"A colorful page-turner." --Walter Isaacson, New York Times Book Review "As important a book on space as has ever been written."&nbsp;--Homer Hickam, Author of Rocket Boys The dramatic inside story of the historic flights that launched SpaceX--and Elon Musk--from a shaky startup into the world's leading-edge rocket company SpaceX has enjoyed a miraculous decade. Less than 20 years after its founding, it boasts the largest constellation of commercial satellites in orbit, has pioneered reusable rockets, and in 2020 became the first private company to launch human beings into orbit. Half a century after the space race it is private companies, led by SpaceX, standing alongside NASA pushing forward into the cosmos, and laying the foundation for our exploration of other worlds. But before it became one of the most powerful players in the aerospace industry, SpaceX was a fledgling startup, scrambling to develop a single workable rocket before the money ran dry. The engineering challenge was immense; numerous other private companies had failed similar attempts. And even if SpaceX succeeded, they would then have to compete for government contracts with titans such as Lockheed Martin and Boeing, who had tens of thousands of employees and tens of billions of dollars in annual revenue. SpaceX had fewer than 200 employees and the relative pittance of $100 million in the bank. In Liftoff, Eric Berger, senior space editor at Ars Technica, takes readers inside the wild early days that made SpaceX. Focusing on the company's first four launches of the Falcon 1 rocket, he charts the bumpy journey from scrappy underdog to aerospace pioneer. We travel from company headquarters in El Segundo, to the isolated Texas ranchland where they performed engine tests, to Kwajalein, the tiny atoll in the Pacific where SpaceX launched the Falcon 1. Berger has reported on SpaceX for more than a decade, enjoying unparalleled journalistic access to the company's inner workings. Liftoff is the culmination of these efforts, drawing upon exclusive interviews with dozens of former and current engineers, designers, mechanics, and executives, including Elon Musk. The enigmatic Musk, who founded the company with the dream of one day settling Mars, is the fuel that propels the book, with his daring vision for the future of space. Filled with never-before-told stories of SpaceX's turbulent beginning, Liftoff is a saga of cosmic proportions.

Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX

Biographies & Memoirs

Berger, Eric

Professionals & Academics

William Morrow

In the fall of 1980, Genentech, Inc., a little-known California genetic engineering company, became the overnight darling of Wall Street, raising over $38 million in its initial public stock offering. Lacking marketed products or substantial profit, the firm nonetheless saw its share price escalate from $35 to $89 in the first few minutes of trading, at that point the largest gain in stock market history. Coming at a time of economic recession and declining technological competitiveness in the United States, the event provoked banner headlines and ignited a period of speculative frenzy over biotechnology as a revolutionary means for creating new and better kinds of pharmaceuticals, untold profit, and a possible solution to national economic malaise. Drawing from an unparalleled collection of interviews with early biotech players, Sally Smith Hughes offers the first book-length history of this pioneering company, depicting Genentech’s improbable creation, precarious youth, and ascent to immense prosperity. Hughes provides intimate portraits of the people significant to Genentech’s science and business, including cofounders Herbert Boyer and Robert Swanson, and in doing so sheds new light on how personality affects the growth of science. By placing Genentech’s founders, followers, opponents, victims, and beneficiaries in context, Hughes also demonstrates how science interacts with commercial and legal interests and university research, and with government regulation, venture capital, and commercial profits. Integrating the scientific, the corporate, the contextual, and the personal, Genentech tells the story of biotechnology as it is not often told, as a risky and improbable entrepreneurial venture that had to overcome a number of powerful forces working against it.

Genentech: The Beginnings of Biotech (Synthesis)

Business & Money

Hughes, Sally Smith

Biography & History

University of Chicago Press

In the fall of 1980, Genentech, Inc., a little-known California genetic engineering company, became the overnight darling of Wall Street, raising over $38 million in its initial public stock offering. Lacking marketed products or substantial profit, the firm nonetheless saw its share price escalate from $35 to $89 in the first few minutes of trading, at that point the largest gain in stock market history. Coming at a time of economic recession and declining technological competitiveness in the United States, the event provoked banner headlines and ignited a period of speculative frenzy over biotechnology as a revolutionary means for creating new and better kinds of pharmaceuticals, untold profit, and a possible solution to national economic malaise. Drawing from an unparalleled collection of interviews with early biotech players, Sally Smith Hughes offers the first book-length history of this pioneering company, depicting Genentech’s improbable creation, precarious youth, and ascent to immense prosperity. Hughes provides intimate portraits of the people significant to Genentech’s science and business, including cofounders Herbert Boyer and Robert Swanson, and in doing so sheds new light on how personality affects the growth of science. By placing Genentech’s founders, followers, opponents, victims, and beneficiaries in context, Hughes also demonstrates how science interacts with commercial and legal interests and university research, and with government regulation, venture capital, and commercial profits. Integrating the scientific, the corporate, the contextual, and the personal, Genentech tells the story of biotechnology as it is not often told, as a risky and improbable entrepreneurial venture that had to overcome a number of powerful forces working against it.

The Nonprofit Sector: A Research Handbook

Bible of researchers on non-profit sector for the next decade

Yale University Press

The second edition of The Nonprofit Sector provides a novel, comprehensive, cross-disciplinary perspective on nonprofit organizations and their role and function in society. This new, updated edition keeps pace with industry trends and advances as well as with the changing interests and needs of students, practitioners, and researchers. As before, every chapter has been written to stand on its own, providing sufficient background for the reader to follow the argument without referring to other chapters―allowing readers to selectively choose those chapters that are most relevant to a particular course, interest, or issue. The Nonprofit Sector: A Research Handbook includes twenty-seven new or updated chapters. Relevant chapters from the previous edition have been refined, and new chapters have been added to fill in gaps, making this the authoritative reference for all who want an accessible, perceptive, and all-inclusive rendering of the nonprofit sector. The contributors―prominent scholars in their respective fields―carefully reflect upon the variety of changes in the rapidly growing world of nonprofits, examining a wide array of organizations, international issues, social science theories, and philanthropic traditions and covering a broad range of topics including the history and scope of nonprofit activities in the United States and abroad, the relation of nonprofits to the marketplace, government-nonprofit issues, key activities of nonprofits, aspects of giving to and joining nonprofits, and nonprofit mission and governance. For anyone who wishes to have a deeper understanding of the nonprofit sector, this remains the essential guide. From reviews of the first edition: "[This book] is the closest thing to a 'bible' of nonprofit sector research and state-of-the-art social science knowledge as currently exists."―Dennis R. Young, Public Administration Review "Invaluable to anyone currently engaged in research or policy decisions involving nonprofit organizations or, for that matter, considering becoming involved.”―Jerald Schiff, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management "An exceptionally useful resource.”―Mark D. Hughes, The Philanthropist

Provides well-balanced discussions of the complexities and difficult issues associated with airway management; Excellent organization ensures that the materials will be learned as well as applied in various situations; A new chapter on laryngeal mask airway that provides timely information on its effect on the practice and the reduced need for laryngoscopy and intubation; Contains more than 250 updated illustrations, tables, and boxes; Includes the latest equipment and techniques along with discussions on complications of airway management

United States Business History, 1602-1988: A Chronology

Robinson, Richard

Greenwood

First published in 1776, The Wealth of Nations is generally regarded as the foundation of contemporary economic thought. Adam Smith, a Scottish professor of moral philosophy, expounded the then-revolutionary doctrine of economic liberalism. The book’s importance was immediately recognized by Smith’s peers, and later economists have shown an unusual consensus in their admiration for his ideas. Combining economics, political theory, history, philosophy, and practical programs, Smith assumes that human self-interest is the basic psychological drive behind economics and that a natural order in the universe makes all the individual, self-interested strivings add up to the social good. His conclusion, that the best program is to leave the economic process alone and that government is useful only as an agent to preserve order and to perform routine functions, is now known as laissez-faire economics or noninterventionism. In noting for the first time the significance of the division of labor and by stating the hypothesis that a commodity’s value correlates to its labor input, Smith anticipated the writings of Karl Marx. Like Marx’s Das Capital and Machiavelli’s The Prince, his great book marked the dawning of a new historical epoch.

The Wealth of Nations (Modern Library)

Smith, Adam

Modern Library

"Fast-paced and impressively researched, this detailed account sings." --Publishers Weekly, starred review A Publishers Weekly Top Ten Book of the Summer (2021) A propulsive, eye-opening work of reporting, chronicling the rise of Juul and the birth of a new addiction It began with a smoke break. James Monsees and Adam Bowen were two ambitious graduate students at Stanford, and in between puffs after class they dreamed of a way to quit smoking. Their solution became the Juul, a sleek, modern device that could vaporize nicotine into a conveniently potent dosage. The company they built around that device, Juul Labs, would go on to become a $38 billion dollar company and draw blame for addicting a whole new generation of underage tobacco users. Time magazine reporter Jamie Ducharme follows Monsees and Bowen as they create Juul and, in the process, go from public health visionaries and Silicon Valley wunderkinds to two of the most controversial businessmen in the country. With rigorous reporting and clear-eyed prose that reads like a nonfiction thriller,Big Vape uses the dramatic rise of Juul to tell a larger story of big business, Big Tobacco, and the high cost of a product that was too good to be true.

Big Vape: The Incendiary Rise of Juul

Ducharme, Jamie

Henry Holt and Co.

About the Author\nJamie Ducharme is a correspondent at Time magazine, where she covers health and science. Her work has won awards from the Deadline Club, the New York Press Club, and the Newswomen’s Club of New York. Originally from New Hampshire, Jamie now lives in Brooklyn. Big Vape is her first book.\n“Fast-paced and impressively researched, this detailed account sings.” 
―Publishers Weekly, starred review\nA Publishers Weekly Top Ten Book of the Summer (2021)\nA propulsive, eye-opening work of reporting, chronicling the rise of Juul and the birth of a new addiction\nIt began with a smoke break. James Monsees and Adam Bowen were two ambitious graduate students at Stanford, and in between puffs after class they dreamed of a way to quit smoking. Their solution became the Juul, a sleek, modern device that could vaporize nicotine into a conveniently potent dosage. The company they built around that device, Juul Labs, would go on to become a $38 billion dollar company and draw blame for addicting a whole new generation of underage tobacco users.\nTime magazine reporter Jamie Ducharme follows Monsees and Bowen as they create Juul and, in the process, go from public health visionaries and Silicon Valley wunderkinds to two of the most controversial businessmen in the country.\nWith rigorous reporting and clear-eyed prose that reads like a nonfiction thriller, Big Vape uses the dramatic rise of Juul to tell a larger story of big business, Big Tobacco, and the high cost of a product that was too good to be true.

Big Vape

Holt Paperbacks

The nonprofit sector has changed in fundamental ways in recent decades. As the sector has grown in scope and size, both domestically and internationally, the boundaries between for-profit, governmental, and charitable organizations have become intertwined. Nonprofits are increasingly challenged on their roles in mitigating or exacerbating inequality. And debates flare over the role of voluntary organizations in democratic and autocratic societies alike. The Nonprofit Sector takes up these concerns and offers a cutting-edge empirical and theoretical assessment of the state of the field. This book, now in its third edition, brings together leading researchers―economists, historians, philosophers, political scientists, and sociologists along with scholars from communication, education, law, management, and policy schools―to investigate the impact of associational life. Chapters consider the history of the nonprofit sector and of philanthropy; the politics of the public sphere; governance, mission, and engagement; access and inclusion; and global perspectives on nonprofit organizations. Across this comprehensive range of topics, The Nonprofit Sector makes an essential contribution to the study of civil society.

The Nonprofit Sector: A Research Handbook, Third Edition

Reference

Stanford University Press

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Biography & History Books

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books on the Biography & History subject. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX

Genentech: The Beginnings of Biotech (Synthesis)

Genentech: The Beginnings of Biotech (Synthesis)

The Nonprofit Sector: A Research Handbook

The Nonprofit Sector: A Research Handbook

United States Business History, 1602-1988: A Chronology

The Wealth of Nations (Modern Library)

Big Vape: The Incendiary Rise of Juul

Big Vape

The Nonprofit Sector: A Research Handbook, Third Edition