Business & Money

One day, when he was contributing to the Tax and Welfare Working Group, economist Gareth Morgan made an off-the-cuff remark that the solution to all of New Zealand's tax and welfare woes lay in abolishing the present welfare system and radically overhauling the tax system. He called this idea 'the big kahuna'. In this book, Gareth and economist and former finance writer for Consumer NZ, Susan Guthrie take the base assumption that we don't, as a society, accept that huge differences in income are acceptable and that we therefore cho... read more

This book starts from my early days as a funeral director's assistant, through to becoming a funeral director. It covers stories of tragedy, stories of laughter, stories of interest and some of the things that can and do go wrong!

'Fiennes has exceptional gifts, and he has written a small masterpiece, a tribute to the power of place, family and memory' - "Sunday Telegraph". William Fiennes' childhood was one of imagination and curiosity, bounded only by the horizon he saw from the roof-tiles of his ancient family home. His older brother Richard, known for his towering presence, his inventiveness, his great passion for Leeds United, and his suffering due to severe epilepsy, was an adored and charismatic figure in his life. Years later, eager to understand his... read more

Everything we know about solving the world's problems is wrong. Out: Plans, experts and above all, leaders. In: Adapting - improvise rather than plan; fail, learn, and try again In this groundbreaking new book, Tim Harford shows how the world's most complex and important problems - including terrorism, climate change, poverty, innovation, and the financial crisis - can only be solved from the bottom up by rapid experimenting and adapting. From a spaceport in the Mojave Desert to the street battles of Iraq, from a blazing offshore d... read more

Can a good company become a great one and, if so, how? After a five-year research project, Collins concludes that good to great can and does happen. In this book, he uncovers the underlying variables that enable any type of organization to make the leap from good to great while other organizations remain only good. Rigorously supported by evidence, his findings are surprising - at times even shocking - to the modern mind. "Good to Great" achieves a rare distinction: a management book full of vital ideas that reads as well as a fast-paced novel.

One of the most established authorities on leadership today, John C. Maxwell speaks to over 350,000 people each year. His most popular topic is THE FIVE LEVELS OF LEADERSHIP, which he now shares with readers. The five levels include:1. Position - People follow because they have to.2. Permission - People follow because they want to.3. Production - People follow because of what you have done for the organization.4. People Development - People follow because of what you have done for them personally.5. Personhood - People follow becau... read more

In 2004, at the age of 58, writer Joe Bageant sensed that the internet could give him editorial freedom. Without having to deal with gatekeepers, he began writing about what he was really thinking, and started submitting his essays to left-of-centre websites. Joe's essays soon gained a wide following for his forceful style, his sense of humour, and his willingness to discuss the American white underclass, a taboo topic for the mainstream media. Joe called himself a 'redneck socialist', and he initially thought most of his readers w... read more

Robert Frank's insightful analysis provides the disturbing big picture of high-beta wealth. His vivid storytelling brings you inside the mortgaged mansions, blown-up balance sheets, repossessed Bentleys and Gulfstreams - and wrecked lives and relationships .

The Public Law Toolbox will be an indispensable resource for lawyers, advocates and industry associations, business people, citizens and non-governmental organisations interfacing with government, and for Government and officials. All New Zealanders have to interface with Government, whether that be business regulation, getting government assistance or administrative decision-making. But not all citizens and businesses know how to successfully interact with government on a level playing field or challenge a government decision on a... read more

The car markets around the world are about to get hit by a large quantity of cheap, quality new cars and car components, and the impact of those cars will be as sudden and as forceful as a tsunami. The surge of competition will be a result of the ever-accelerating development of the Chinese motor vehicle manufacturers. Those manufacturers were comparatively small and technologically inferior during the latter part of the twentieth century, but in the new millennium they have developed with surprising speed - doubling their output a... read more

What information about you is out there? Who might have access to it? What can you do about it? In this rapidly changing electronic world, your personal information is no longer your own. Online databases can sell your details to anyone who asks, and your phone records, internet usage, bills, warranties and even your rubbish can reveal more about you than you think.'Disappearing' gives you the freedom to escape this intrusion. When you disappear, you create your own world and dictate its borders. It might be as simple as removing y... read more

Humans are degrading the planet far faster than they are regenerating it. The economic downturn that has accompanied the ecological crisis has led to another type of scarcity: incomes, jobs, and credit are also in short supply. Our usual way back to growth - a debt-financed consumer boom - is no longer an option we can afford. Plenitude puts sustainability at its core, but it is not a paradigm of sacrifice. Instead it's an argument that through a major shift to new sources of wealth, green technologies, and different ways of living... read more

In "Business Stripped Bare", Sir Richard Branson shares the inside track on his life in business and reveals the incredible truth about his most risky, brilliant and audacious deals. Discover why Virgin tried to take on one of the world's biggest superbrands, how Virgin Mobile USA holds the record as the fastest company in history to generate revenues of over one billion dollars (faster than Microsoft, Google and Amazon) and how Richard is the only person in the world to have built eight billion-dollar companies from scratch in eig... read more

Xinran's extraordinary second book takes the reader right to the hidden heart of one of the world's most mysterious and inaccessible countries. In March 1958, a Chinese woman learns that her husband, an idealistic army doctor, has died whilst serving in Tibet. Determined to know what has happened to him, she sets off courageously to join his regiment. To her horror, instead of finding a Tibetan people welcoming their Chinese 'liberators', she walks into a bloody conflict, with the Chinese subject to terrifying attacks from Tibetan ... read more

In Azar Nafisi's personal story of growing up in Iran, she shares her memories of a life lived in thrall to a powerful and complex mother, against the background of a country's political revolution. Nafisi's intelligent and complicated mother, disappointed in her dreams of leading an important and romantic life, created mesmerising fictions about herself, her family, and her past. But her daughter soon learned that these narratives of triumph hid as much as they revealed.
When her father began to see other women, young Azar b... read more

In "23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism" one of today's most iconoclastic thinkers destroys the biggest myths about the world we live in. There's no such thing as a 'free' market. Globalization isn't making the world richer. We don't live in a digital world - the washing machine has changed lives more than the internet. Poor countries are more entrepreneurial than rich ones. Higher paid managers don't produce better results. This galvanizing, fact-packed book about money, equality, freedom and greed proves that the free ... read more

Having made the U.S. financial crisis comprehensible for us all in "The Big Short", Michael Lewis realised that he hadn't begun to get grips with the full story. How exactly had it come to hit the rest of the world in the face too? Just how broke are we really? "Boomerang" is a tragi-comic romp across Europe, in which Lewis gives full vent to his storytelling genius. The cheap credit that rolled across the planet between 2002 and 2008 was more than a simple financial phenomenon: it was temptation, offering entire societies the chan... read more

If the consumer economy had a sex, it would be female.If the business world had a sex, it would be male. And therein lies the pickle. Women are the engine of the global economy, driving 80 percent of consumer spending in the United States alone. They hold the purse strings, and when they've got a tight grip on them as they do now, companies must be shrewder than ever to win them over. Just when executives have mastered becoming technology literate, they find there's another skill they need: becoming female literate. This isn't alwa... read more

The Lincoln Lawyer: For Mickey Haller, the law is rarely about guilt or innocence, it's about negotiation and manipulation. When he gets hired by a Beverly Hills rich boy arrested for assault, Mickey sees a franchise case: a long, expensive trial with maximum billable hours - until it puts him face-to-face with pure evil and with a man who may truly be innocent. For a lawyer who has always gone for the easy score, getting justice means risking everything. The Brass Verdict: When a former colleague is murdered, Mickey inherits his b... read more