Here are 100 books that Fiasco fans have personally recommended if you like
Fiasco.
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I teach the law and enforcement of corporate crime as a law professor. At the outset of the course, I tell the students that corporate crime is a problem, not a body of law. You have to start by thinking about the problem. How do these things occur? What is the psychology, both individual and institutional? What are the economic incentives at each level and with each player? What role do lawyers play? When do regulatory arrangements cause rather than prevent this kind of thing? If the locution were not too awkward, I might call the field “scandalology.” I love every one of these books because they do such a great job of telling the human stories through which we can ask the most interesting and important questions about how corporate crimes happen.
Because I was a prosecutor on the Enron case, people often ask me what to read about it (or even to explain it to them!). At the time, we used to say that Enron was calculus to every other case’s algebra when it came to corporate financial fraud. Elkind and McLean (McLean had a lot to do with questioning Enron’s narrative before the company’s decline) have done the definitive job of explaining a very hard case in accessible style and detail. The truth is that accounting fraud is a very technical form of corporate fraud, sometimes painfully so. But, as I tell my students, the people who work at companies on these kinds of things are no smarter, and often no older, than my students. They just speak a different language. Don’t let that obfuscate matters. Learn the lingo and follow the money. Smartest Guys allows the general reader to…
What went wrong with American business at the end of the 20th century?
Until the spring of 2001, Enron epitomized the triumph of the New Economy. Feared by rivals, worshipped by investors, Enron seemingly could do no wrong. Its profits rose every year; its stock price surged ever upward; its leaders were hailed as visionaries.
Then a young Fortune writer, Bethany McLean, wrote an article posing a simple question - how, exactly, does Enron make its money?
Within a year Enron was facing humiliation and bankruptcy, the largest in US history, which caused Americans to lose faith in a system…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I am drawn to stories that grip, teach, and hold power to account. Some of my favorite writers have the ability to do all of it in one go–Lawrence Wright, David Grann, Dan Fagin, etc. I just try to write stories I want to read. So, when I started looking into a pharmacist who made drugs in a dirty lab outside Boston and who shipped his fungus-plagued vials throughout the U.S., I saw an opportunity. As an investigative journalist, I seek stories that shine light on dark corners of government and industry, as well as those that have the chance to better things while entertaining and educating the reader.
This is a great blow-by-blow primer on how the best investigative journalism is done. As a journalist, I admired the bravery of the author taking on the powerful people who propped up Theranos and its wunderkind founder, Elizabeth Holmes.
It reminds me of why I love the work I do, which is often leads to dead ends because someone doesn’t want you to know the truth. Books like Bad Blood show that it’s important to have investigative journalists who don’t give up the fight and end up saving lives by exposing fraud.
The shocking true story behind The Dropout, starring the Emmy award-winning Amanda Seyfried, Naveen Andrews and Stephen Fry.
'I couldn't put down this thriller . . . a book so compelling that I couldn't turn away' - Bill Gates
Winner of the Financial Times/McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award 2018
The full inside story of the breathtaking rise and shocking collapse of Theranos, the multibillion-dollar biotech startup founded by Elizabeth Holmes, by the prize-winning journalist who first broke the story and pursued it to the end, despite pressure from its charismatic CEO and threats by her lawyers.
As a historian of science and medicine, I’m fascinated by the many ways that drugs—from tea to opiates, Prozac to psychedelics—have shaped our world. After all, there are few adults on the planet today who don’t regularly consume substances that have been classified as a drug at one time or another (I’m looking at you, coffee and tea!). The books I’ve selected here have deeply influenced my own thinking on the history of drugs over the past decade, from my first book, The Age of Intoxication, to my new book on the history of psychedelic science.
In this tour-de-force work of investigative journalism, New Yorker staff writer Patrick Radden Keefe traces the sordid history of the Sackler dynasty, the billionaire family behind Purdue Pharmaceuticals and its blockbuster narcotic painkiller OxyContin.
With both narrative verve and moral urgency—a combination that isn’t always easy to pull off—this book exposes one of the many points of origin for America’s devastating opioid epidemic. Keefe’s work has reinforced my conviction that drug historians have an important role to play in shaping public understanding and policy debates around these substances in the present. I found this book to be a page-turner and one of the most thoughtful books I’ve read in years.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR • A grand, devastating portrait of three generations of the Sackler family, famed for their philanthropy, whose fortune was built by Valium and whose reputation was destroyed by OxyContin. From the prize-winning and bestselling author of Say Nothing.
"A real-life version of the HBO series Succession with a lethal sting in its tail…a masterful work of narrative reportage.” – Laura Miller, Slate
The history of the Sackler dynasty is rife with drama—baroque personal lives; bitter disputes over estates; fistfights in boardrooms; glittering art collections; Machiavellian courtroom…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
I teach the law and enforcement of corporate crime as a law professor. At the outset of the course, I tell the students that corporate crime is a problem, not a body of law. You have to start by thinking about the problem. How do these things occur? What is the psychology, both individual and institutional? What are the economic incentives at each level and with each player? What role do lawyers play? When do regulatory arrangements cause rather than prevent this kind of thing? If the locution were not too awkward, I might call the field “scandalology.” I love every one of these books because they do such a great job of telling the human stories through which we can ask the most interesting and important questions about how corporate crimes happen.
There is a partial myth, eagerly promoted by corporate interests and their lawyers, that federal prosecutors are frighteningly all-powerful and basically cannot be defeated. The veteran financial and legal reporter Eichenwald knows otherwise. The Informant, in contrast to the almost farcical (if enjoyable!) Stephen Soderbergh movie based on the book, lays out a textbook case of how prosecutors can blow an important case due to infighting, problems with unreliable informants, and clever high-priced defense lawyering that exploits every error that less-than-superb prosecutors might make. Here we have a tale of CEO-level officials at major global corporations caught on videotape flagrantly conspiring to violate antitrust laws and, in the end, almost no one ends up in prison. Eichenwald details the countless blunders by many Justice Department lawyers spread across several offices, and the clever maneuvering throughout by crack corporate defenders. He too, by the way, paints a fascinating portrait of…
The Informant is Mark Whitacre, a senior executive with America's most powerful food giant, who put his career and his family's safety at risk to become a confidential government witness. Using Whitacre's secret recordings and a team of agents, the FBI uncovered the corporation's scheme to steal millions of dollars from its own customers. But as the FBI closed in on their target, they suddenly realized that Whitacre wasn't quite playing the game they'd thought ...This is the gripping account of how a corporate golden boy became an FBI mole and went on to double-cross both the authorities and his…
I am a writer and reporter who has spent two decades covering complicated topics for a wide audience. This started when I covered Wall Street for Bloomberg News, where I spent 17 years as a reporter, and continues to this day with my own crypto media company, DeCential Media. My love of distilling new technologies to their essence is what informs the best of my writing and comes with the added bonus of being able to interview and learn from some of the smartest people in tech and finance.
This is my favorite book about the financial crisis of 2008. Richard had unparalleled access to Bill Ackman, one of the savviest investors around, and tells this story with amazing detail and insight. Everyone knows The Big Short, but Confidence Game is the book to read to really understand what created the credit crisis of 2008.
An expose on the delusion, greed, and arrogance that led to America's credit crisis The collapse of America's credit markets in 2008 is quite possibly the biggest financial disaster in U.S. history. Confidence Game: How a Hedge Fund Manager Called Wall Street's Bluff is the story of Bill Ackman's six-year campaign to warn that the $2.5 trillion bond insurance business was a catastrophe waiting to happen. Branded a fraud by the Wall Street Journal and New York Times, and investigated by Eliot Spitzer and the Securities and Exchange Commission, Ackman later made his investors more than $1 billion when bond…
Like all of us, I was raised on promises, and now I’ve veered off to another perspective. I love football. I played in high school, college, and for a brief time, in the NFL (didn’t make the final roster!) Philosophy has been a life-long pursuit, but I didn’t find what I was looking for: the truth. Except for the existentialists, most of it is a mere history of how mankind thought. But philosophy has taught me how to examine the essence of important issues. That’s why I wrote a book about tribalism, because to me, tribalism is the strongest dynamic in humanity and morality is subordinate to tribalism.
I originally read this as research for my own novel and I’m so glad I did. Not all of it is about scandal, in fact my favorite parts highlighted how sports can be used to bring out the best in us. In fact, that’s what sports did for me. I loved that it also sheds light on the machinations we don’t see that are used to drive the sport. And, yes, I was horrified by some of the stories: horrified by the sexual assaults and furthermore by the rationalizations and the coverups. The feeling I had reading The System: we all want to dress ourselves in virtue, but all we really want is to win and for some, there is no price that’s too high.
NCAA football is big business. Every Saturday millions of people file into massive stadiums or tune in on television as "athlete-students" give everything they've got to make their team a success. Billions of dollars now flow into the game. But what is the true cost? The players have no share in the oceans of money. And once the lights go down, the glitter doesn't shine so brightly. Filled with mind-blowing details of major NCAA football scandals, with stops at Ohio State, Tennessee, Texas Tech, Missouri, BYU, LSU, Texas A&M and many more,…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
Like all of us, I was raised on promises, and now I’ve veered off to another perspective. I love football. I played in high school, college, and for a brief time, in the NFL (didn’t make the final roster!) Philosophy has been a life-long pursuit, but I didn’t find what I was looking for: the truth. Except for the existentialists, most of it is a mere history of how mankind thought. But philosophy has taught me how to examine the essence of important issues. That’s why I wrote a book about tribalism, because to me, tribalism is the strongest dynamic in humanity and morality is subordinate to tribalism.
I’m conflicted, two of my three kids went to Florida State and this book holds nothing back about the crimes and sins that have taken place at FSU. I felt like I was witness to a crime scene; the crimes were academic, cultural, and truly criminal. I completely believe that our higher education system is critical to our country, yet what takes place at these schools is an outrage. This is a book written by a talented journalist who took me on an objective tour of the hypocrisy we are willing to allow for our tribe to dominate.
With little public debate or introspection, our institutions of higher learning have become hostages to the rapacious, smash-mouth entertainment conglomerate known, quaintly, as intercollegiate athletics. In Champions Way, New York Times investigative reporter Mike McIntire chronicles the rise of this growing scandal through the experience of the Florida State Seminoles, one of the most successful teams in NCAA history.
A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for his Times investigation of college sports, McIntire breaks new ground here, uncovering the workings of a system that enables athletes to violate academic standards and avoid criminal prosecution for actions ranging from shoplifting to…
As a cancer doctor, I have spent two decades dedicated to understanding the causes and therapy of cancer, how my patients experience their diagnosis and treatment, and how meaningful improvements in their experience should be reflected in the criteria we use to approve cancer drugs approval in the U.S., to improve their lives. In over 100 essays published in outlets like The New York Times and The Washington Post and in two books, I sing the stories of my patients as I learn from their undaunted spirits and their utter humanity, as I try to figure out how to be a better doctor, and a better person.
There’s a seedy side to the pharmaceutical industry that started well before the creation of the FDA, and continues through the modern era, fueling the epidemic of opioid drug dependency.
In Pharma, Posner’s comprehensive reporting introduces us to brilliant scientists, incorruptible government regulators, and brave whistleblowers facing off against company executives often blinded by greed.
We learn how the Sacklers built a culture of pain relief on the shoulders of oxycontin – one that ultimately led to the lowest survival rates for Americans in a century.
Award-winning journalist and New York Times bestselling author Gerald Posner traces the heroes and villains of the trillion-dollar-a-year pharmaceutical industry and uncovers how those once entrusted with improving life have often betrayed that ideal to corruption and reckless profiteering-with deadly consequences.
Pharmaceutical breakthroughs such as anti biotics and vaccines rank among some of the greatest advancements in human history. Yet exorbitant prices for life-saving drugs, safety recalls affecting tens of millions of Americans, and soaring rates of addiction and overdose on pre scription opioids have caused many to lose faith in drug companies. Now, Americans are demanding a national reckoning…
When each of our older boys were in the midst of the college admissions process, our husbands suffered life-threatening health crises. It was such a bizarre coincidence that we both experienced intense brushes with mortality during this time of high anxiety. The juxtaposition between health and college admissions gave us a unique perspective and led us to explore the impacts of college admissions anxiety on families, friendships, students, and school communities. We had entirely plottedGirls With Bright Futuresand were nearly through the first draft when the Operation Varsity Blues college admissions scandal broke in March 2019. We felt like the headlines had been ripped from our manuscript!
This well-researched non-fiction book by powerhouse investigative reporter Nicole LaPorte of Fast Company provides a fascinating look at some of the behind-the-scenes, real-world parenting dynamics that set the stage for Operation Varsity Blues. In addition to all the juicy details LaPorte reveals about Los Angeles’ elite private school ecosystem, we particularly love the way she traces the origins of college admissions mania all the way back to kindergarten. If you’ve ever wondered how community group-think can lead to lawlessness and a total abandonment of ethics and values, Guilty Admissions takes readers on a tantalizing journey into the competitive-parenting abyss, LA-style.
GUILTY ADMISSIONS weaves together the story of an unscrupulous college counselor named Rick Singer, and how he preyed on the desperation of some of the country's wealthiest families living in a world defined by fierce competition, who function under constant pressure to get into the "right" schools, starting with pre-school; non-stop fundraising and donation demands in the form of multi-million-dollar galas and private parties; and a community of deeply insecure parents who will do anything to get their kids into name-brand colleges in order to maintain their own A-list status.
Investigative reporter Nicole LaPorte lays bare the source of this…
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
As an attorney, former TV broadcaster, and workplace consultant, I’ve devoted my career to empowering women and confronting systemic inequities. My passion stems from personal experience navigating the complexities of workplace harassment, which inspired me to write my book and guide others through similar challenges. I am continually drawn to books that illuminate the hidden power structures and offer practical tools for resilience, empowerment, and self-advocacy. The works on this list have profoundly shaped my perspective, providing inspiration and clarity in both my professional and personal journey. I hope they resonate with you as deeply as they have with me.
This book floored me with its unflinching exploration of systemic abuse and complicity within Hollywood—a microcosm for many workplaces.
Ryan’s bold, investigative approach helped me better understand how power dynamics shape industries and how meaningful change can emerge when individuals unite against systemic wrongdoing. Her ability to mix stories of injustice with actionable solutions makes this book unforgettable and empowering.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * LOS ANGELES TIMES BESTSELLER
In this spectacular, newsmaking expose that has the entertainment industry abuzz and on its heels, Vanity Fair's Maureen Ryan blows the lid on patterns of harassment and bias in Hollywood, the grassroots reforms under way, and the labor and activist revolutions that recent scandals have ignited.
It is never just One Bad Man.
Abuse and exploitation of workers is baked into the very foundations of the entertainment industry. To break the cycle and make change that sticks, it's important to stop looking at headline-making stories as individual events. Instead, one must…
