St. Petersburg College offers access to a wide variety of business books, available in print or online, through the library research portal. Search the entire collection using the link below, or browse our curated lists.
Poverty, Prosperity, and the Minimum Wage
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The US federal hourly minimum wage has been stuck at $7.25 for more than a decade, even though both inflation and productivity have risen steadily. Experts say an hourly wage of $24 is in keeping with inflation, although even a raise to $15 per hour would succeed in lifting nearly one million Americans out of poverty. Some states and cities have done just that, but a gridlocked Congress has prevented it from happening on the federal level. This resource asks the question: In one of the world's richest countries, why are so many workers unable to cover basic living expenses?
Amazon Unbound
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A Washington Post Notable Book This New York Times bestseller is a "masterful" (The Washington Post), "juicy tour of the company [Jeff] Bezos built" (The New York Times Book Review), revealing the most important business story of our time by the bestselling author of The Everything Store. Almost ten years ago, Bloomberg journalist Brad Stone captured the rise of Amazon in his bestseller The Everything Store. Since then, Amazon has expanded exponentially, inventing novel products like Alexa and disrupting countless industries, while its workforce has quintupled in size and its valuation has soared to nearly two trillion dollars. It's almost impossible to go a day without encountering the impact of Jeff Bezos's Amazon, between services like Whole Foods, Prime Video, and Amazon's cloud computing unit, AWS, plus Bezos's ownership of The Washington Post. We live in a world run, supplied, and controlled by Amazon and its iconoclast founder. In Amazon Unbound, Brad Stone presents an "excellent" (The New York Times), deeply reported, vividly drawn portrait of how a retail upstart became of the most powerful and feared entities in the global economy. Stone also probes the evolution of Bezos himself--who started as a geeky technologist totally devoted to building Amazon, but who transformed to become a fit, disciplined billionaire with global ambitions, who ruled Amazon with an iron fist, even as he found his personal life splashed over the tabloids. Definitive, timely, and "engaging" (Jon Meacham, author of The Soul of America), Stone has provided an unvarnished portrait of a man and company that we couldn't imagine modern life without.
Elon Musk
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In the spirit of Steve Jobs and Moneyball, Elon Musk is both an illuminating and authorized look at the extraordinary life of one of Silicon Valley's most exciting, unpredictable, and ambitious entrepreneurs--a real-life Tony Stark--and a fascinating exploration of the renewal of American invention and its new "makers." Elon Musk spotlights the technology and vision of Elon Musk, the renowned entrepreneur and innovator behind SpaceX, Tesla, and SolarCity, who sold one of his Internet companies, PayPal, for $1.5 billion. Ashlee Vance captures the full spectacle and arc of the genius's life and work, from his tumultuous upbringing in South Africa and flight to the United States to his dramatic technical innovations and entrepreneurial pursuits. Vance uses Musk's story to explore one of the pressing questions of our age: can the nation of inventors and creators who led the modern world for a century still compete in an age of fierce global competition? He argues that Musk--one of the most unusual and striking figures in American business history--is a contemporary, visionary amalgam of legendary inventors and industrialists including Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Howard Hughes, and Steve Jobs. More than any other entrepreneur today, Musk has dedicated his energies and his own vast fortune to inventing a future that is as rich and far-reaching as the visionaries of the golden age of science-fiction fantasy. Thorough and insightful, Elon Musk brings to life a technology industry that is rapidly and dramatically changing by examining the life of one of its most powerful and influential titans.
Empire of Pain
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NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE NOMINEE * A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR * NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER * A grand, devastating portrait of three generations of the Sackler family, famed for their philanthropy, whose fortune was built by Valium and whose reputation was destroyed by OxyContin. From the prize-winning and bestselling author of Say Nothing The history of the Sackler dynasty is rife with drama--baroque personal lives; bitter disputes over estates; fistfights in boardrooms; glittering art collections; Machiavellian courtroom maneuvers; and the calculated use of money to burnish reputations and crush the less powerful. The Sackler name has adorned the walls of many storied institutions--Harvard, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Oxford, the Louvre. They are one of the richest families in the world, known for their lavish donations to the arts and the sciences. The source of the family fortune was vague, however, until it emerged that the Sacklers were responsible for making and marketing a blockbuster painkiller that was the catalyst for the opioid crisis. Empire of Pain begins with the story of three doctor brothers, Raymond, Mortimer and the incalculably energetic Arthur, who weathered the poverty of the Great Depression and appalling anti-Semitism. Working at a barbaric mental institution, Arthur saw a better way and conducted groundbreaking research into drug treatments. He also had a genius for marketing, especially for pharmaceuticals, and bought a small ad firm. Arthur devised the marketing for Valium, and built the first great Sackler fortune. He purchased a drug manufacturer, Purdue Frederick, which would be run by Raymond and Mortimer. The brothers began collecting art, and wives, and grand residences in exotic locales. Their children and grandchildren grew up in luxury. Forty years later, Raymond's son Richard ran the family-owned Purdue. The template Arthur Sackler created to sell Valium--co-opting doctors, influencing the FDA, downplaying the drug's addictiveness--was employed to launch a far more potent product: OxyContin. The drug went on to generate some thirty-five billion dollars in revenue, and to launch a public health crisis in which hundreds of thousands would die. This is the saga of three generations of a single family and the mark they would leave on the world, a tale that moves from the bustling streets of early twentieth-century Brooklyn to the seaside palaces of Greenwich, Connecticut, and Cap d'Antibes to the corridors of power in Washington, D.C. Empire of Pain chronicles the multiple investigations of the Sacklers and their company, and the scorched-earth legal tactics that the family has used to evade accountability. Empire of Pain is a masterpiece of narrative reporting and writing, exhaustively documented and ferociously compelling. It is a portrait of the excesses of America's second Gilded Age, a study of impunity among the super elite and a relentless investigation of the naked greed and indifference to human suffering that built one of the world's great fortunes.
Unstoppable
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Winner - Best of Los Angeles Award's "Best Holocaust Book - 2021" "A must-read that hopefully will be adapted for the screen. Greene lets Wilzig's effervescent spirit shine through, and his story will appeal to a wide variety of readers." - Library Journal Unstoppable is the ultimate immigrant story and an epic David-and-Goliath adventure. While American teens were socializing in ice cream parlors, Siggi was suffering beatings by Nazi hoodlums for being a Jew and was soon deported along with his family to the darkest place the world has ever known: Auschwitz. Siggi used his wits to stay alive, pretending to have trade skills the Nazis could exploit to run the camp. After two death marches and near starvation, he was liberated from camp Mauthausen and went to work for the US Army hunting Nazis, a service that earned him a visa to America. On arrival, he made three vows: to never go hungry again, to support the Jewish people, and to speak out against injustice. He earned his first dollar shoveling snow after a fierce blizzard. His next job was laboring in toxic sweatshops. From these humble beginnings, he became President, Chairman and CEO of a New York Stock Exchange-listed oil company and grew a full-service commercial bank to more than $4 billion in assets. Siggi's ascent from the darkest of yesterdays to the brightest of tomorrows holds sway over the imagination in this riveting narrative of grit, cunning, luck, and the determination to live life to the fullest.
Baby Steps Millionaires
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You Can Baby Step Your Way to Becoming aMillionaire Most people know Dave Ramsey as the guy whodid stupid with a lot of zeros on the end. He made his first million in histwenties--the wrong way--and then went bankrupt. That's when he set out to learnGod's ways of managing money and developed the Ramsey Baby Steps. Followingthese steps, Dave became a millionaire again--this time the right way. After three decades of guiding millions ofothers through the plan, the evidence is undeniable: if you follow the BabySteps, you will become a millionaire and get to live and givelike no one else. In Baby Steps Millionaires, you will. . . Take a deeper look at Baby Step 4 to learn how Daveinvests and builds wealth Learn how to bust through the barriers preventing themfrom becoming a millionaire Hear true stories from ordinary people who dugthemselves out of debt and built wealth Discover how anyone can become a millionaire,especially you Baby Steps Millionaires isn't a book that tells the secrets ofthe rich. It doesn't teach complicated financial concepts reserved only for theelite. As a matter of fact, this information is straightforward, practical, andmaybe even a little boring. But the life you'll lead if you follow the BabySteps is anything but boring! You don't need a large inheritance or the winninglottery number to become a millionaire. Anyone can do it--even today. For thosewho are ready, it's game on!
How to Money
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"Where was this book when we were teenagers?" - Real Simple "Helps new grads make smart, informed money decisions." - MSNBC Learn how to money in this in-depth, illustrated guide from New York Times bestselling author and financial expert Jean Chatzky, Kathryn Tuggle, and the team at HerMoney There's no getting around it. You need to know how to manage money to know how to manage life -- but most of us don't! This illustrated guidebook from New York Times bestselling author and financial expert Jean Chatzky, Kathryn Tuggle, and their team at HerMoney breaks down the basics of money--how to earn it, manage it, and use it--giving you all the tools you need to take charge and be fearless with personal finance. How to Money will teach you the ins and outs of: -creating a budget (and sticking to it) -scoring that first job (and what that paycheck means) -navigating student loans (and avoiding student debt) -getting that first credit card (and what "credit" is) -investing like a pro (and why it's important!) All so you can earn more, save smart, invest wisely, borrow only when you have to, and enjoy everything you've got!
The Power of Regret
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"The world needs this book." --Brené Brown, Ph.D., New York Times bestselling author of Dare to Lead and Atlas of the Heart An instant New York Times bestseller As featured in The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post Named a Best Book of 2022 by NPR and Financial Times From the #1 New York Times-bestselling author of When and Drive, a new book about the transforming power of our most misunderstood yet potentially most valuable emotion: regret. Everybody has regrets, Daniel H. Pink explains in The Power of Regret. They're a universal and healthy part of being human. And understanding how regret works can help us make smarter decisions, perform better at work and school, and bring greater meaning to our lives. Drawing on research in social psychology, neuroscience, and biology, Pink debunks the myth of the "no regrets" philosophy of life. And using the largest sampling of American attitudes about regret ever conducted as well as his own World Regret Survey--which has collected regrets from more than 15,000 people in 105 countries--he lays out the four core regrets that each of us has. These deep regrets offer compelling insights into how we live and how we can find a better path forward. As he did in his bestsellers Drive, When, and A Whole New Mind, Pink lays out a dynamic new way of thinking about regret and frames his ideas in ways that are clear, accessible, and pragmatic. Packed with true stories of people's regrets as well as practical takeaways for reimagining regret as a positive force, The Power of Regret shows how we can live richer, more engaged lives.
Think Again
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#1 New York Times Bestseller "THIS. This is the right book for right now. Yes, learning requires focus. But, unlearning and relearning requires much more--it requires choosing courage over comfort. In Think Again, Adam Grant weaves together research and storytelling to help us build the intellectual and emotional muscle we need to stay curious enough about the world to actually change it. I've never felt so hopeful about what I don't know." --Brené Brown, Ph.D., #1 New York Times bestselling author of Dare to Lead The bestselling author of Give and Take and Originals examines the critical art of rethinking: learning to question your opinions and open other people's minds, which can position you for excellence at work and wisdom in life Intelligence is usually seen as the ability to think and learn, but in a rapidly changing world, there's another set of cognitive skills that might matter more: the ability to rethink and unlearn. In our daily lives, too many of us favor the comfort of conviction over the discomfort of doubt. We listen to opinions that make us feel good, instead of ideas that make us think hard. We see disagreement as a threat to our egos, rather than an opportunity to learn. We surround ourselves with people who agree with our conclusions, when we should be gravitating toward those who challenge our thought process. The result is that our beliefs get brittle long before our bones. We think too much like preachers defending our sacred beliefs, prosecutors proving the other side wrong, and politicians campaigning for approval--and too little like scientists searching for truth. Intelligence is no cure, and it can even be a curse: being good at thinking can make us worse at rethinking. The brighter we are, the blinder to our own limitations we can become. Organizational psychologist Adam Grant is an expert on opening other people's minds--and our own. As Wharton's top-rated professor and the bestselling author of Originals and Give and Take, he makes it one of his guiding principles to argue like he's right but listen like he's wrong. With bold ideas and rigorous evidence, he investigates how we can embrace the joy of being wrong, bring nuance to charged conversations, and build schools, workplaces, and communities of lifelong learners. You'll learn how an international debate champion wins arguments, a Black musician persuades white supremacists to abandon hate, a vaccine whisperer convinces concerned parents to immunize their children, and Adam has coaxed Yankees fans to root for the Red Sox. Think Again reveals that we don't have to believe everything we think or internalize everything we feel. It's an invitation to let go of views that are no longer serving us well and prize mental flexibility over foolish consistency. If knowledge is power, knowing what we don't know is wisdom.