The Big Payback

“There has never been a better book about hip-hop…a record-biz portrait that jumps off the page.”—A.V. Club THE INSPIRATION FOR THE VH1 SERIES THE BREAKS The Big Payback takes readers from the first $15 made by a “rapping DJ” in 1970s New York to the 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 made to the boardrooms where the big deals were inked, The Big Payback tallies the list of who lost and who won. Read the secret histories of the early long-shot successes of Sugar Hill Records and Grandmaster Flash, Run DMC's crossover breakthrough on MTV, the marketing of gangsta rap, and the rise of artist/ entrepreneurs like Jay-Z and Sean “Diddy” Combs. 300 industry giants like Def Jam founders Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons gave their stories to renowned hip-hop journalist Dan Charnas, who provides a compelling, never-before-seen, myth-debunking view into the victories, defeats, corporate clashes, and street battles along the 40-year road to hip-hop's dominance. INCLUDES PHOTOGRAPHS

Don’t get mad, get even… Phil Town’s first book, the #1 New York Times bestseller Rule #1, was a guide to stock trading for people who believe they lack the knowledge to trade. But because many people aren’t ready to go from mutual funds directly into trading without understanding investing—for the long term – he created Payback Time. Too often, people see long-term investing as “mutual fund contributing” – otherwise known as “long-term hoping.” But the sad truth is that mutual fund investors are, to a stunning degree, pinning their hopes on an institution that is hopeless. It turns out that only 4% of fund managers consistently beat the S&P 500 index over the long term, which means that 96% of fund investors see a smaller return on their nest egg than a chimpanzee who simply buys stocks in the 500 biggest companies in America and watches what happens. But it’s worse than that. The net effect of hitching your wagon to mutual funds is that over a lifetime they’ll fritter away as much 60% of your nest egg in fees. Once you understand how funds engineer this, you’ll rush to invest on your own. Payback Time’s risk-free approach is called “stockpiling” and it’s how billionaires get rich in bad markets. It’s a set of rules for investing (not trading but investing) in the right businesses at the right time -- rules that will ensure you make the big money.

Ego Trip's Book of Rap Lists is more popular than racism! Hip hop is huge, and it's time someone wrote it all down. And got it all right. With over 25 aggregate years of interviews, and virtually every hip hop single, remix and album ever recorded at their disposal, the highly respected Ego Trip staff are the ones to do it. The Book of Rap Lists runs the gamut of hip hop information. This is an exhaustive, indispensable and completely irreverent bible of true hip hip knowledge.

In this brand-new collection of the New York Times bestselling series Big Nate, everyone's favorite prankster takes on everything from epic snowball fights to sixth-grade crushes, with plenty of hilarious misadventures along the way.

Explores debt as a central historical component of religion, literature, and societal structure, while examining the idea of humanity's debt to the natural world.

Award-winning novelist Carl Deuker creates a mystery-thriller against the backdrop of high school football and the criminal underworld.

If you're like most people, you bet your career and company on innovation--because you must. Payback: Reaping the Rewards of Innovation offers you a new way to think about and manage innovation that will dramatically improve the odds of success. Authors James Andrew and Harold Sirkin, senior partners in The Boston Consulting Group, describe an approach to managing innovation based on the concept of a cash curve--which tracks investment against time. They ask the questions you need to ask: How much should you invest in a new product or service? How fast should you push it to market? How quickly can you get to optimal value? How much additional investment should you pour into sustaining and building the product or service? Payback offers you practical and economically sound advice on when to pursue cash flow indirectly by first pursuing other benefits, such as brand and knowledge. It also shows you how to reshape the cash curve by using different business models--integrator, orchestrator, and licenser--each of which balances risk and reward differently. The authors then present a short list of decisions and activities that you must make--not delegate--to achieve a high return on innovation. You won't find facile answers in Payback--but you will find valuable insights and practical guidance for mastering one of the most challenging and critical business activities: innovation.

Look out, Big Nate fans—it’s payback time! In this brand-new collection of Big Nate comics, Nate develops a mysterious allergy to Mrs. Godfrey, wages epic snowball fights with Teddy and Francis, and even takes a nervous newbie under his wing during detention. But after a disastrous run-in with Randy in the cafetorium, our hero faces a dreaded after-school showdown on the soccer field. Will Nate survive or get kicked around? From wedgies and food fights to Halloween pranks and sixth-grade crushes, Big Nate: Payback Time! has got it all.