The history of Guinness, one of the world's most famous brands, reveals the noble heights and generosity of a great family and an innovative business. It began in Ireland in the mid-1700s. The water in Ireland, indeed throughout Europe, was famously undrinkable, and the gin and whiskey that took its place devastated civil society. It was a disease-ridden, starvation-plagued, alcoholic age.

Empower your business, your town, and your fellow citizens to prosper as never before. Town Inc. unpacks the deceivingly simple link between building a booming business and growing a prosperous town. The secret, it turns out, is to market your town just as passionately as you market your own business. In cities across America, business leaders are telling uniquely compelling stories to lure other businesses and willing workforces to relocate to their towns. Their towns flourish, and their businesses prosper.

G. Eric Kuskey, former colleague of Thomas Kinkade and close friend until the artist's death in 2012, tells Kinkade's story for the first time, from his art's humble beginnings on a sidewalk in Carmel, California, to his five-house compound in Monte Sereno. It's a tale of addiction and grief, of losing control, and ultimately, of the price of our dreams.

He wasn’t always the Great Showman. In fact, Phineas Taylor Barnum grew up in relative poverty with only his wits to help him along. When his father died, the 15-year-old boy entered the working world as a shopkeeper’s assistant. In leaps and bounds, he worked his way from assistant to shop owner, lottery office owner, and, eventually, entertainment promoter. The bulk of his career was focused on his beloved American Museum, where thousands of ticket holders flocked every day to look at the human oddities, stuffed animals, live whale, and American memorabilia. 

In Miniature takes a big look at small things. It is a celebration of the obsessive, eccentric and meticulous and welcomes us into the world of collectors, modellers and fans. Simon Garfield is a master of finding delight and fascination in unlikely places, and here we discover flea circuses, 1,000 tiny Hitlers, miniature crime scenes, model villages and railways, minuscule food and a dozen more intricately examined pursuits. Each object considered plots the course of a new miniature byway and in unexpected ways lets us see our world in a whole new light.... 

Obroni and the Chocolate Factory is Steven's chaotic, fascinating, and bemusing journey to create a successful international business that aspired do a bit of good in the world. This book is at once a penetrating business memoir and a story about imagining globalism done right. Wallace's picaresque journey takes him to Ghana's residence for the head of state, to the Amsterdam offices of a secretive international cocoa conglomerate, and face-to-face with key figures in the sharp-elbowed world of global trade and geopolitics.

In 1836, Charles Henry Harrod was convicted at the Old Bailey of receiving stolen goods and sentenced to seven years' hard labour in Tasmania. But he miraculously escaped his fate to found what would become the legendary Harrods. His son, Charles Digby, transformed the shop from a local grocer's to a department store patronised by the wealthy and famous. Robin Harrod's fascinating book reveals the previously unknown origins of the store and follows its fortunes through family scandal, the devastating fire of 1883 and its subsequent rise from the ashes, to 1889 when its shares were floated on the stock exchange, completing one of the most extraordinary stories in the history of commerce.

‘I am fascinated by people turning their daft dreams into a reality. How did they do it and why?’ Driven by his own passion for collecting Hunter Davies has packed his notepad and set off in search of Britain’s maddest museums. As he explores these hidden gems he soon discovers that they are everywhere and that they celebrate just about everything, from lawnmowers in Southport to pencils in Keswick.

The Astor surname, one of New York’s most important family names for over a century, is synonymous with American aristocracy, a term that defies simple definition. Unlike Britain, where the term aristocrat had a definite meaning, the New York aristocracy was “at best a metaphor for high social status or prestige in a nation which had unequivocally rejected the mechanisms needed to create and sustain an aristocracy on the European model.”

Thomas Edison was born into a hard-working but attentive family. He struggled in school and became deaf at an early age. Born on February 11, 1847, Edison would become, arguably, the best-known American inventor of all time. His invention of the light bulb was one of more than 1,000 patents he held during his lifetime. Others included the phonograph, the electrical grid, and motion pictures. His work changed the way we see and hear the world around us.

The best-selling author of Truman and John Adams, David McCullough has written profiles of exceptional men and women past and present who have not only shaped the course of history or changed how we see the world but whose stories express much that is timeless about the human condition. Here are Alexander von Humboldt, whose epic explorations of South America surpassed the Lewis and Clark expedition; Harriet Beecher Stowe, "the little woman who made the big war”....

In this course, we'll examine the lives and careers of successful men and women who seized the opportunities offered by the vibrant and open economy that has ensued. We'll examine how each of these individuals found the necessary resources - both economic and personal - to achieve greatness in the business arena. In doing so, we hope not only to arrive at a better understanding of American business history in general, but also to commune with its greatest visionaries - its Masters of Enterprise.

Journalist Maximillian Potter uncovers a fascinating plot to destroy the vines of La Romance-Conti, Burgundy's finest and most expensive wine. In January 2010, Aubert de Villaine, the famed proprietor of the Domaine de la Romance-Conti, the tiny, storied vineyard that produces the most expensive, exquisite wines in the world, received an anonymous note threatening the destruction of his priceless vines by poison - a crime that in the world of high-end wine is akin to murder - unless he paid a one million euro ransom.

Britain's rise to global dominance from the 16th century owed as much to the vision and creativity of traders, industrialists and bankers as it did to wars of conquest fought by military men. Dragons tells the story of British business endeavours through the lives of ten titans of commerce. Beginning with the Tudor merchants who transformed England's economy via trade with the New World, Liam Byrne traces a fascinating and eye-opening entrepreneurial line.

A collection of the timeless, the priceless and the unforgettable, this compendium accompanies the beloved BBC One TV series. Gracing our screens for nearly 40 years, one of the nation's most beloved television programmes has become a national institution. The Antiques Roadshow has given the opportunity for thousands of unique stories to be told over the years as well as the introduction of many incredible characters.