The Best Business Writing - Paperback

by Dean Starkman (Editor), Martha Hamilton (Editor), Ryan Chittum (Editor)

An anthology Malcolm Gladwell has called "riveting and indispensable," The Best Business Writing is a far-ranging survey of business's dynamic relationship with politics, culture, and life. This year's selections include John Markoff (New York Times) on innovations in robot technology and the decline of the factory worker; Evgeny Morozov (New Republic) on the questionable value of the popular TED conference series and the idea industry behind it; Paul Kiel (ProPublica) on the ripple effects of the ongoing foreclosure crisis; and the infamous op-ed by Greg Smith, published in the New York Times, announcing his break with Goldman Sachs over its trading practices and corrupt corporate ethos.

Jessica Pressler (New York) delves into the personal and professional rivalry between former spouses and fashion competitors Tory and Christopher Burch. Peter Whoriskey (Washington Post) exposes the human cost of promoting pharmaceuticals for off-label uses. Charles Duhigg and David Barboza (New York Times) investigate Apple's unethical labor practices in China. Max Abelson (Bloomberg) reports on Wall Street's amusing reaction to the diminishing annual bonus. Mina Kimes (Fortune) recounts the grisly story of a company's illegal testing--and misuse--of a medical device for profit, and Jeff Tietz (Rolling Stone) composes one of the most poignant and comprehensive portraits of the financial crisis's dissolution of the American middle class.

Front Jacket

Launched at a time of major economic change and an uncommon era in business, this new annual series presents the most intriguing and rigorous coverage of the year's well-known and crucial-to-know developments in business and finance. Divided into thematic sections, such as bad business behavior; the financial system and its discontents; trends in global markets; the relationship between politics and money; big-picture practices; and news from the corporate world, the anthology fills a longstanding gap for those seeking diverse, enriching, yet entertaining perspectives on the business of business.

This year's selections include Rolling Stone's profile of Don Blankenship and his corrupt tenure as CEO of Massey Energy; the London Guardian's original, unprecedented investigation into the News of the World phone-hacking scandal and its indictment of the Rupert Murdoch media empire; and the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's poignant account of the fatal consequences of federal deregulation in health and medicine. Two searing pieces on the ongoing mortgage scandal, one a hard look at the role of hedge fund Magnetar in perpetuating the housing bubble for financial gain, and the other a detailed breakdown of Countrywide's malfeasance, provide critical context and background; while articles on recoveries in Ireland, Germany, and elsewhere suggest a way foreword from recession. Additional articles tackle bank fees and bailouts, the Buffet Rule, the corporate lobby's reach, the Greenspan legacy, the rise of a global business elite, the future of the American auto industry, and the meaning of recent shakeups at Pfizer, Gucci, IKEA, and other corporate institutions.

Author Biography

Dean Starkman is editor of the Columbia Journalism Review's business section, The Audit, which tracks financial journalism in print and on the web, and is the magazine's Kingsford Capital Fellow. A reporter for two decades, he worked eight years as a Wall Street Journal staff writer and was chief of the Providence Journal's investigative unit. He has won numerous national and regional journalism awards and helped lead the Providence Journal to the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Investigations.

Martha M. Hamilton is a former writer, editor, and columnist for the Washington Post who investigates complaints about financial journalism for CJR's "The Audit." She is also the author, along with former Post colleague Warren Brown, of Black and White and Red All Over.

Ryan Chittum is deputy editor of CJR's The Audit. He's a former reporter for The Wall Street Journal and has written for numerous other publications, including the New York Times. He is also a contributor to Bad News: How America's Business Press Missed the Story of the Century. His recent work can be seen at www.cjr.org/author/ryan-chittum-1/.

Felix Salmon is the finance blogger for Reuters. He arrived in the United States in 1997 from England, where he worked at Euromoney magazine. He also wrote daily commentary on Latin American markets for the former news service, Bridge News, and created the Economonitor blog for Roubini Global Economics.