{"id":53416,"date":"2024-12-10T06:00:26","date_gmt":"2024-12-10T12:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/?p=53416"},"modified":"2024-10-02T17:13:48","modified_gmt":"2024-10-02T22:13:48","slug":"new-business-leadership-and-economics-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/new-business-leadership-and-economics-books\/","title":{"rendered":"New Business, Leadership and Economics Books"},"content":{"rendered":"

Books that discuss business, leadership, and economics cover a wide selection, but what’s always been interesting to me are the books that deep dive into specific businesses, as well as broad business sectors\/types. The books below are new titles in these categories that highlight everything from Amazon to day trading to startups. As always, if you are looking for other related books in this category, don’t hesitate to reach out!<\/p>\n

These titles are owned by the Davenport Public Library at the time of this writing. The descriptions have been provided by the publishers.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>American Flannel: How a Band of Entrepreneurs Are Bringing the Art and Business of Making Clothes Back Home<\/a><\/strong><\/em> by Steven Kurutz<\/p>\n

The little-engine-that-could story of how a band of scrappy entrepreneurs are reviving the enterprise of manufacturing clothing in the United States.<\/em><\/p>\n

For decades, clothing manufacture was a pillar of U.S. industry. But beginning in the 1980s, Americans went from wearing 70 percent domestic-made apparel to almost none. Even the very symbol of American freedom and style\u2014blue jeans\u2014got outsourced. With offshoring, the nation lost not only millions of jobs but also crucial expertise and artistry.<\/em><\/p>\n

Dismayed by shoddy imported \u201cfast fashion\u201d\u2014and unable to stop dreaming of re-creating a favorite shirt from his youth\u2014Bayard Winthrop set out to build a new company, American Giant, that would swim against this trend. New York Times reporter Steven Kurutz, in turn, began to follow Winthrop\u2019s journey. He discovered other trailblazers as well, from the \u201cSock Queen of Alabama\u201d to a pair of father-son shoemakers and a men\u2019s style blogger who almost single-handedly drove a campaign to make \u201cMade in the USA\u201d cool. Eye-opening and inspiring, American Flannel is the story of how a band of visionaries and makers are building a new supply chain on the skeleton of the old and wedding old-fashioned craftsmanship to cutting-edge technology and design to revive an essential American dream.<\/em> – Riverhead Books<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>The Everything War: Amazon’s Ruthless Quest to Own the World and Remake Corporate Power<\/a><\/strong><\/em> by Dana Mattioli<\/p>\n

From veteran Amazon reporter for The Wall Street Journal, The Everything War is the first untold, devastating expos\u00e9 of Amazon’s endless strategic greed, from destroying Main Street to remaking corporate power, in pursuit of total domination, by any means necessary.<\/em><\/p>\n

In 2017, Lina Khan published a paper that accused Amazon of being a monopoly, having grown so large, and embedded in so many industries, it was akin to a modern-day Standard Oil. Unlike Rockefeller\u2019s empire, however, Bezos\u2019s company had grown voraciously without much scrutiny. In fact, for over twenty years, Amazon had emerged as a Wall Street darling and its \u201ccustomer obsession\u201d approach made it indelibly attractive to consumers across the globe. But the company was not benevolent; it operated in ways that ensured it stayed on top. Lina Khan\u2019s paper would light a fire in Washington, and in a matter of years, she would become the head of the FTC. In 2023, the FTC filed a monopoly lawsuit against Amazon in what may become one of the largest antitrust cases in the 21st century.<\/em><\/p>\n

With unparalleled access, and having interviewed hundreds of people \u2013 from Amazon executives to competitors to small businesses who rely on its marketplace to survive \u2013 Mattioli exposes how Amazon was driven by a competitive edge to dominate every industry it entered, bulldozed all who stood in its way, reshaped the retail landscape, transformed how Wall Street evaluates companies, and altered the very nature of the global economy. It has come to control most of online retail, and uses its own sellers\u2019 data to compete with them through Amazon\u2019s own private label brands. Millions of companies and governmental agencies use AWS, paying hefty fees for the service. And, the company has purposefully avoided collecting taxes for years, exploited partners, and even copied competitors\u2014leveraging its power to extract whatever it can, at any cost. It has continued to gain market share in disparate areas, from media to logistics and beyond. Most companies dominate one or two industries; Amazon now leads in several. And all of this was by design.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Everything War is the definitive, inside story of how it grew into one of the most powerful and feared companies in the world \u2013 and why this lawsuit opens a window into the most consequential business story of our times.<\/em> – Little, Brown and Company<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Taming the Octopus: The Long Battle for the Soul of the Corporation<\/a><\/strong><\/em> by Kyle Edward Williams<\/p>\n

The untold story of how efforts to hold big business accountable changed American capitalism.<\/em><\/p>\n

Recent controversies around environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing and \u201cwoke capital\u201d evoke an old idea: the Progressive Era vision of a socially responsible corporation. By midcentury, the notion that big business should benefit society was a consensus view. But as Kyle Edward Williams\u2019s brilliant history, Taming the Octopus, shows, the tools forged by New Deal liberals to hold business leaders accountable, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, narrowly focused on the financial interests of shareholders. This inadvertently laid the groundwork for a set of fringe views to become dominant: that market forces should rule every facet of society. Along the way, American capitalism itself was reshaped, stripping businesses to their profit-making core.<\/em><\/p>\n

In this vivid and surprising history, we meet activists, investors, executives, and workers who fought over a simple question: Is the role of the corporation to deliver profits to shareholders, or something more? On one side were \u201cbusiness statesmen\u201d who believed corporate largess could solve social problems. On the other were libertarian intellectuals such as Milton Friedman and his oft-forgotten contemporary, Henry Manne, whose theories justified the ruthless tactics of a growing class of corporate raiders. But Williams reveals that before the \u201cactivist investor\u201d emerged as a capitalist archetype, Civil Rights groups used a similar playbook for different ends, buying shares to change a company from within.<\/em><\/p>\n

As a rising tide of activists pushed corporations to account for societal harms from napalm to environmental pollution to inequitable hiring, a new idea emerged: that managers could maximize value for society while still turning a maximal profit. This elusive ideal, \u201cstakeholder capitalism,\u201d still dominates our headlines today. Williams\u2019s necessary history equips us to reconsider democracy\u2019s tangled relationship with capitalism.<\/em> – WW Norton & Company<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Vulture Capitalism: Corporate Crimes, Backdoor Bailouts, and the Death of Freedom<\/a><\/strong><\/em> by Grace Blakeley<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to look at the state of the world around us and feel hopeless. We live in an era marked by war, climate crisis, political polarization, and acute inequality\u2014and yet many of us feel powerless to do anything about these profound issues. We\u2019ve been assured that unfettered capitalism is necessary to ensure our freedom and prosperity but why, in our age of unchecked corporate power, are most of us living paycheck to paycheck? When the economy falters, why do governments bail out corporations and shareholders but leave everyday people in the dust?<\/em><\/p>\n

Now, acclaimed journalist and progressive star on the rise Grace Blakeley exposes the corrupt system that is failing all around us, pulling back the curtain on the free-market mythology we have been sold. She also clearly illustrates how, as corporate interests have taken hold, governments have historically been shifting away from competition and democracy towards monopoly and oligarchy.<\/em><\/p>\n

Tracing over a century of neoliberal planning and backdoor bailouts, Blakeley takes us on a deeply reported tour of the corporate crimes, political maneuvering, and economic manipulation that elites have used to enshrine a global system of \u201cvulture capitalism\u201d\u2014planned capitalist economies that benefit corporations and the uber-wealthy at the expense of the rest of us.<\/em> – Atria Books<\/p>\n

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More New Business, Leadership and Economics Books<\/strong><\/p>\n