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The Billionaire's Vinegar: The Mystery of the World's Most Expensive Bottle of Wine
It was the most expensive bottle of wine ever sold. In 1985, at a heated auction by Christie’s of London, a 1787 bottle of Château Lafite Bordeaux—one of a cache of bottles unearthed in a bricked-up Paris cellar and supposedly owned by Thomas Jefferson—went for $156,000 to a member of the Forbes family. The discoverer of the bottle was pop-band manager turned wine collector Hardy Rodenstock, who had a knack for finding extremely old and exquisite wines. But rumors about the bottle soon arose. Why wouldn’t Rodenstock reveal the exact location where it had been found? Was it part of a smuggled Nazi hoard? Or did his reticence conceal an even darker secret? It would take more than two decades for those questions to be answered and involve a gallery of intriguing players—among them Michael Broadbent, the bicycle-riding British auctioneer who speaks of wines as if they are women and staked his reputation on the record-setting sale; Serena Sutcliffe, Broadbent’s elegant archrival, whose palate is covered by a hefty insurance policy; and Bill Koch, the extravagant Florida tycoon bent on exposing the truth about Rodenstock. Pursuing the story from Monticello to London to Zurich to Munich and beyond, Benjamin Wallace also offers a mesmerizing history of wine, complete with vivid accounts of subterranean European laboratories where old vintages are dated and of Jefferson’s colorful, wine-soaked days in France, where he literally drank up the culture. Suspenseful, witty, and thrillingly strange, The Billionaire’s Vinegar is the vintage tale of what could be the most elaborate con since the Hitler diaries. It is also the debut of an exceptionally powerful new voice in narrative non-fiction..
Price: $15.20
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The Tao of Warren Buffett: Warren Buffett's Words of Wisdom: Quotations and Interpretations to Help Guide You to Billionaire Wealth and Enlightened Business Management
A collection of pithy and inspiring sayings from America's favorite businessman that reveal his secrets of successLike the sayings of the ancient Chinese philospher Lao-tzu, Warren Buffett's worldly wisdom is deceptively simple and enormously powerful in application. In The Tao of Warren Buffett, Mary Buffett -- author of three books on Warren Buffett's investment methods -- joins noted Buffettologist and international lecturer David Clark to bring you Warren Buffett's smartest, funniest, and most memorable sayings with an eye toward revealing the life philosophy and the investment strategies that have made Warren Buffett, and the shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway, so enormously wealthy. Warren Buffett's investment achievements are unparalleled. He owes his success to hard work, integrity, and that most elusive commodity of all, common sense. The quotations in this book exemplify Warren's practical strategies and provide useful illustrations for every investor -- large or small -- and models everyone can follow. The quotes are culled from a variety of sources, including personal conversations, corporate reports, profiles, and interviews. The authors provide short explanations for each quote and use examples from Buffett's own business transactions whenever possible to illustrate his words at work. As Warren says: "You should invest in a business that even a fool can run, because someday a fool will.""With enough inside information and a million dollars, you can go broke in a year." "No matter how great the talent or effort, some things just take time: You can't produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant." "Our method is very simple. We just try to buy businesses with good-to-superb underlying economics run by honest and able people and buy them at sensible prices. That's all I'm trying to do."
The Tao of Warren Buffett inspires, amuses, sharpens the mind, and offers priceless investment savvy that anyone can take to the bank. This irresistibly browsable and entertaining book is destined to become a classic..
Price: $6.95
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Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters: From Dating, Shopping, and Praying to Going to War and Becoming a Billionaire-- Two Evolutionary Psychologists Explain Why We Do What We Do
A lively and provocative look at how evolution shapes our behavior and our lives. Contrary to conventional wisdom, our brains and bodies are hardwired to carry out an evolutionary mission that determines much of what we do, from life plans to everyday decisions. With an accessible tone and a healthy disregard for political correctness, this lively and eminently readable book popularizes the latest research in a cutting-edge field of study-one that turns much of what we thought we knew about human nature upside-down. Every time we fall in love, fight with our spouse, enjoy watching a favorite TV show, or feel scared--walking alone at night, we are in part behaving as a human animal with its own unique nature-a nature that essentially stopped evolving 10,000 years ago. Alan S. Miller and Satoshi Kanazawa re-examine some of the most popular and controversial topics of modern life-and shed a whole new light on why we do the things we do. Reader beware: You may never look at human nature the same way again..
Price: $3.99
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1,000 Dollars and an Idea: Entrepreneur to Billionaire
The rags-to-riches story of an amazing business wizard—from the Louisiana cotton fields to the worlds of computers, retailing, fast food, high finance, and green energy—life lessons from a man ahead of the pack and ahead of his time."My work is to create companies and build them," says the billionaire whom Fortune magazine, over thirty years ago, characterized_as "one of the most, if not the most, important entrepreneurs" of the century. This was even before Wyly contributed to nearly every great technological, service industry, and investment business breakthrough in the second half of the twentieth century. Now, in his fast-paced, fascinating, and candid memoir, Wyly reveals the thought processes, relationships, and financial machinations behind the building of his diverse businesses over the last four decades. Here's the story of how he worked his way through Louisiana Tech selling class rings and why, after his first job in which he broke sales records for IBM (along with Ross Perot, a fellow IBM salesman) and a brief stint at Honeywell, he decided to risk $1,000 of his savings to found the first "computer utility" company in the business world. This was in 1963. Two years later, he took his University Computing Company public and became an instant millionaire. Never losing his entrepreneurial spirit, Wyly undertook one challenge after another, such as: • Waging a successful anti-monopoly battle against AT&T, enabling him to build a "telephone highway" for computers • Growing the modest Bonanza Steak House chain, which he "inherited" as the result of a bad debt, to a total of 600 outlets before selling it for a huge profit • Creating a new systems software company, Sterling Software, which he eventually sold for $4 billion • Dividending Sterling Commerce to public shareholders and selling to AT&T_for $4 billion in 2000 • Expanding the small arts-and-crafts chain Michaels Stores from 10 to 1,000 stores before selling it for $6 billion in 2006 • Founding Green Mountain Energy, which has become the largest and most profitable green business in the country. Part autobiography and part inspirational self-help business guide, Wyly not only provides his homespun life lessons in the practice of starting and building businesses, but he also delivers refreshing new insights into how many American businesses operated from the 1950s to the present..
Price: $6.49
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Wolves Eat Dogs (Arkady Renko Novels)
In his groundbreaking Gorky Park, Martin Cruz Smith created an iconic detective of contemporary fiction. Quietly subversive, brilliantly analytical, and haunted by melancholy, Arkady Renko survived, barely, the journey from the Soviet Union to the New Russia, only to find his transformed nation just as obsessed with corruption and brutality as was the old Communist dictatorship. In Wolves Eat Dogs, Renko returns for his most enigmatic and baffling case: the death of one of Russia's new billionaires, which leads him to Chernobyl and the Zone of Exclusion -- closed to the world since 1986's nuclear disaster. It is still aglow with radioactivity, now inhabited only by the militia, shady scavengers, a few reckless scientists, and some elderly peasants who refuse to relocate. Renko's journey to this ghostly netherworld, the crimes he uncovers there, and the secrets they reveal about the New Russia make for an unforgettable adventure. .
Price: $6.35
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The Billionaire Who Wasn't: How Chuck Feeney Made and Gave Away a Fortune Without Anyone Knowing
In 1988 Forbes Magazine hailed Chuck Feeney as the twenty-third richest American alive. Born in Elizabeth, New Jersey to a blue-collar Irish-American family during the Depression, a veteran of the Korean War, he had made a fortune as co-founder of Duty Free Shoppers, the world's largest duty-free retail chain. But secretly, Feeney had already transferred all his wealth to his foundation, Atlantic Philanthropies. Only in 1997, when he sold his duty free interests, was he "outed" as one of the greatest and most mysterious American philanthropists in modern times. A frugal man who travels economy class and does not own a house or a car, Feeney then went "underground" again, until he decided in 2005 to cooperate in a biography to promote giving-while-living. Now in his mid-seventies, he is determined his foundation should spend the remaining $4 billion in his lifetime. The Billionaire Who Wasn't is a tale of one of the greatest untold retail triumphs of the twentieth century, and of what happens to a unique man and his family when confronted with wealth beyond imagining. .
Price: $6.60
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Trump Strategies for Real Estate: Billionaire Lessons for the Small Investor
Trump Strategies for Real Estate offers unbeatable insider advice for every serious real estate investor—beginners and old pros alike. For more than twenty-five years, author George Ross has been one of Donald Trump’s chief advisors and intimately involved with many of Trump’s biggest real estate deals. Now, Ross teams up with bestselling real estate author Andrew McLean to present Trump’s real estate investment strategies so that even small investors can invest like Trump. You’ll learn how Trump identifies potential properties and how he finances, negotiates, and markets his big deals. Not everyone has Trump’s money or name, but everyone, even you, can use his tactics and strategies to win big in real estate..
Price: $7.99
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Q & A: A Novel
Vikas Swarup's spectacular debut novel opens in a jail cell in Mumbai, India, where Ram Mohammad Thomas is being held after correctly answering all twelve questions on India's biggest quiz show, Who Will Win a Billion? It is hard to believe that a poor orphan who has never read a newspaper or gone to school could win such a contest. But through a series of exhilarating tales Ram explains to his lawyer how episodes in his life gave him the answer to each question. Ram takes us on an amazing review of his own history -- from the day he was found as a baby in the clothes donation box of a Delhi church to his employment by a faded Bollywood star to his adventure with a security-crazed Australian army colonel to his career as an overly creative tour guide at the Taj Mahal. Swarup's Q & A is a beguiling blend of high comedy, drama, and romance that reveals how we know what we know -- not just about trivia, but about life itself. Cutting across humanity in all its squalor and glory, Vikas Swarup presents a kaleidoscopic vision of the struggle between good and evil -- and what happens when one boy has no other choice in life but to survive..
Price: $14.46
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The Bill Cook Story: Ready, Fire, Aim!
Bill Cook epitomizes the American success story. His business ventures in medical devices, pharmaceuticals, genetics, real estate, retail management, and travel services have made him a billionaire Yet, Cook continues to lead a modest life, involving himself in a variety of philanthropic activities that have included historic preservation and even a marching band. This riveting story is the first-ever biography of the entrepreneur who, working from the spare bedroom of his Bloomington, Indiana, apartment in 1963 with a $1,500 investment, began to construct the wire guides, needles, and catheters that would become the foundation of the global multi-billion-dollar Cook Group. Biographer Bob Hammel, with extraordinary access to Cook, his files, and his associates, has created a vivid portrait of this modern, multidimensional Horatio Alger - quirky humour, widely varied interests, and all. Informative and inspiring, this book celebrates an exceptional self-made individual..
Price: $10.99
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Think Like a Billionaire, Become a Billionaire
Billionaires Think Differently About: Money we look for ways to spend money. Billionaires look for ways to invest money. Investing we invest just a little. Billionaires realize investing is the key to abundance. Jobs we think a better job will make us wealthy. Billionaires know that a job will never make them wealthy; investments will. Risks we stay away from risks because we might fail. Billionaires know if they don't take risks, they've already failed. Problems we try to avoid problems. Billionaires see problems as opportunities to make millions. Preparation we prepare today for today. Billionaires prepare today for the opportunities of tomorrow. Time we waste time. Billionaires see time as their most valuable asset. Billionaires think differently, and their lives produce differently. Follow me on the journey i took in changing my thinking. I went from just getting by to having millions of dollars, and i'm on my way to billions. As you begin to think like a billionaire, your life has no choice but to produce it..
Price: $15.63
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