New Books: Business & Fashion Merchandising

Sarah Wynn-Williams tells the wrenching but fun story of Facebook, mapping its rise from stumbling encounters with juntas to Mark Zuckerberg's reaction when he learned of Facebook's role in Trump's election. She experiences the challenges and humiliations of working motherhood within a pressure cooker of a workplace. A deep, unflinching look at the role that social media has assumed in our lives, Careless People reveals the truth about the leaders of Facebook: how the more power they grasp, the less responsible they become and the consequences this has for all of us.

Beyond Shareholder Primacy argues that capitalism has reformed itself twice before and is poised for a third major reformation. Retelling the origin story of capitalism from the fifteenth century to the present, Hart argues that a radically sustainable, just capitalism is possible, and even likely, in our lifetime. Hart goes on to describe what it will take to move beyond capitalism's present worship of "shareholder primacy," including corporate transformations to re-embed purpose and reforms to major economic institutions. A key requirement is eliminating the "externalities" (or collateral damage) of our current shareholder capitalism.

From investors and monetary authorities to governments and policy makers, almost everyone had assumed inflation was dead and buried. But now people the world over are confronting a poisonous new economic reality and, with it, the prospect of vast and increasing wealth inequality. How have we arrived in this situation? And what, if anything, can we do about it? Stephen D. King identifies key lessons from the history of inflation that policy makers chose not to heed. From ancient Rome through the American Civil War and up to the asset bubbles of today, inflation stems from policy error, sovereign greed, and a loss of faith in currencies.

A cinematic narrative of glamour, grit, luxury, and luck, Fashion Killa draws on exclusive interviews with the leaders of the fashion world to tell the story of the hip-hop artists, designers, stylists, and unsung heroes who fought the power and reinvented style around the world over the last fifty years. Set in the sartorial scenes of New York, Paris, and Milan, Krishnamurthy's reporting on the intersecting histories of hip-hop and contemporary fashion focuses on the risk takers and rebels--the artists, designers, stylists, models, and tastemakers--who challenged a systemic power structure and historically reinvented the world of haute couture.

Everyone knows YouTube. Across the world, people watch over a billion hours of video on the website every day. And yet virtually no one knows how YouTube works. This book explains how YouTube's technology and business evolved, how it works, and how it helped Google grow to unimaginable power, a narrative told through the people who created YouTube and the Google engineers and chiefs who took it over. It's the story of an industry run amok, and of how corporate greed resulted in the unraveling of truth, the spread of violence, and the corruption of the Internet, all for the sake of profit.

Armed with only the vague notion that people were making heaps of money on something he didn't entirely understand, McKenzie dove deep into blockchain, Bitcoin, and the various other coins and exchanges on which they are traded. But after scratching the surface, he had to ask, 'Am I crazy, or is this all a total scam?' Easy Money is an investigative adventure into crypto and its remarkable crash. Weaving together stories of average traders and victims, colorful crypto 'visionaries,' Hollywood's biggest true believers, anti-crypto whistleblowers, and government operatives, Easy Money tells of a perfect storm of irresponsibility and criminal fraud.

After the Cold War, globalization accelerated at breakneck speed. Manufacturing, transport, and consumption defied national borders, companies made more money, and consumers had access to an ever-increasing range of goods. But in recent years, a profound shift has begun to take place. Business executives and politicians alike are realising that globalization is no longer working. Supply chains are imperilled, Russia has been expelled from the global economy after its invasion of Ukraine, and China is using these fissures to leverage a strategic advantage. Given these pressures, what will the future of our world economy look like?

From our earliest ancestors to babies born today, fabric is a necessary part of our everyday lives, but it's also an opportunity for creativity, symbolism, culture and connection. A century ago in Wales, women would sew their own funeral clothes over tea with friends. In Papua New Guinea, bark is stripped from trees and beaten into cloth. Harris Tweed has a particular smell, while Guatemalan weavers use dazzling colors. Uncovering the stories of the fabrics people wear and use from sacking to silk, Fabric combines science, history, tradition and art in a captivating exploration of how we live, work, craft and care.

We are all taught to think like an economist, with total faith in the power of the individual, the purity of the free market, and our boundless future. The problem is that economics is a fairy tale--one that perpetuates vast inequality and environmental devastation. The Progress Illusion charts the rise of the economic worldview and its infiltration into our daily lives as a theory of everything--I over us, private over public, consumption over community. Ecological economist Jon Erickson calls for a challenge to this destructive philosophy, both within academia and in 'the real world,' through educational reform and grassroots social movements.

A sweeping, lively, and highly approachable history of American business from the nation's founding to the 21st century. Major themes include the nation's business beginnings in land and real estate, the pivotal place of financial institutions from the nation's earliest days, America's emergence as an industrial powerhouse, the dominance of its railways, automobiles, and other transportation companies, and the role of government.