Contents

Introduction

Acknowledgments

Part I. On the Ground

1. The Sharp, Sudden Decline of America’s Middle Class

Jeff Tietz

Rolling Stone

2. The Great American Foreclosure Story: The Struggle for Justice and a Place to Call Home

Paul Kiel

ProPublica

Part II. Bad Medicine

3. Bad to the Bone: A Medical Horror Story

Mina Kimes

Fortune

4. Prescription for Addiction

Thomas Catan, Devlin Barrett, and Timothy W. Martin

Wall Street Journal

5. Anemia Drugs Made Billions, but at What Cost?

Peter Whoriskey

Washington Post

Part III. Big Business

6. Making the World’s Largest Airline Fly

Drake Bennett

BusinessWeek

7. Gusher

Steve Coll

The New Yorker

Part IV. Bad Business

8. Vast Mexico Bribery Case Hushed Up by Wal-Mart After Top-Level Struggle

David Barstow

New York Times

9. Chesapeake and Rival Plotted to Suppress Land Prices

Brian Grow, Joshua Schneyer, and Janet Roberts Reuters

10. Fear Fans Flames for Chemical Makers

Patricia Callahan and Sam Roe

Chicago Tribune

Part V. Media and Marketing

11. His. Hers.

Jessica Pressler

New York

12. Top Five Ways Bleacher Report Rules the World!

Joe Eskenazi

San Francisco Weekly

13. Why India’s Newspaper Industry Is Thriving

Ken Auletta

The New Yorker

14. The Frequent Fliers Who Flew Too Much

Ken Bensinger

Los Angeles Times

Part VI. Big Think

15. Trade-offs Between Inequality, Productivity, and Employment

Steve Randy Waldman

Interfluidity

16. The Naked and the TED

Evgeny Morozov

The New Republic

Part VII. Adventures in Finance

17. Wall Street Bonus Withdrawal Means Trading Aspen for Coupons

Max Abelson

Bloomberg

18. The Tale of a Whale of a Fail

Matt Levine

Dealbreaker

19. Case Against Bear and JPMorgan Provides Little Cheer

Bethany McLean

Reuters

20. How ECB Chief Outflanked German Foe in Fight for Euro

Brian Blackstone and Marcus Walker

Wall Street Journal

21. From The Trouble Is the Banks

Edited by Mark Greif, Dayna Tortorici, Kathleen French, Emma Janaskie, and Nick Werle

n + 1

Please Don’t Harass My Father Any Further

DEENA DENARO

My Furnace Guy

JOEL ROACHE

Thank You for My Lessons

ANONYMOUS

How We’re Doing Out Here

ANONYMOUS

I Didn’t Buy a House

PAMILA PAYNE

22. Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs

Greg Smith

New York Times

23. Death Takes a Policy: How a Lawyer Exploited the Fine Print and Found Himself Facing Federal Charges

Jake Bernstein

ProPublica

Part VIII. Brave New World

24. How Companies Learn Your Secrets

Charles Duhigg

New York Times Magazine

25. Glass Works: How Corning Created the Ultrathin, Ultrastrong Material of the Future

Bryan Gardiner

Wired

26. Skilled Work, Without the Worker

John Markoff

New York Times

27.I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave

Mac McClelland

Mother Jones

28. In China, Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad

Charles Duhigg and David Barboza

New York Times

29. How Apple and Amazon Security Flaws Led to My Epic Hacking

Mat Honan

Wired

Permissions

List of Contributors