Industry Studies Books

There are companies that create waves and those that ride or are drowned by them. This is a ride on the Google wave, telling the story of how it formed and crashed into traditional media businesses - from newspapers to books to television to movies to telephones to advertising to Microsoft. With unp...

You’ve seen it all before. A malicious online rumor costs a company millions. A political sideshow derails the national news cycle and destroys a candidate. Some product or celebrity zooms from total obscurity to viral sensation. What you don’t know is that someone is responsible for all this. Usual...

Beloved television star of Fair Go, Kevin Milne's memoir 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 ...

Hunter S. Thompson's Kingdom of Fear is the wild and outrageous autobiography from the world's most notorious journalist. It's an unrestrained and uncensored account of fast living, hard drinking, sharp writing and unimaginable drug taking; of road trips, girls, guns, bikes and being accused of tryi...

Long before SKII, La Prairie, or the coveted Creme de la Mer, there was Helena Rubinstein. Your mother or grandmother probably used Helena Rubinstein creams or cosmetics once upon a time. But not that many people know about Helena's Australian connections. She was little known and has been virtuall...

It is best known for its search engine, but as Steven Levy explains, Google's ambitions go far beyond internet searching. It has moved into mobile phones, computer operating systems, television, and is the most powerful company in the advertising business. Its advertising business produces revenues...

Tough, smart business advice on what it takes to run a successful business - from the star of the hit TLC show "American Chopper You" could hardly blame someone for being intimidated if they ran into big Paul Teutul in a dark alley. Massive and mustachioed, frequently scowling, and decked ...

'Finally I was forced to admit that I work in a corrupted profession.' When award-winning journalist Nick Davies decided to break Fleet Street's unwritten rule by investigating his own colleagues, he found that the business of reporting the truth had been slowly subverted by the mass production of i...

Pie carts are a much-loved kiwi institution. In the 1950s and 1960s, in the days of the six o'clock swill and long before the advent of sophisticated cafe culture, where else could you be assured of a hot feed and a warm welcome, in any sizable New Zealand town? Colourful characters gathered aro...

Amazon's business model is deceptively simple: make online shopping so easy that customers won't think twice. It can be summed up by that button on every page: 'Buy now with one click'. Why has Amazon been so successful? Much of it hinges on Jeff Bezos, the CEO and founder, whose unique character an...

 Visionary game designer Jane McGonigal reveals how we can harness the power of games to solve real-world problems and boost global happiness. More than 174 million Americans are gamers, and the average young person in the United States will spend ten thousand hours gaming by the age of twe...

"The Big Payback" takes us from the first $15 made by a "rapping DJ" in 1970s New York to the recent multi-million-dollar sales of the Phat Farm and Roc-a-Wear clothing companies in 2004 and 2007. On this four-decade-long journey from the studios where the first rap records were ...

For much of the twentieth century New Zealand Truth was this country's most popular newspaper, and by the mid-1950s claimed a readership of half a million people. Not surprisingly Truth gained a position of considerable influence within New Zealand. This highly readable history tells the story of ho...

Almost thirty years ago, Michael Moritz, then a young journalist at "Time" magazine, was allowed exclusive access to the inner workings of a cutting-edge technology company to tell the story of its first decade in business. "The Little Kingdom: The Private Story of Apple Computer" brought readers in...

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...

'Author BiographyDinah Bradley and Tania Clifton-Smith are physiotherapists who run BREATHING WORKS, the first breathing pattern disorders clinic in Australasia. Dinah is the author of HYPERVENTILATION SYNDROME. Tania is the author of BREATHE TO SUCCEED and they co-authored BREATHING WORKS FOR ASTHM...

Ken Douglas was raised in a hardworking, tough-talking, union-focussed Wellington family and got into union politics as a very young working man. Hard-nosed, pragmatic and never scared of a scrap, he rose through the ranks, got deeper into left-wing ideology and activity with his membership of the S...

Few, if any, of AC/DC's fans would have any idea that the band's unmistakeable brand of raucous, hardcore rock was delivered to the world via a small Australian family music publishing business, J. Albert & Son. In fact, the lives of most Australians have been touched in some way by the Alberts, thr...

In 1926, Alf Sutton joined his mother's coal bagging business after starting life at the coal face, but this ended after an altercation with the foreman. Alf Sutton was not afraid of work and soon had bought out his brothers and moved into haulage. He outgrew his horse & cart and acquired his fi...

An elegant demolition of the supermarket miracle, this book charts the impact that supermarkets have had on every aspect of our lives and culture. Did you know! / Almost 50 per cent of supermarket fruit and vegetables contain pesticide residues? / UK supermarkets make 40p on every AGBP1 spent on ban...

The sea offers many opportunities for recreation and tourism purposes and in practical terms it is a source of food and transport. In the past, most of our marine environment was 'protected' from tourist use by its inaccessibility, safety concerns and the relatively high cost of recreating in the s...

***About the Authors*** TOM WATSON is the MP for West Bromwich East. He campaigns against unlawful media practices and led the questioning of Rupert and James Murdoch when they appeared before Parliament in July 2011. He is the deputy chair of the Labour Party. MARTIN HICKMAN has worked for th...

From bestselling author Walter Isaacson comes the landmark biography of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. In Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography, Isaacson provides an extraordinary account of Jobs' professional and personal life. Drawn from three years of exclusive and unprecedented interviews Isaacs...

Victoria University physicist Paul Callaghan has given a series of public lectures around New Zealand, sponsored by the David and Genevieve Becroft Foundation and the Royal Society of New Zealand, entitled 'Beyond the Farm and the Theme Park'. The lectures have been on the subject of sustainable wea...

Thomas L. Friedman’s phenomenal number-one bestseller The World Is Flat has helped millions of readers to see the world in a new way. Now Friedman brings a fresh outlook to the crises of destabilizing climate change and rising competition for energy - both of which could poison our world i...

• Essential reading for practising or intending children’s writers • Wisdom and insights based on decades of writing at the highest level Here in warmly written prose, the author distils her four decades at the top of the children’s writing pyramid for the benefit of anyone...

Few companies have captured the hearts and minds of New Zealanders like Trade Me. Originally built by university drop-out Sam Morgan on a borrowed laptop, Trade Me was to change the face of retailing in New Zealand, destroying newspapers classifieds businesses and going on to become part of ...

Stamps are more than just a payment for postage. The best and most memorable are gems of graphic design and encapsulations of our history. They celebrate landmark events, famous New Zealanders, sporting and creative achievements; our natural heritage, enterprising spirit and ingenuity. Looking back ...

Mary Kate & Ashley Olsen share the various people in the worlds of fashion, art, and design who matter to them and have influenced them up to this point in their lives. They interview 20 people, including Karl Lagerfeld, Diane Von Furstenburg, Lauren Hutton, John Galliano, Christian Louboutin...

All Their Own Wings is a remarkable collection of stories and photographs of enthusiasts who make and fly their own aircraft, some who have just started with a clean sheet of paper, a few design ideas and an overwhelming desire to fly. It provides a fascinating insight into a colourful and significa...

Journalist, author, and broadcaster Ian Cross has made many splashes in New Zealand's small pond and in this rich and rewarding memoir he reveals much of his life that would easily elude any would-be biographer: The bizarre troubles he and another young journalist fell into in Panama under the direc...

First published in 1990, the Bateman New Zealand Writer's Handbook is now in its fifth edition. It has become a tool for all New Zealanders who write, either professionally or as a hobby. A recommended text for many writing courses around the country, it is packed full of useful advice to improve yo...

Jeannette Walls grew up with parents whose ideals and stubborn nonconformity were both their curse and their salvation. Rex and Rose Mary Walls had four children. In the beginning, they lived like nomads, moving among Southwest desert towns, camping in the mountains. Rex was a charismatic, brilliant...

Cibo is 'food with attitude'. Whether it be culinary wizard Kate Fay pushing the boundaries with her scrumptious, imaginative dishes or Jeremy Turner and his team rolling out the trims and trappings of fine dining with panache or having guests roaring with laughter, Cibo has attitude aplenty. ...

Regarded as the undisputed Bible of the movie industry, Ephraim Katz's "The Film Encyclopedia" is the most comprehensive one-volume encyclopedia on film available. This all new seventh edition includes up-to-date additions, and features more than 8,000 A-Z entries on the artistic, technical, and com...

In the spirit of books like "Waiter Rant" and "Kitchen Confidential", blogger and flight attendant Heather Poole gives the inside scoop on how to be the most hated passenger on the plane, whether passionate affairs with pilots are really as frequent as you'd think, what it's like flying in a post-9/...

Michael Fazio is the ultimate behind-the-scenes support man. Want two orchestra tickets to the Broadway musical that just won the Tony? Call Fazio. How about an upgrade to first class on an overbooked overnight flight to Tokyo? Call Fazio. Or a roomful of fresh hydrangeas - in winter? That's right. ...

 Eating Animals is a uniquely passionate, powerful and provocative exploration of what we eat, and why, by the bestselling author of Everything is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. ‘This story didn’t begin as a book. I simply wanted to know – ...

'Tom Chatfield's "Fun Inc." is the most elegant and comprehensive defence of the status of computer games in our culture I have read, as well as a helpful compendium of research...The numbers surrounding the sector are certainly thudding. By the end of 2008, annual sales of video games - n...

Sir Terry McLean, New Zealand’s best-known journalist and sports writer, packed a lot of living into his 90 years. Author of 32 books, mostly on rugby, his life encompassed some of the most cataclysmic events in New Zealand history, from the Great Depression, the Napier earthquake and the S...