it. When you cede your core values to someone else, it's time to quit. Full of behind-the-scenes history on the creation of Danny's most famous restaurants and the anecdotes, advice, and lessons he has accumulated on his long and ecstatic journey to the top of the American restaurant scene, Setting the Table is a treasure trove of innovative insights that are applicable to any business or organization.

A global-innovation expert offers a new perspective on how consumers think and how to develop products and services that affect their everyday lives.Who are your next customers not just the ones you are serving today but the ones you'll need three, five, or ten years from nowHow do you figure out what goods and services will attract them in the future before your competitors do?According to Jan Chipchase whom Fast Company has called the James Bond of design research and Fortune has called the Indiana Jones of technology for the developing world most of the clues are right in front of us. The key is learning to see the ordinary in a revolutionary new way. As the executive creative director of Global Insights at frog, an award-winning global design and innovation company, Chipchase draws on everyday objects and patterns to show us how to see the world differently, from making a phone call to filling up a gas tank to ascertaining whether it's actually half-and-half you're pouring into your coffee. Chipchase is always looking for opportunities gaps, anomalies, and contradictions that will give his clients, some of the world's largest and most successful companies, a distinct competitive advantage, whether they're delivering the most low-tech bar of soap or the most high-tech wireless network.In Hidden in Plain Sight, Chipchase takes readers on his journeys around the globe and shares his methods for identifying the unmet needs of customers. No matter where he stops whether Cleveland or Kabul his goals are the same: to spot and decode the routines of daily life and to help readers use the very same tools that he and his team use to see, and capitalize upon, what is hidden in plain sight today to create businesses tomorrow.

In troubled times, it is only natural to worry about our financial security. That's why now is the time to act -- to preserve your financial well-being, and that of your family, and to ensure your peace of mind.Financial expert and best-selling author Ric Edelman has written this guide to help all of us quickly safeguard our economic lives. Edelman's eight-point action plan -- actions that you can take right now -- will help you protect yourself and your family, as well as your money, your income, your job, your home, your possessions, and your business. You'll learn how to manage the powerful emotions that can cloud your financial judgment, and find the guidelines you need to make the right investment decisions now that will secure your investments today and prepare you for the future.And because it is more important than ever that we be generous in our charitable giving, you will learn the best ways to give, so you can lend support to all our neighbors who are in such dire need of our help.Financial Security in Troubled Times will help all of us face the future, knowing that our financial house is in order and that we are ready to meet the challenges ahead.

Why do some projects deliver under budget and ahead of schedule, while others cost more and take longer than expectedMore important, which products work better: the quick and thrifty or the slow and expensive?In a story-filled blend of quirky pop culture and practical engineering insight, Dan Ward's F.I.R.E. answers those questions and more. Ward's extensive research and firsthand experience show how the world's top technologists consistently deliver best-in-class results on shoestring budgets and cannonball schedules, and using skeleton crews.This remarkable book will make you laugh, make you think, and equip you to leverage the power of constraints. Discover the secrets of F.I.R.E. and learn how to:Build strategies for speed that enhance accountability and ensure your products are well aligned with the market's needs.Design your organizations, products, and processes with thrift in mind, solving problems with intellectual capital, not financial capital.Unleash the power of small budgets and small teams, using short schedules, short meetings, and short documents.Streamline your designs and cut through unnecessary, unproductive layers of bureaucracy.But this is not just a book about how to win. With unflinching candor, Ward shows how the F.I.R.E. method, even when followed wisely and well, can result in a flop. Taking a deep look at several negative outcomes, he shows how to make failures optimal rather than epic.F.I.R.E. provides strategic concepts for leaders, decision-making principles for managers, and practical tools for people working on anything from spacecraft and fighter jets to websites and children's toys. Technology professionals and curious amateurs alike will come away with a deeper understanding of effective product design. Plus, there's a funny story about a dishwasher that just may change the way you buy major appliances.

The Challenge Built to Last, the defining management study of the nineties, showed how great companies triumph over time and how long-term sustained performance can be engineered into the DNA of an enterprise from the verybeginning. But what about the company that is not born with great DNAHow can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatnessThe Study For years, this question preyed on the mind of Jim Collins. Are there companies that defy gravity and convert long-term mediocrity or worse into long-term superiorityAnd if so, what are the universal distinguishing characteristics that cause a company to go from good to greatThe Standards Using tough benchmarks, Collins and his research team identified a set of elite companies that made the leap to great results and sustained those results for at least fifteen years. How greatAfter the leap, the good-to-great companies generated cumulative stock returns that beat the general stock market by an average of seven times in fifteen years, better than twice the results delivered by a composite index of the world's greatest companies, including Coca-Cola, Intel, General Electric, and Merck.The Comparisons The research team contrasted the good-to-great companies with a carefully selected set of comparison companies that failed to make the leap from good to great. What was differentWhy did one set of companies become truly great performers while the other set remained only goodOver five years, the team analyzed the histories of all twenty-eight companies in the study. After sifting through mountains of data and thousands of pages of interviews, Collins and his crew discovered the key determinants of greatness -- why some companies make the leap and others don't. The Findings The findings of the Good to Great study will surprise many readers and shed light on virtually every area of management strategy and practice. The findings include: Level 5 Leaders: The research team was shocked to discover the type of leadership required to achieve greatness. The Hedgehog Concept (Simplicity within the Three Circles): To go from good to great requires transcending the curse of competence. A Culture of Discipline: When you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get the magical alchemy of great results. Technology Accelerators: Good-to-great companies think differently about the role of technology. The Flywheel and the Doom Loop: Those who launch radical change programs and wrenching restructurings will almost certainly fail to make the leap. Some of the key concepts discerned in the study, comments Jim Collins, "fly in the face of our modern business culture and will, quite frankly, upset some people.Perhaps, but who can afford to ignore these findings?

At a time when it's harder than ever to get and keep people's attention, we could all use some help. Enter Sonya Hamlin, author of the now classic How to Talk So People Listen (1988), and one of the country's leading communication experts. In this revised and updated edition, Sonya Hamlin, arguably America's leading communication expert, shows us how to successfully capture people's attention so that they listen, understand, and are persuaded by your message especially in the plugged in, fast paced, visually driven atmosphere that is today's workplace. Whether making a presentation to a large audience or dealing one on one with a client or colleague, or communicating by Email, Hamlin teaches us that one of the keys to making people listen is to think about and respond to what motivates them namely, self interest. She then provides tools to assess others' self interest and use it to get them to listen to your message. Hamlin also explains how to capitalize on the latest visual aids we have at our disposal today. We learn to determine what information needs or lends itself to visual presentation, and how to make visuals active, so that they serve as an extension of the speaker. In How To Talk So People Listen, you'll also find practical information on how to understand your audience, how to encourage your listeners to trust you, and how to be yourself when you're on the podium.

This is the story of Rebecca Smith and John R. Emshwiller, the two reporters who led the Wall Street Journal's reporting on Enron and uncovered the unorthodox partnerships at the heart of the scandal through skill, luck, and relentless determination. It all started in August 2001when Emshwiller was assigned to write a supposedly simple article on the unexpected resignation of Enron CEO Jeff Skilling. During his research, Emshwiller uncovered a buried reference to an off-balance-sheet partnership called LJM. Little did he know, this was the start of a fast and furious ride through the remarkable downfall of a once highly-prized company. Written in an intense, fast paced narrative style, 24 Days tells the gripping story of the colossal collapse of what would become the world's most notorious corporation. The reader follows along as Smith and Emshwiller continue to uncover new partnerships and self-dealing among the highest levels of Enron's management. As they publish articles detailing their findings in the Journal, Wall Street and individual investors have a crisis of confidence and start selling Enron stock at unprecedented levels of volume. In the end - 24 short days later - Enron had completely collapsed, erasing 16 years of growth and losing $19 billion in market value while watching the stock drop from $33.84 to $8.41. Not only was the company destroyed, but investors and retired employees were completely wiped out-all the while Enron executives were collecting millions of dollars. Climaxing with this 24-day period, this book shows the reporter's-eye view of a David-and-Goliath battle between journalists and a giant corporation. Each day a new story uncovered another fact; each day the company issued denials. And when the investigative stories reached critical mass and momentum, the stock market cast its final vote of no confidence. In the tradition of Indecent Exposure and Barbarians at the Gate, two other gripping narratives that began as a series of Wall Street Journal stories and ended up as books that defined an era, 24 Days brings the importance of great investigative journalism to life.