Showing results by publisher "Blackstone Audio, Inc." in Business & Careers

Nintendo has continually set the standard for video game innovation in America, starting in 1981 with a plucky hero who jumped over barrels to save a girl from an ape. The saga of Mario, the portly plumber who became the most successful franchise in the history of gaming, has plot twists worthy of a video game. Jeff Ryan shares the story of how this quintessentially Japanese company found success in the American market.

As a teenager visiting the Andy Warhol Museum, Beth Pickens realized the importance of making art. As an adult, she has worked as a consultant empowering artists. Intimate yet practical, Your Art Will Save Your Life helps artists build a sustainable practice while navigating the world of MFAs, residencies, and institutional funding.

The relationship between military leaders and political leaders has always been a complicated one, especially in times of war. When the chips are down, who should run the show, the politicians or the generals? In Supreme Command, Eliot Cohen examines four great democratic war statesmen - Abraham Lincoln, Georges Clemenceau, Winston Churchill, and David Ben-Gurion - to reveal the surprising answer - the politicians. The generals may think they know how to win, but the statesmen are the ones who see the big picture.

The tale of the Bechtel family dynasty is a classic American business story. It begins with Warren A. "Dad" Bechtel, who led a consortium that constructed the Hoover Dam. From that auspicious start, the family and its eponymous company would go on to build the world, from the construction of airports in Hong Kong and Doha to pipelines and tunnels in Alaska and Europe to mining and energy operations around the globe.

In 1999 Joseph Pine and James Gilmore offered readers the idea of the experience economy as a new way to connect with customers and secure their loyalty. As a result, their book The Experience Economy is now a classic, embraced by listeners and companies worldwide and available in more than a dozen languages. Though the world has changed in many ways since then, the way to a customer’s heart has not.

Why do well-intentioned plans for improving the human condition go tragically awry? Author James C. Scott analyzes failed cases of large-scale authoritarian plans in a variety of fields. Centrally managed social plans misfire, Scott argues, when they impose schematic visions that do violence to complex interdependencies that are not - and cannot - be fully understood. Further, the success of designs for social organization depends upon the recognition that local, practical knowledge is as important as formal, epistemic knowledge.

Did you ever wish you could tell a story that leaves others spellbound? Storytelling teacher and champion Margot Leitman will show you how! With a fun, irreverent, and infographic approach, this guide breaks a story into concrete components with ways to improve content, structure, emotional impact, and delivery through personal anecdotes, relatable examples, and practical exercises.

Does the mere thought of selling cause you to break out in a cold sweat? Is a great salesperson something you desperately want to become, but struggle with overcoming fear, being pushy, or being seen as "that guy/girl" who people avoid like the plague? If this sounds like you, breathe easy, you aren't alone. Hope is here! Selling is littered with many potential land mines; however, you can learn the exact sales skills needed to build greater levels of sales confidence and sell like a pro. Building sales confidence involves being real with yourself and having a proven road map.

Napoleon Hill's Golden Rules: The Lost Writings consists of a series of magazine articles Napoleon Hill wrote between 1919 and1923 for Success Magazine. Hill's obsession with achieving material success led him out of the poverty-stricken Appalachian Mountains and filled him with the desire to study successful people.

These articles focus on Hill's philosophy of success, drawing on the thoughts and experiences of a multitude of rags-to-riches tycoons.

We live in a factory-made world: modern life is built on three centuries of advances in factory production, efficiency, and technology. But giant factories have also fueled our fears about the future since their beginnings, when William Blake called them "dark Satanic mills". Many factories that operated over the last two centuries - such as Homestead, River Rouge, and Foxconn - were known for the labor exploitation and class warfare they engendered, not to mention the environmental devastation caused by factory production.

This is a practical, relatable, and humorous guide to surviving the difficult, awkward, and rewarding job of being a breastfeeding, working mother. Drawing on the war stories, hacks, and humor of working moms and on her own stories from her demanding job and travel in developing countries, she gives women moral support for dealing with the stress and guilt that come with juggling working and breastfeeding. As she tells the listener in her witty, inspiring manifesto, "Your worth as a mother is not measured in ounces."

Ludwig von Mises is to economics what Albert Einstein is to physics. Human Action is his greatest work: a systematic study that covers every major topic in the science of economics. It is also one of the most convincing indictments of socialism and statism ever penned. When it first appeared in 1949, it ignited an eruption of critical acclaim.

The employer-employee relationship is broken, and managers face a seemingly impossible dilemma: the old model of guaranteed long-term employment no longer works in a business environment defined by continuous change, but neither does a system in which every employee acts like a free agent. The solution? Stop thinking of employees as either family or free agents. Think of them instead as allies.

Feeling directionless or perhaps too intimidated to make a necessary change in your life? Tired of letting your fears keep you from achieving your goals or becoming healthier, happier, or more successful? If so, this book is for you. Popular life coach and consultant Adam Smith has created a powerful method to help you harness your inner passion and drive to overcome whatever is holding you back.

Beauchamp writes about the pictures Kennedy produced, the stars he made - and destroyed - and the men who did his bidding. She also writes about the Hollywood titans in his midst: William Randolph Hearst, Cecille B. DeMille, and David Sarnoff, whose collaboration with Kennedy resulted in the formation of RKO Studios.

Milton Friedman and his wife, Rose, teamed up to write this most convincing and readable guide, which illustrates the crucial link between Adam Smith's capitalism and the free society. They show how freedom has been eroded and prosperity undermined through the rapid growth of governmental agencies, laws, and regulations.

Best selling author Jack Trout doesn't beat around the bush. He takes marketers to task for taking the easy route too often, employing high-tech razzle-dazzle and sleight of hand when they should be working to discover and market their product's uniquely valuable qualities. He examines successful differentiation initiatives and outlines the many ways you can achieve differentiation.

Most of us have no idea why we fail to reach our goals. Now eminent social psychologist Heidi Grant Halvorson shows us how we can finally win by revealing how goals really work—and by showing us how to avoid what typically goes wrong.

As statistics tell us that most of the "ventureholics" who go out on their own to start a business will ultimately fail; and, as readers will learn, the main reason for this is because most businesses are not started the right way. Based on decades of experience working with small business owners, Michael Gerber will teach budding entrepreneurs his one-of-a-kind seven-step method - which is meant to be conceptualized long before the doors are ever opened.

Today, organizations are grappling with ambiguity, volatility, and paradox surrounding the challenges they face. This is complexity. But too many leaders approach complexity the wrong way - they push their people harder and harder and tackle problems one at a time over months, sometimes even years and nearly always in a linear fashion. It’s like setting a pot of water on “low” and waiting for it to boil. In this book, the authors share their proven formula for dramatically shortening the process and solving an organization’s toughest challenges in mere days.