Titans Of Fortune Publishing: 60 books

Success is not the absence of failure and the Milton Snavely Hershey story is concrete proof of this aphorism: he had a string of successive failures and only one success, the formation of Hershey Chocolate. His failures were so striking and so devastating his friends and family lost all confidence in...

In 1928 William Paley, son of one of the nation's largest cigar producers, purchased United Independent Broadcasters Inc., a collection of 16 radio stations. He renamed it the Columbia Broadcasting System and built it into one of the nation's largest radio networks before turning to television....

In 2008 U.S. domestic airlines carried nearly 750 million passengers domestically and internationally. The growth of commercial air transportation and the number of passengers flying today can be laid at the feet of one of the great aviation pioneers, Juan Trippe, who began a crusade to create an air...

Central Park, a verdant refuge from the teeming, ever-shaded concrete corridors that crisscross Manhattan is beloved by both tourists and New Yorkers. The 700-acre park with winding paths, undulating hills, carpets of flowers in spring equally resplendent with fall colors dotted with lakes, was America's...

Biographical profile of Alexander Hamilton, one of the most interesting, paradoxical, and brilliant members of our Founding Fathers. Professor Carl Rubine of Columbia University called him "the first Horatio Alger . . . the original underdog who made it." It is hard to imagine anyone starting life with...

Executive jets and yachts are the quintessential tableau of today's tycoons. A century or more ago it was Pullman Palace Cars and yachts. The Palace Cars were ornate, featured extravagant pomp, from crystal chandeliers and marble baths to sumptuous bedrooms, libraries and living rooms walled in...

Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson were staunch opponents of a national bank. When President Jackson let the charter of the second bank lapse after 20 years it left the nation unprepared and powerless to respond quickly or effectively to major economic declines or emergencies. J. Pierpont Morgan...

Biographical profile of Jay Gould railroad tycoon and baron of Wall Street. Jay Gould one of the richest and most hated men in America in the 1880s was an elusive slippery character difficult to assess and more difficult to understand. The secretive tycoon was brilliant and ruthless perhaps the quintessential...

Sergey Brin once described the Internet as the repository of all our knowledge and the company he and Larry Page founded a mere decade ago Google Inc. provides access to the Internet for a majority of the Western world. Google has altered the world we live in with a profound impact on just about everything...

Henry Goldman is arguably the founder of investment banking as we know it today. In 1906 he began diverting his fathers company from a bank specializing in commercial paper into a Wall Street firm that helped enterprises expand operations by raising the capital they needed through the sale of their shares...

William Marcy Tweed was a big man at 300 pounds, a charming, garrulous man whose personality matched his girth. He could disarm the most disagreeable person; few could resist his charms. And like most big men, Tweed had a big appetite, but his craving was not just for food; it was for money and power....

The Huntington in San Marino, California, is one of the world's foremost collections of books, art and flora. Set in park-like grounds and a Beaux-Arts mansion built in the early 1900s, the Huntington boasts some of the rarest and most valuable artifacts on Earth from the Gutenberg Bible on vellum,...

The growth of commercial air transportation and the number of passengers flying today can be laid at the feet of one of the great aviation pioneers, Juan Trippe, who began a crusade to create an air network that would link America to the world. The Yale graduate was absorbed by flight and airplanes....

WHEN AN AMERICAN GETS PUT INSIDE THIS MEXICAN JAILHE HAS TWO CHOICES: ESCAPE OR DIE.TAGGART, a fading soldier of fortune, pulls off the stickup of the century until a double cross puts him behind bars in Mexico's most notorious prison, where his captors employ a world-class torturer to extract his secrets....