From the Ground Up; A Journey to Reimagine the Promise of America
New York: Random House, 2019. First Edition [Stated], First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. xiii, [1], 352, [2] pages. Illustrations (most in color). Index. Signed by the author on a bookplate on the front free endpaper. Howard D. Schultz (born July 19, 1953) is an American businessman, author, and philanthropist. He served as the chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of the Starbucks Coffee Corporation for more than two decades; first from 1986 to 2000, and then from 2008 to 2017. After stepping down as CEO, Schultz stayed at the company from 2017 to 2018 as its executive chairman overseeing Starbucks's philanthropic and charitable giving arm. Born and raised in the Brooklyn borough of New York, Schultz graduated from Northern Michigan University in 1975. Coffeehouse startup Starbucks onboarded him as their marketing and operations head in 1982. A business trip to Milan, Italy and the country's coffee culture inspired him to open Il Giornale, a specialty coffeeshop that merged with Starbucks during the late-1980s. Shultz pushed the new company to sell more than coffee beans and equipment, quickly establishing a large network of stores that served espresso, coffee, teas, and casual food. Following large-scale distribution deals–particularly with major hotels, groceries, and bookstores–Starbucks became the largest coffeehouse chain in the world. Shultz took the company public in 1992 and used a $271 million valuation to double their store count in a series of highly publicized coffee wars. He stepped down in 2000 to focus on Starbucks' international expansion. He authored three business books, Pour Your Heart Into It (1997), Onward (2011), and From the Ground Up (2019). More