We once idolized tech entrepreneurs for creating innovations that seemed like modern miracles. Yet our faith has been shattered. We now blame them for spreading lies, breaking laws, and causing chaos. Yesterday’s Silicon Valley darlings have become today’s Big Tech villains. Which is it? Are they superheroes or scoundrels? Or is it more complicated, some blend of both? In The Venture Alchemists, Rob Lalka demystifies how tech entrepreneurs built empires that made trillions. Meta started as a cruel Halloween prank, Alphabet began as a master’s thesis that warned against corporate deception, and Palantir came from a campus controversy over hateful speech. These largely forgotten origin stories show how ordinary fears and youthful ambitions shaped their ventures—making each tech tale relatable, both wonderfully and tragically human. Readers learn about the adversities tech entrepreneurs overcame, the troubling tradeoffs they made, and the tremendous power they now wield. Using leaked documents and previously unpublished archival material, Lalka takes readers inside Big Tech’s worst exploitations and abuses, alongside many good intentions and moral compromises. But this story remains unfinished, and The Venture Alchemists ultimately offers hope from the people who, decades ago, warned about the risks of the emerging Internet. Their insights illuminate a path toward more responsible innovations, so that technologies aren’t dangerous weapons but valuable tools that ensure progress, improve society, and enhance our daily lives.

THE greatest of English dramatists except Shakespeare, the first literary dictator and poet-laureate, a writer of verse, prose, satire, and criticism who most potently of all the men of his time affected the subsequent course of English letters: such was Ben Jonson, and as such his strong personality assumes an interest to us almost unparalleled, at least in his age. Ben Jonson came of the stock that was centuries after to give to the world Thomas Carlyle; for Jonson's grandfather was of Annandale, over the Solway, whence he migrated to England. Jonson's father lost his estate under Queen Mary, "having been cast into prison and forfeited." He entered the church, but died a month before his illustrious son was born, leaving his widow and child in poverty. Jonson's birthplace was Westminster, and the time of his birth early in 1573. He was thus nearly ten years Shakespeare's junior, and less well off, if a trifle better born. But Jonson did not profit even by this slight advantage. His mother married beneath her, a wright or bricklayer, and Jonson was for a time apprenticed to the trade.

The world needs new ideas, now products, new kinds of associations and institutions, new initiatives, new art and new designs. But these new things seldom come from established organisations. They come from individuals - the New Alchemists. What drives people to create something from nothing? Is it ambition, the need for self-fulfilment? Is it to do with money, power, or even genes? Is there a mood of the time that encourages people? Can anyone do it? Charles Handy has talked to a range of extraordinary characters - from Trevor Baylis and Richard Branson to Jane Tewson and Terence Conran. And Elizabeth Handy has used her new style of composite portraits to highlight aspects of all the different alchemists in their particular environments. The New Alchemists is a fascinating and inspirational investigation into the creative and entrepreneurial process.

One of the world's top 40 manufacturing companies, one of the largest global petrochemicals producers and the biggest private company in the UK, INEOS has risen to prominence over the past twenty years led by three unassuming northern grammar school boys: majority owner Jim Ratcliffe and his business partners Andy Currie and John Reece. The company's prolific growth and unlikely success have reshaped the industry, though its first two decades have been punctuated by close calls and hard lessons, as well as unprecedented highs. As they celebrate the company's twentieth anniversary and continued evolution, Ratcliffe and his management team have opened up on the major junctions of the INEOS journey, and their insights into business and manufacturing today.

Formerly handed down under oath of secrecy, this clear, concise handbook discusses: the fundamental principles of alchemy; directions for the formation of an inexpensive home laboratory, with illustrations of the necessary equipment; step-by-step instructions for the work of the Lesser Circulation, the alchemical transformation within the plant kingdom?the necessary prerequisite for any work in the mineral kingdom.

A fast-paced whirlwind of fantasy and mockery confined to a single room, The Alchemist offers a witty culmination of Jonson's experiments with city comedy. The play has been widely recognized as one of the most impressive achievements of the period's theatre; Coleridge famously described it as one of the three most perfect plots in literature. Yet it is a notoriously difficult play: its alchemical language has aged into obscurity, and its insiderly humour can seem impenetrable to students approaching it for the first time. This comprehensively annotated edition translates and illuminates the play's many pleasures and shows how Jonson's cynical, street-wise wit resonates with our contemporary sensibilities. Pollard highlights the play's witty ingenuity, while offering the information and guidance to enable students to understand and enjoy The Alchemist fully.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1982.