Top 5 Best Selling Business & Economics Books

Compiled by Mighty Ape Books Online

1.      The Life and Times of a Brown Paper Bag

Kevin Milne, the beloved television star of Fair Go, provides a memoir that is funny, insightful, incisive, moving and all-round entertaining. He talks of his long television career - 40 years - including 25 years of the long-running, top-rating Fair Go. Kevin writes in a relaxed, laconic style that draws the reader in immediately - he's an excellent story-teller and raconteur. He includes many wonderful anecdotes about the well-known people who have been Fair Go reporters over the years, for example Kerre Woodham, Brian Edwards, Carole Hirschfeld, Kim Hill.

Author Biography

Kevin Milne has been on Fair Go for 25 years - and in television - for 40 years.

2.      Hubbard: A Biography of Allan Hubbard

Allan Hubbard is a man very much loved by thousands of South Islanders, but whose finance company Aorangi Securities is currently being investigated by the Serious Fraud Office. Despite this, thousands of passionate supporters marched in Timaru, flocked to defend him on the internet and some even complained to the Ombudsman. Well known for his generosity, his frugal lifestyle and his entrepreneurship, Hubbard is something of a folk hero and held in very high esteem.

This authorised biography tells his story by way of fascinating anecdotes - from his squalid childhood in the Depression as a child of alcoholic and abusive parents through to his successful businesses such as Mutual Group, Helicopters NZ, Scales Corporation and South Canterbury Finance. South Canterbury has been good to Allan and he has given back to the region on a grand scale, helping hundreds of young people onto farms, saving good farmers from bankruptcy and underwriting large-scale projects to bring water to the drought-prone region. How did Allan fall from being the wealthiest man in the South Island to having no money for groceries after his assets were placed under statutory management? And how did the 'most trusted man in New Zealand' come under investigation from the Serious Fraud Office? Whatever the outcome, this is a fascinating read about a Kiwi phenomenon.

Author Biography

Virginia Green is a much respected writer who has previously written a biography of Sir Gordon Tait.

3.      Celluloid Circus: the Heyday of the New Zealand Picture Theatre

Long before DVDs, long before plasma screen TVs and home theatres, New Zealanders went out to escape and be entertained. In an often stuffily suburban little country at the bottom of the world, the local picture theatres were their places of dreams, where they went to see Garbo and Gable, Monroe and Hayworth. The movie theatre impresarios who ran Kerridge Odeon and Amalgamated knew all about romance and fantasy, building ever more grand picture houses, decking them out like the grand buildings of Europe, Moorish palaces and rococo shrines. It was all fakery, of course, but the crowds who lined up for the matinee screenings loved every contrived and elaborate inch of them.

Today most of those great places have gone, but for a generation of New Zealand memories remain of the velvet curtains, the ice cream boy at half time, standing to sing the National Anthem before each screening, the cartoons and more. Wayne Brittenden is the son of a movie theatre manager and grew up in Christchurch in the 1960s, when the picture theatres were reaching their apogee. It would not be long before TV knocked them for six.In this lively social history he talks to the few surviving projectionists and brings together a marvellous collection of over 150 images and pieces of ephemera such as movie posters and newspaper advertisements to take the reader back to that fantastical time. Such a history has never before been published and it is sure to appeal to movie buffs and nostalgia fans alike.

Author Biography

Wayne Brittenden is a New Zealand journalist who has worked overseas for most of his career. A former National Radio correspondent in Tokyo, he later worked for the BBC and now works as an independent documentary maker, based in London. He has done extensive research in New Zealand for this book.

4.      No Ordinary Deal: Unmasking Free Trade and the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement

The Trans Pacific Partnership is no ordinary free trade deal. Billed as an agreement fit for the twentyfirst century, no one is sure what that means. For its champions in New Zealand a free trade agreement with the US is a magic bullet - opening closed doors for Fonterra into the US dairy market. President Obama sells it as the key to jobs and economic recovery, while protecting home markets. Australia's Prime Minister Kevin Rudd hails it as a foundation stone for an APEC-wide free trade agreement. None of these arguments stacks up. All eight participant countries except Vietnam are heavily liberalised, deregulated and privatised.* They already have twelve free trade deals between them. No-one really believes that US dairy markets will be thrown open to New Zealand, or that China, India and Japan will sign onto a treaty they had no role in designing. No Ordinary Deal unmasks the fallacies of the TPP. Experts from Australia, New Zealand, the US and Chile examine the geopolitics and security context of the negotiations and set out some of the costs for New Zealand and Australia of making trade-offs to the US simply to achieve a deal.

'Trade' agreement is a misnomer. The TPP is not primarily about imports and exports. Its obligations will intrude into core areas of government policy and Parliamentary responsibilities. If the US lobby has its way, the rules will restrict how drug-buying agencies Pharmac (in New Zealand) and the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (in Australia) can operate, and the kind of food standards and intellectual property laws we can have. Foreign investors will be able to sue the government for reducing their profits. The TPP will govern how we regulate the finance industry or other services, along with our capacity to create jobs at home. Above all, No Ordinary Deal exposes the contradictions of locking our countries even deeper into a neoliberal model of global free markets - when even political leaders admit that this has failed. *The US, Australia, New Zealand, Brunei Darussalam, Chile, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam

Author Biography

Professor Jane Kelsey teaches at the University of Auckland. Known for her exceptional research on political issues, she is the author of several books shaping the critical debate both locally and internationally. The New Zealand Experiment (AUP/BWB, 1995) struck a chord with its analysis of the 1980s political 'experiment', and went into several reprints. Reclaiming the Future (BWB, 1999), co-published with the University of Toronto Press, took a hard look at globalisation and its economic impacts. Ranging over law, economics and politics, Jane Kelsey's sharp intellect brings important analyses to the globalising world.

5.      Every Bastard Says No: The 42 Below Story

If you haven't heard of the success of 42 Below Vodka you must have been living under a rock! Initially brewed by Wellington advertising man Geoff Ross in his garage, everything about this vodka was audacious, from the very notion of making high-end vodka Downunder to its shock-and-awe advertising campaigns and the fact that it would go on to beat the world's great brands in international vodka competitions. But the most remarkable thing about 42 Below was the way it stole the world's bartenders' hearts and eventually attracted the attention of liquor giant Bacardi, which paid millions to buy the brand two years ago.

Every Bastard Says No is the rollicking tale of how Geoff Ross, his wife Justine and their business partners and loyal staff risked all and worked their butts off to do what New Zealanders so dream of doing but so rarely manage: build a brand that makes the world sit up and take notice. It's an inspirational business story that will appeal to entrepreneurs, business students, creative's, and everyone who loves a brave - and ultimately successful - little Kiwi battler.

'This book will bamboozle those who look for neat classifications. Is it a business book? A biography? Or a beverage bible? I don't know - and it doesn't matter. It works. It's brilliant! Like 42 Below. ' Mark Weldon, CEO New Zealand Stock Exchange

Author Biography

Geoff Ross and Justine Troy are the husband and wife founders of the revolutionary New Zealand-distilled vodka brand 42 Below. They sold the company to Bacardi in 2007 and these days are actively involved in other business investments and ventures. They live in Auckland with theier two young children.

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