Condoleezza Rice

The powerful and inspiring story of an all-American wrestler who defied the odds Anthony Robles is a three-time all-American wrestler, the 2011 NCAA National Wrestling Champion, and a Nike-sponsored athlete. He was also born without his right leg. Doctors could not explain to his mother, Judy, what led to the birth defect, but at the age of five, the one-legged toddler scaled a fifty-foot pole unassisted. From that moment on, Judy knew without a doubt that her son would be unstoppable. When Anthony first began wrestling in high school, he was the smallest kid on the team and finished the year in last place. Yet Anthony’s family and coaches supported his decision to continue, and he completed his junior and senior years with a 96–0 record to become a two-time Arizona State champion. In college, Anthony had to prove all over again that he could excel. Despite hardships on and off the mat—including the temptation to quit school and get a job to help his family when they lost their home to foreclosure—Anthony focused his determination and became a champion once again. Since winning the national championship in March 2011, Anthony has become a nationally recognized role model to kids and adults alike. But Unstoppable is not just an exciting sports memoir or an inspirational tale of living with a disability. It is also the story of one man whose spirit and unyielding resolve remind us all that we have the power to conquer adversity—in whatever form.

“To say Charles Schwab is an entrepreneur is actually an understatement. He really is a revolutionary.”—Phil Knight, co-founder of Nike, author of Shoe Dog The founder of The Charles Schwab Corporation recounts his ups and downs as he made stock investing, once the expensive and clubby reserve of the few, accessible to ordinary Americans. In this deeply personal memoir, Schwab describes his passion to have Main Street participate in the growing economy as investors and owners, not only earners. Schwab opens up about his dyslexia and how he worked around and ultimately embraced it, and about the challenges he faced while starting his fledgling company in the 1970s. A year into his grand experiment in discounted stock trading, living in a small apartment in Sausalito with his wife, Helen, and new baby, he carried a six-figure debt and a pocketful of personal loans. As it turned out, customers flocked to Schwab, leaving his small team scrambling with scarce resources and no road map to manage the company’s growth. He recounts the company’s game-changing sale to Bank of America—and how, in the end, the merger almost doomed his organization. We learn about the clever and timely leveraged buyout he crafted to regain independence; the crushing stock market collapse of 1987, just weeks after the company had gone public; the dot-com meltdown of 2000 and its reverberating aftermath of economic stagnation, layoffs, and the company’s eventual reinvention; and how the company’s focus on managing risk protected it and its clients during the financial crisis in 2008, propelling its growth. A remarkable story of a company succeeding by challenging norms and conventions through decades of change, Invested also offers unique insights and lifelong principles for readers—the values that Schwab has lived and worked by that have made him one of the most successful entrepreneurs of our time. Today, his eponymous company is one of the leading financial services firms in the world. Advance praise for Invested “I’ve admired Chuck Schwab for a long time. When you read this book, you’ll understand why.”—Warren E. Buffett “This is a fascinating story that teaches you about the never-ending evolution of an entrepreneurial company, but even more about personal learning from that experience. So read, learn how to learn from experience, and enjoy.”—George P. Shultz, former secretary of Labor, Treasury, and State

“Bill Burns is a treasure of American diplomacy.”—Hillary Clinton “The Back Channel shows how diplomacy works, why it matters, and why its recent demise is so tragic.”—Walter Isaacson, author of Leonardo da Vinci Over the course of more than three decades as an American diplomat, William J. Burns played a central role in the most consequential diplomatic episodes of his time—from the bloodless end of the Cold War to the collapse of post–Cold War relations with Putin’s Russia, from post–9/11 tumult in the Middle East to the secret nuclear talks with Iran. In The Back Channel, Burns recounts, with novelistic detail and incisive analysis, some of the seminal moments of his career. Drawing on a trove of newly declassified cables and memos, he gives readers a rare inside look at American diplomacy in action. His dispatches from war-torn Chechnya and Qaddafi’s bizarre camp in the Libyan desert and his warnings of the “Perfect Storm” that would be unleashed by the Iraq War will reshape our understanding of history—and inform the policy debates of the future. Burns sketches the contours of effective American leadership in a world that resembles neither the zero-sum Cold War contest of his early years as a diplomat nor the “unipolar moment” of American primacy that followed. Ultimately, The Back Channel is an eloquent, deeply informed, and timely story of a life spent in service of American interests abroad. It is also a powerful reminder, in a time of great turmoil, of the enduring importance of diplomacy. Advance praise for The Back Channel “Bill Burns is simply one of the finest U.S. diplomats of the last half century. The Back Channel demonstrates his rare and precious combination of strategic insight and policy action. It is full of riveting historical detail but also, more important, shrewd insights into how we can advance our interests and values in a world where U.S. leadership remains the linchpin of international order.”—James A. Baker III “From one of America’s consummate diplomats, The Back Channel is an incisive and sorely needed case for the revitalization of diplomacy—what Burns wisely describes as our ‘tool of first resort.’”—Henry Kissinger “Burns not only offers a vivid account of how American diplomacy works, he also puts forward a compelling vision for its future that will surely inspire new generations to follow his incredible example.”—Madeleine K. Albright