Knowledge = Power

In the last two decades, free markets have swept the globe. But  traditional capitalism has been unable to solve problems like inequality  and poverty. In Muhammad Yunus' groundbreaking sequel to Banker to the Poor,  he outlines the concept of social business -- business where the  creative vision of the entrepreneur is applied to today's most serious  problems: feeding the poor, housing the homeless, healing the sick, and  protecting the planet. Creating a World Without Poverty reveals the next phase in a hopeful economic and social revolution that is already underway.

Dark Psychology

Here is THE book recounting the life and times of one of the most  respected men in the world, Warren Buffett. The legendary Omaha investor  has never written a memoir, but now he has allowed one writer, Alice  Schroeder, unprecedented access to explore directly with him and with  those closest to him his work, opinions, struggles, triumphs, follies,  and wisdom. The result is the personally revealing and complete  biography of the man known everywhere as “The Oracle of Omaha.” Although  the media track him constantly, Buffett himself has never told his full  life story. His reality is private, especially by celebrity standards.  Indeed, while the homespun persona that the public sees is true as far  as it goes, it goes only so far. Warren Buffett is an array of  paradoxes. He set out to prove that nice guys can finish first. Over the  years he treated his investors as partners, acted as their steward, and  championed honesty as an investor, CEO, board member, essayist, and  speaker. At the same time he became the world’s richest man, all from  the modest Omaha headquarters of his company Berkshire Hathaway. None of  this fits the term “simple.” When Alice Schroeder met Warren  Buffett she was an insurance industry analyst and a gifted writer known  for her keen perception and business acumen. Her writings on finance  impressed him, and as she came to know him she realized that while much  had been written on the subject of his investing style, no one had moved  beyond that to explore his larger philosophy, which is bound up in a  complex personality and the details of his life. Out of this came his  decision to cooperate with her on the book about himself that he would  never write. Never before has Buffett spent countless hours  responding to a writer’s questions, talking, giving complete access to  his wife, children, friends, and business associates—opening his files,  recalling his childhood. It was an act of courage, as The Snowball makes  immensely clear. Being human, his own life, like most lives, has been a  mix of strengths and frailties. Yet notable though his wealth may be,  Buffett’s legacy will not be his ranking on the scorecard of wealth; it  will be his principles and ideas that have enriched people’s lives. This  book tells you why Warren Buffett is the most fascinating American  success story of our time.

John Julius Norwich―called a “true master of narrative history” by Simon  Sebag Montefiore―returns with the book he has spent his distinguished  career wanting to write, A History of France: a portrait of the past two centuries of the country he loves best. Beginning  with Julius Caesar’s conquest of Gaul in the first century BC, this  study of French history comprises a cast of legendary  characters―Charlemagne, Louis XIV, Napoleon, Joan of Arc and Marie  Antionette, to name a few―as Norwich chronicles France’s often violent,  always fascinating history. From the French Revolution―after which  neither France, nor the world, would be the same again―to the storming  of the Bastille, from the Vichy regime and the Resistance to the end of  the Second World War, A History of France is packed with heroes  and villains, battles and rebellion, stories so enthralling that Norwich  declared, “I can honestly say that I have never enjoyed writing a book  more.” With his celebrated stylistic panache and expert command  of detail, Norwich writes in an inviting, intimate tone, and with a  palpable affection for France. One of our greatest contemporary  historians has deftly crafted a comprehensive yet concise portrait of  the country's historical sweep.

Robert Cialdini-Instant Influence

Critically acclaimed author John Julius Norwich weaves the turbulent  story of Sicily into a spellbinding narrative that places the island at  the crossroads of world history. “Sicily,” said Goethe, “is  the key to everything.” It is the largest island in the Mediterranean,  the stepping-stone between Europe and Africa, the link between the Latin  West and the Greek East. Sicily’s strategic location has tempted Roman  emperors, French princes, and Spanish kings. The subsequent struggles to  conquer and keep it have played crucial roles in the rise and fall of  the world’s most powerful dynasties.

This classic  biography is the story of seven men—a naturalist, a writer, a lover, a  hunter, a ranchman, a soldier, and a politician—who merged at age  forty-two to become the youngest President in history. The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt begins at the apex of his international prestige. That was on New  Year’s Day, 1907, when TR, who had just won the Nobel Peace Prize, threw  open the doors of the White House to the American people and shook  8,150 hands. One visitor remarked afterward, “You go to the White House,  you shake hands with Roosevelt and hear him talk—and then you go home  to wring the personality out of your clothes.” The rest of this  book tells the story of TR’s irresistible rise to power. During the  years 1858–1901, Theodore Roosevelt transformed himself from a frail,  asthmatic boy into a full-blooded man. Fresh out of Harvard, he  simultaneously published a distinguished work of naval history and  became the fist-swinging leader of a Republican insurgency in the New  York State Assembly. He chased thieves across the Badlands of North  Dakota with a copy of Anna Karenina in one hand and a Winchester  rifle in the other. Married to his childhood sweetheart in 1886, he  became the country squire of Sagamore Hill on Long Island, a flamboyant  civil service reformer in Washington, D.C., and a night-stalking police  commissioner in New York City. As assistant secretary of the navy, he  almost single-handedly brought about the Spanish-American War. After  leading “Roosevelt’s Rough Riders” in the famous charge up San Juan  Hill, Cuba, he returned home a military hero, and was rewarded with the  governorship of New York. In what he called his “spare hours” he  fathered six children and wrote fourteen books. By 1901, the man Senator  Mark Hanna called “that damned cowboy” was vice president. Seven months  later, an assassin’s bullet gave TR the national leadership he had  always craved. His is a story so prodigal in its variety, so  surprising in its turns of fate, that previous biographers have treated  it as a series of haphazard episodes. This book, the only full study of  TR’s pre-presidential years, shows that he was an inevitable chief  executive. “It was as if he were subconsciously aware that he was a man  of many selves,” the author writes, “and set about developing each one  in turn, knowing that one day he would be President of all the people.”

In a sparkling, fast-paced narrative, esteemed historian John Julius  Norwich chronicles the turbulent events of fourteenth- and  fifteenth-century England that inspired Shakespeare's history plays. It  was a time of uncertainty and incessant warfare, a time during which the  crown was constantly contested, alliances were made and broken, and  peasants and townsmen alike arose in revolt. This was the raw material  of Shakespeare's dramas, and Norwich holds up his work to the light of  history to ask: Who was the real Falstaff? How accurate a historian was  the playwright? Shakespeare's Kings is a marvelous study of the Bard's method of spinning history into art, and a captivating portrait of the Middle Ages.

Winner of the National Book Award and now considered a classic, The House of Morgan is the most ambitious history ever written about an American banking dynasty. Acclaimed by the Wall Street Journal as "brilliantly researched and written", the book tells the rich,  panoramic story of four generations of Morgans and the powerful,  secretive firms they spawned. It is the definitive account of the rise  of the modern financial world. A gripping history of banking and the  booms and busts that shaped the world on both sides of the Atlantic, The House of Morgan traces the trajectory of the J. P.Morgan empire from its obscure  beginnings in Victorian London to the crash of 1987. Ron Chernow paints a  fascinating portrait of the private saga of the Morgans and the  rarefied world of the American and British elite in which they moved.  Based on extensive interviews and access to the family and business  archives, The House of Morgan is an investigative masterpiece, a  compelling account of a remarkable institution and the men who ran it,  and an essential book for understanding the money and power behind the  major historical events of the last 150 years.

"A wonderful, splendid book - a book that should be ready by every  American, student or otherwise, who wants to understand his country,  its true history, and its hope for the future." (Howard Fast) For  much of his life, historian Howard Zinn chronicled American history  from the bottom up, throwing out the official version taught in schools -  with its emphasis on great men in high places - to focus on the street,  the home, and the workplace.