
Bad Company
Private Equity and the Death of the American Dream
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
$0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Buy for $19.79
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Dan Bittner
-
By:
-
Megan Greenwell
About this listen
A timely work of singular reportage and a damning indictment of the private equity industry told through the stories of four American workers whose lives and communities were upended by the ruinous effects of private equity takeovers.
Private equity runs our country, yet few Americans have any idea how ingrained it is in their lives. Private equity controls our hospitals, daycare centers, supermarket chains, voting machine manufacturers, local newspapers, nursing home operators, fertility clinics, and prisons. The industry even manages highways, municipal water systems, fire departments, emergency medical services, and owns a growing swath of commercial and residential real estate.
Private equity executives, meanwhile, are not only among the wealthiest people in American society, but have grown to become modern-day barons with outsized influence on our politics and legislation. CEOs of firms like Blackstone, Carlyle, KKR, and Apollo are rewarded with seats in the Senate and on the boards of the country’s most august institutions; meanwhile, entire communities are hollowed out as a result of their buyouts. Workers lose their jobs. Communities lose their institutions. Only private equity wins.
Acclaimed journalist Megan Greenwell’s Bad Company unearths the hidden story of private equity by examining the lives of four American workers that were devastated as private equity upended their employers and communities: a Toys R Us floor supervisor, a rural doctor, a local newspaper journalist, and an affordable housing organizer. Taken together, their individual experiences also pull back the curtain on a much larger project: how private equity reshaped the American economy to serve its own interests, creating a new class of billionaires while stripping ordinary people of their livelihoods, their health care, their homes, and their sense of security.
In the tradition of deeply human reportage like Matthew Desmond’s Evicted, Megan Greenwell pulls back the curtain on shadowy multibillion dollar private equity firms, telling a larger story about how private equity is reshaping the economy, disrupting communities, and hollowing out the very idea of the American dream itself. Timely and masterfully told, Bad Company is a forceful rebuke of America’s most consequential, yet least understood economic forces.
©2025 Megan Greenwell (P)2025 HarperCollins PublishersListeners also enjoyed...
-
Little Bosses Everywhere
- How the Pyramid Scheme Shaped America
- By: Bridget Read
- Narrated by: Nikki Massoud
- Length: 11 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Little Bosses Everywhere, journalist Bridget Read tells the gripping story of multilevel marketing in full for the first time, winding from sunny postwar California, where a failed salesman started a vitamin business, through the devoutly religious suburbs of Michigan, where the industry built its political influence, to stadium-size conventions where today’s top sellers preach to die-hard recruits. MLM has enriched powerful people, like the DeVos and Van Andel families, Warren Buffett, and President Donald Trump, all while eroding public institutions and the social safety net.
-
-
Well researched.
- By Donald Schuster on 05-08-25
By: Bridget Read
-
AI Valley
- Microsoft, Google, and the Trillion-Dollar Race to Cash In on Artificial Intelligence
- By: Gary Rivlin
- Narrated by: Joe Knezevich
- Length: 11 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Artificial Intelligence has been “just around the corner” for decades, continually disappointing those who long believed in its potential. But now, with the emergence and growing use of ChatGPT, Gemini, and a rapidly multiplying number of other AI tools, many are wondering: Has AI’s moment finally arrived? In AI Valley, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gary Rivlin brings us deep into the world of AI development in Silicon Valley. Over the course of more than a year, Rivlin closely follows founders and venture capitalists trying to capitalize on this AI moment.
-
-
A dizzying account of the development of AI
- By ER on 03-31-25
By: Gary Rivlin
-
The Gunfighters
- How Texas Made the West Wild
- By: Bryan Burrough
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 12 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The “Wild West” gunfighter is such a stock figure in our popular culture that some dismiss it all as a corny myth, more a product of dime novels and B movies than a genuinely important American history. In fact, as Bryan Burrough shows us in his dazzling and fast-paced new book, there’s much more below the surface. For three decades at the end of the 1800s, a big swath of the American West was a crucible of change, with the highest murder rate per capita in American history. The reasons behind this boil down to one word: Texas.
-
-
Hits the target
- By S. S. Felzenberg on 06-09-25
By: Bryan Burrough
-
Ghosts of Iron Mountain
- The Hoax of the Century, Its Enduring Impact, and What It Reveals About America Today
- By: Phil Tinline
- Narrated by: Phil Tinline
- Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A compelling work of investigative journalism that explores the surprising origins and hidden ramifications of an epic late 1960s hoax, perpetrated by cultural luminaries, including Victor Navasky and E.L. Doctorow. For readers curious about the surprising connections between John F. Kennedy, Oliver Stone, Timothy McVeigh, Alex Jones, and Donald Trump.
-
-
Audio quality
- By Chas30166 on 03-29-25
By: Phil Tinline
-
The Optimist
- By: Keach Hagey
- Narrated by: Will Damron
- Length: 12 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Optimist, the Wall Street Journal reporter Keach Hagey presents the most detailed account yet of Altman’s rise, from his precocious childhood in St. Louis to his first, failed startup experience; his time as legendary entrepreneur Paul Graham’s protégé and successor as head of Y Combinator, the start-up accelerator where Altman became the premier power broker in Silicon Valley; the founding of OpenAI and his recruitment of a small yet superior team; and his struggle to keep his company at the cutting edge while fending off determined rivals, including Elon Musk.
-
-
Excellent, lots of new information, and no slant
- By MR on 05-24-25
By: Keach Hagey
-
The View from Flyover Country
- Dispatches from the Forgotten America
- By: Sarah Kendzior
- Narrated by: Sarah Kendzior
- Length: 6 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A clear-eyed account of the realities of life in America’s overlooked heartland, The View from Flyover Country is a piercing critique of the labor exploitation, race relations, gentrification, media bias, and other aspects of the post-employment economy that gave rise to a president who rules like an autocrat. The View from Flyover Country is necessary listening for anyone who believes that the only way for America to fix its problems is to first discuss them with honesty and compassion.
-
-
Repetitive
- By wanda on 05-03-18
By: Sarah Kendzior
-
Little Bosses Everywhere
- How the Pyramid Scheme Shaped America
- By: Bridget Read
- Narrated by: Nikki Massoud
- Length: 11 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Little Bosses Everywhere, journalist Bridget Read tells the gripping story of multilevel marketing in full for the first time, winding from sunny postwar California, where a failed salesman started a vitamin business, through the devoutly religious suburbs of Michigan, where the industry built its political influence, to stadium-size conventions where today’s top sellers preach to die-hard recruits. MLM has enriched powerful people, like the DeVos and Van Andel families, Warren Buffett, and President Donald Trump, all while eroding public institutions and the social safety net.
-
-
Well researched.
- By Donald Schuster on 05-08-25
By: Bridget Read
-
AI Valley
- Microsoft, Google, and the Trillion-Dollar Race to Cash In on Artificial Intelligence
- By: Gary Rivlin
- Narrated by: Joe Knezevich
- Length: 11 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Artificial Intelligence has been “just around the corner” for decades, continually disappointing those who long believed in its potential. But now, with the emergence and growing use of ChatGPT, Gemini, and a rapidly multiplying number of other AI tools, many are wondering: Has AI’s moment finally arrived? In AI Valley, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gary Rivlin brings us deep into the world of AI development in Silicon Valley. Over the course of more than a year, Rivlin closely follows founders and venture capitalists trying to capitalize on this AI moment.
-
-
A dizzying account of the development of AI
- By ER on 03-31-25
By: Gary Rivlin
-
The Gunfighters
- How Texas Made the West Wild
- By: Bryan Burrough
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 12 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The “Wild West” gunfighter is such a stock figure in our popular culture that some dismiss it all as a corny myth, more a product of dime novels and B movies than a genuinely important American history. In fact, as Bryan Burrough shows us in his dazzling and fast-paced new book, there’s much more below the surface. For three decades at the end of the 1800s, a big swath of the American West was a crucible of change, with the highest murder rate per capita in American history. The reasons behind this boil down to one word: Texas.
-
-
Hits the target
- By S. S. Felzenberg on 06-09-25
By: Bryan Burrough
-
Ghosts of Iron Mountain
- The Hoax of the Century, Its Enduring Impact, and What It Reveals About America Today
- By: Phil Tinline
- Narrated by: Phil Tinline
- Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A compelling work of investigative journalism that explores the surprising origins and hidden ramifications of an epic late 1960s hoax, perpetrated by cultural luminaries, including Victor Navasky and E.L. Doctorow. For readers curious about the surprising connections between John F. Kennedy, Oliver Stone, Timothy McVeigh, Alex Jones, and Donald Trump.
-
-
Audio quality
- By Chas30166 on 03-29-25
By: Phil Tinline
-
The Optimist
- By: Keach Hagey
- Narrated by: Will Damron
- Length: 12 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Optimist, the Wall Street Journal reporter Keach Hagey presents the most detailed account yet of Altman’s rise, from his precocious childhood in St. Louis to his first, failed startup experience; his time as legendary entrepreneur Paul Graham’s protégé and successor as head of Y Combinator, the start-up accelerator where Altman became the premier power broker in Silicon Valley; the founding of OpenAI and his recruitment of a small yet superior team; and his struggle to keep his company at the cutting edge while fending off determined rivals, including Elon Musk.
-
-
Excellent, lots of new information, and no slant
- By MR on 05-24-25
By: Keach Hagey
-
The View from Flyover Country
- Dispatches from the Forgotten America
- By: Sarah Kendzior
- Narrated by: Sarah Kendzior
- Length: 6 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A clear-eyed account of the realities of life in America’s overlooked heartland, The View from Flyover Country is a piercing critique of the labor exploitation, race relations, gentrification, media bias, and other aspects of the post-employment economy that gave rise to a president who rules like an autocrat. The View from Flyover Country is necessary listening for anyone who believes that the only way for America to fix its problems is to first discuss them with honesty and compassion.
-
-
Repetitive
- By wanda on 05-03-18
By: Sarah Kendzior
-
Abundance
- By: Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson
- Narrated by: Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson
- Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
To trace the history of the twenty-first century so far is to trace a history of unaffordability and shortage. After years of refusing to build sufficient housing, America has a national housing crisis. After years of limiting immigration, we don’t have enough workers. Despite decades of being warned about the consequences of climate change, we haven’t built anything close to the clean-energy infrastructure we need. Ambitious public projects are finished late and over budget—if they are ever finished at all.
-
-
Advice to the Democratic Party from Klein & Thompson
- By Betsy Fowler on 03-31-25
By: Ezra Klein, and others
-
1929
- Inside the Greatest Crash in History--and How It Shattered a Nation
- By: Andrew Ross Sorkin
- Narrated by: Andrew Ross Sorkin
- Length: 17 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1929, the world watched in shock as the unstoppable Wall Street bull market went into a freefall, wiping out fortunes and igniting a depression that would reshape a generation. But behind the flashing ticker tapes and panicked traders, another drama unfolded—one of visionaries and fraudsters, titans and dreamers, euphoria and ruin. With unparalleled access to historical records and newly uncovered documents, New York Times bestselling author Andrew Ross Sorkin takes listeners inside the chaos of the crash.
-
Lawless
- How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes
- By: Leah Litman
- Narrated by: Leah Litman
- Length: 7 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With the gravitas of Joan Biskupic and the irreverence of Elie Mystal, Leah Litman brings her signature wit to the question of what’s gone wrong at One First Street. In Lawless, she argues that the Supreme Court is no longer practicing law; it’s running on vibes. By “vibes,” Litman means legal-ish claims that repackage the politics of conservative grievance and dress them up in robes. Major decisions adopt the language and posture of the law, while in fact displaying a commitment to protecting a single minority: the religious conservatives and Republican officials.
-
-
Not For Me
- By George David fritts on 06-19-25
By: Leah Litman
-
The Haves and Have-Yachts
- By: Evan Osnos
- Narrated by: Evan Osnos
- Length: 10 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The ultrarich hold more of America’s wealth than they did in the heyday of the Carnegies and Rockefellers. Here, Evan Osnos’s incisive reportage yields an unforgettable portrait of the tactics and obsessions driving this new Gilded Age, in which superyachts, luxury bunkers, elite tax dodges, and a torrent of political donations bespeak staggering disparities of wealth and power. With deft storytelling and meticulous reporting, this is a book about the indulgences, incentives, and psychological distortions that define our economic age.
-
-
I hated for the book to end!!
- By Anonymous User on 06-18-25
By: Evan Osnos
-
Apple in China
- The Capture of the World's Greatest Company
- By: Patrick McGee
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 13 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For listeners of Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs and Chris Miller’s Chip War, a riveting look at how Apple helped build China’s dominance in electronics assembly and manufacturing only to find itself trapped in a relationship with an authoritarian state making ever-increasing demands.
-
-
Performance is so robotic it’s distracting.
- By robert Campbell on 05-29-25
By: Patrick McGee
-
When It All Burns
- Fighting Fire in a Transformed World
- By: Jordan Thomas
- Narrated by: Jordan Thomas
- Length: 10 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In When It All Burns, wildland firefighter and anthropologist Jordan Thomas recounts a single, brutal six-month fire season with the Los Padres Hotshots—the special forces of America’s firefighters. Being a hotshot is among the most difficult jobs on earth. Thomas viscerally renders his crew’s attempts to battle flames that are often too destructive to contain. He uncovers the hidden cultural history of megafires, revealing how humanity’s symbiotic relationship with wildfire became a war—and what can be done to change it back.
-
-
Smart, Authentic and Needed
- By Watch Hill on 06-03-25
By: Jordan Thomas
-
When McKinsey Comes to Town
- The Hidden Influence of the World's Most Powerful Consulting Firm
- By: Walt Bogdanich, Michael Forsythe
- Narrated by: Ari Fliakos
- Length: 10 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In When McKinsey Comes to Town, two prizewinning investigative journalists have written a portrait of the company sharply at odds with its public image. Bogdanich and Forsythe have penetrated the veil of secrecy surrounding McKinsey by conducting hundreds of interviews, obtaining tens of thousands of revelatory documents, and following rule #1 of investigative reporting: Follow the money. When McKinsey Comes to Town is a a devastating portrait of a firm whose work has often made the world more unequal, more corrupt, and more dangerous.
-
-
Shows systemic problems in McKinsey's culture
- By GA on 10-15-22
By: Walt Bogdanich, and others
-
The Contrarian
- Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power
- By: Max Chafkin
- Narrated by: Will Damron
- Length: 12 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Since the days of the dot-com bubble in the late 1990s, no industry has made a greater impact on the world than Silicon Valley. And few individuals have done more to shape Silicon Valley than Peter Thiel. The billionaire venture capitalist and entrepreneur has been a behind-the-scenes operator influencing countless aspects of our contemporary way of life, from the technologies we use every day to the delicate power balance between Silicon Valley, Wall Street, and Washington. But despite his power and the ubiquity of his projects, no public figure is quite so mysterious.
-
-
Don’t burn a credit.
- By John on 09-27-21
By: Max Chafkin
-
Wild Faith
- How the Christian Right Is Taking Over America
- By: Talia Lavin
- Narrated by: Talia Lavin
- Length: 9 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From school boards to the Supreme Court, Christian theocracy is ascendant in America—and only through exploring its motivations and impacts can we understand the crisis we face. In Wild Faith, Lavin fearlessly confronts whether our democracy can survive an organized, fervent theocratic movement, one that seeks to impose its religious beliefs on American citizens.
-
-
Rough listen
- By Nick on 12-10-24
By: Talia Lavin
-
Private Equity
- A Memoir
- By: Carrie Sun
- Narrated by: Carrie Sun
- Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When we meet Carrie Sun, she can’t shake the feeling that she’s wasting her life. The daughter of Chinese immigrants, Carrie excelled in school, graduated early from MIT, and climbed the corporate ladder, all in pursuit of the American dream. But at twenty-nine, she’s left her analyst job, dropped out of an MBA program, and is trapped in an unhappy engagement. So when she gets the rare opportunity to work at one of the most prestigious hedge funds in the world, she knows she can’t say no. Fourteen interviews later, she’s in.
-
-
Not what I was expecting
- By Anonymous User on 09-05-24
By: Carrie Sun
-
Empire of AI
- Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI
- By: Karen Hao
- Narrated by: Karen Hao
- Length: 17 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When AI expert and investigative journalist Karen Hao first began covering OpenAI in 2019, she thought they were the good guys. Founded as a nonprofit with safety enshrined as its core mission, the organization was meant, its leader Sam Altman told us, to act as a check against more purely mercantile, and potentially dangerous, forces. What could go wrong?
-
-
Well-researched. Timely. Informative. Karen is brilliant and kind!
- By Kahlil Andrews on 05-25-25
By: Karen Hao
-
The Thinking Machine
- Jensen Huang, Nvidia, and the World's Most Coveted Microchip
- By: Stephen Witt
- Narrated by: Stephen Witt
- Length: 10 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In June of 2024, thirty-one years after its founding in a Denny’s restaurant, Nvidia became the most valuable corporation on Earth. The Thinking Machine is the astonishing story of how a designer of video game equipment conquered the market for AI hardware, and in the process re-invented the computer. Essential to Nvidia’s meteoric success is its visionary CEO Jensen Huang, who more than a decade ago, on the basis of a few promising scientific results, bet his entire company on AI.
-
-
A wonderful book!
- By John K. Clark on 04-13-25
By: Stephen Witt
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
Plunder
- Private Equity's Plan to Pillage America
- By: Brendan Ballou
- Narrated by: Kevin Kenerly
- Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Private equity surrounds us. Firms like Blackstone, Carlyle, and KKR are among the largest employers in America and hold assets that rival those of small countries. Yet few understand what these firms are or how they work. In Plunder, Brendan Ballou explains how private equity has reshaped American business by raising prices, reducing quality, cutting jobs, and shifting resources from productive to unproductive parts of the economy.
-
-
Don't waste your time or credit
- By Navillus82 on 05-07-23
By: Brendan Ballou
-
These Are the Plunderers
- How Private Equity Runs—and Wrecks—America
- By: Gretchen Morgenson, Joshua Rosner
- Narrated by: John Bedford Lloyd
- Length: 11 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
These Are the Plunderers traces the thirty-year history of corporate takeovers in America and private equity’s increasing dominance. Morgenson and Rosner investigate some of the biggest names in private equity, exposing how they buy companies, load them with debt, and then bleed them of assets and profits. All while prosecutors and regulators stand idly by.
-
-
Lacks credibility and fact checking
- By Sam Smith on 05-25-23
By: Gretchen Morgenson, and others
-
When McKinsey Comes to Town
- The Hidden Influence of the World's Most Powerful Consulting Firm
- By: Walt Bogdanich, Michael Forsythe
- Narrated by: Ari Fliakos
- Length: 10 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In When McKinsey Comes to Town, two prizewinning investigative journalists have written a portrait of the company sharply at odds with its public image. Bogdanich and Forsythe have penetrated the veil of secrecy surrounding McKinsey by conducting hundreds of interviews, obtaining tens of thousands of revelatory documents, and following rule #1 of investigative reporting: Follow the money. When McKinsey Comes to Town is a a devastating portrait of a firm whose work has often made the world more unequal, more corrupt, and more dangerous.
-
-
Shows systemic problems in McKinsey's culture
- By GA on 10-15-22
By: Walt Bogdanich, and others
-
Two and Twenty
- How the Masters of Private Equity Always Win
- By: Sachin Khajuria
- Narrated by: Will Damron
- Length: 7 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Private equity has succeeded in near-stealth—until now. In Two and Twenty, Sachin Khajuria, a former partner at Apollo, gives readers an unprecedented view inside this opaque global economic engine, which plays a vital role underpinning our retirement systems. From illuminating the rituals of firms’ all-powerful investment committees to exploring key precepts (“think like a principal, not an advisor”), Khajuria brings the traits, culture, and temperament of the industry’s leading practitioners to life through a series of vivid and unvarnished deal sketches.
-
-
Disappointed by lack of real examples and facts
- By Gadget Lover on 08-22-22
By: Sachin Khajuria
-
Hedged Out
- Inequality and Insecurity on Wall Street
- By: Megan Tobias Neely
- Narrated by: Tina Nakhleh Falkenbury
- Length: 11 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Who do you think of when you imagine a hedge fund manager? A greedy fraudster, a visionary entrepreneur, a wolf of Wall Street? These tropes capture the public imagination of a successful hedge fund manager. But behind the designer suits, helicopter commutes, and illicit pursuits are the everyday stories of people who work in the hedge fund industry—many of whom don't realize they fall within the 1 percent that drives the divide between the richest and the rest.
-
I'll Tell You When I'm Home
- By: Hala Alyan
- Narrated by: Hala Alyan
- Length: 9 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After a decade of yearning for parenthood, years marked by miscarriage after miscarriage, Hala Alyan makes the decision to use a surrogate. In this charged time, she turns to the archetype of the waiting woman—the Scheherazade who tells stories to ensure another dawn—to confront her own narratives of motherhood, love, and inheritance.
By: Hala Alyan
-
Plunder
- Private Equity's Plan to Pillage America
- By: Brendan Ballou
- Narrated by: Kevin Kenerly
- Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Private equity surrounds us. Firms like Blackstone, Carlyle, and KKR are among the largest employers in America and hold assets that rival those of small countries. Yet few understand what these firms are or how they work. In Plunder, Brendan Ballou explains how private equity has reshaped American business by raising prices, reducing quality, cutting jobs, and shifting resources from productive to unproductive parts of the economy.
-
-
Don't waste your time or credit
- By Navillus82 on 05-07-23
By: Brendan Ballou
-
These Are the Plunderers
- How Private Equity Runs—and Wrecks—America
- By: Gretchen Morgenson, Joshua Rosner
- Narrated by: John Bedford Lloyd
- Length: 11 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
These Are the Plunderers traces the thirty-year history of corporate takeovers in America and private equity’s increasing dominance. Morgenson and Rosner investigate some of the biggest names in private equity, exposing how they buy companies, load them with debt, and then bleed them of assets and profits. All while prosecutors and regulators stand idly by.
-
-
Lacks credibility and fact checking
- By Sam Smith on 05-25-23
By: Gretchen Morgenson, and others
-
When McKinsey Comes to Town
- The Hidden Influence of the World's Most Powerful Consulting Firm
- By: Walt Bogdanich, Michael Forsythe
- Narrated by: Ari Fliakos
- Length: 10 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In When McKinsey Comes to Town, two prizewinning investigative journalists have written a portrait of the company sharply at odds with its public image. Bogdanich and Forsythe have penetrated the veil of secrecy surrounding McKinsey by conducting hundreds of interviews, obtaining tens of thousands of revelatory documents, and following rule #1 of investigative reporting: Follow the money. When McKinsey Comes to Town is a a devastating portrait of a firm whose work has often made the world more unequal, more corrupt, and more dangerous.
-
-
Shows systemic problems in McKinsey's culture
- By GA on 10-15-22
By: Walt Bogdanich, and others
-
Two and Twenty
- How the Masters of Private Equity Always Win
- By: Sachin Khajuria
- Narrated by: Will Damron
- Length: 7 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Private equity has succeeded in near-stealth—until now. In Two and Twenty, Sachin Khajuria, a former partner at Apollo, gives readers an unprecedented view inside this opaque global economic engine, which plays a vital role underpinning our retirement systems. From illuminating the rituals of firms’ all-powerful investment committees to exploring key precepts (“think like a principal, not an advisor”), Khajuria brings the traits, culture, and temperament of the industry’s leading practitioners to life through a series of vivid and unvarnished deal sketches.
-
-
Disappointed by lack of real examples and facts
- By Gadget Lover on 08-22-22
By: Sachin Khajuria
-
Hedged Out
- Inequality and Insecurity on Wall Street
- By: Megan Tobias Neely
- Narrated by: Tina Nakhleh Falkenbury
- Length: 11 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Who do you think of when you imagine a hedge fund manager? A greedy fraudster, a visionary entrepreneur, a wolf of Wall Street? These tropes capture the public imagination of a successful hedge fund manager. But behind the designer suits, helicopter commutes, and illicit pursuits are the everyday stories of people who work in the hedge fund industry—many of whom don't realize they fall within the 1 percent that drives the divide between the richest and the rest.
-
I'll Tell You When I'm Home
- By: Hala Alyan
- Narrated by: Hala Alyan
- Length: 9 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After a decade of yearning for parenthood, years marked by miscarriage after miscarriage, Hala Alyan makes the decision to use a surrogate. In this charged time, she turns to the archetype of the waiting woman—the Scheherazade who tells stories to ensure another dawn—to confront her own narratives of motherhood, love, and inheritance.
By: Hala Alyan
-
The Haves and Have-Yachts
- By: Evan Osnos
- Narrated by: Evan Osnos
- Length: 10 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The ultrarich hold more of America’s wealth than they did in the heyday of the Carnegies and Rockefellers. Here, Evan Osnos’s incisive reportage yields an unforgettable portrait of the tactics and obsessions driving this new Gilded Age, in which superyachts, luxury bunkers, elite tax dodges, and a torrent of political donations bespeak staggering disparities of wealth and power. With deft storytelling and meticulous reporting, this is a book about the indulgences, incentives, and psychological distortions that define our economic age.
-
-
I hated for the book to end!!
- By Anonymous User on 06-18-25
By: Evan Osnos
-
Mind Electric
- A Neurologist on the Strangeness and Wonder of Our Brains
- By: Pria Anand
- Narrated by: Pria Anand
- Length: 8 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A girl believes she has been struck blind for stealing a kiss. A mother watches helplessly as each of her children is replaced by a changeling. A woman is haunted each month by the same four chords of a single song. In neurology, illness is inextricably linked with narrative, the clues to unraveling these mysteries hidden in both the details of a patient's story and the tells of their body.
-
-
The weaving of neurology and geography with infinite empathy
- By Amazon Customer on 06-15-25
By: Pria Anand
-
Misbehaving at the Crossroads
- Essays & Writings
- By: Honoree Fanonne Jeffers
- Narrated by: Karen Chilton
- Length: 11 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Honorée Fanonne Jeffers is at a crossroads. Traditional African/Black American cultures present the crossroads as a place of simultaneous difficulty and possibility. In contemporary times, Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the phrase “intersectionality” to explain the unique position of Black women in America. In many ways, they are at a third crossroads: attempting to fit into notions of femininity and respectability primarily assigned to White women, while inventing improvisational strategies to combat oppression.
-
Murderland
- Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers
- By: Caroline Fraser
- Narrated by: Patty Nieman
- Length: 16 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Caroline Fraser grew up in the shadow of Ted Bundy, the most notorious serial murderer of women in American history, surrounded by his hunting grounds and mountain body dumps, in the brooding landscape of the Pacific Northwest. But in the 1970s and ’80s, Bundy was just one perpetrator amid an uncanny explosion of serial rape and murder across the region. Why so many? Why so weirdly and nightmarishly gruesome? Why the senseless rise and then sudden fall of an epidemic of serial killing?
-
-
Washington’s dark secrets
- By Erica J. on 06-18-25
By: Caroline Fraser
-
Time and Power
- Visions of History in German Politics, from the Thirty Years' War to the Third Reich
- By: Christopher Clark
- Narrated by: Grant Cartwright
- Length: 7 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This book presents new perspectives on how the exercise of power is shaped by different notions of time. Acclaimed historian Christopher Clark draws on four key figures from German history—Friedrich Wilhelm of Brandenburg-Prussia, Frederick the Great, Otto von Bismarck, and Adolf Hitler—to look at history through a temporal lens and ask how historical actors and their regimes embody unique conceptions of time.
-
Stupid TV, Be More Funny
- How the Golden Era of The Simpsons Changed Television—and America—Forever
- By: Alan Siegel
- Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin
- Length: 8 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This comprehensive account of the meteoric rise of The Simpsons combines incisive pop culture criticism and interviews with the show’s creative team that take listeners inside the making of an American phenomenon during its most influential decade, the 1990s.
-
-
So informative
- By Amazon Customer on 06-15-25
By: Alan Siegel
-
Human Nature
- Nine Ways to Feel About Our Changing Planet
- By: Kate Marvel
- Narrated by: Courtney Patterson
- Length: 8 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Human Nature is a deeply felt inquiry into our rapidly changing Earth. In each chapter, Marvel uses a different emotion to explore the science and stories behind climate change. As expected, there is anger, fear, and grief—but also wonder, hope, and love. With her singular voice, Marvel takes us on a soaring journey, one filled with mythology, physics, witchcraft, bad movies, volcanoes, Roman emperors, sequoia groves, and the many small miracles of nature we usually take for granted.
By: Kate Marvel
-
Our Dollar, Your Problem
- An Insider's View of Seven Turbulent Decades of Global Finance, and the Road Ahead
- By: Kenneth Rogoff
- Narrated by: Evan Sibley
- Length: 12 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Drawing in part on his own experiences, including with policymakers and world leaders, Kenneth Rogoff animates the remarkable postwar run of the dollar—how it beat out the Japanese yen, the Soviet ruble, and the euro—and the challenges it faces today from crypto and the Chinese yuan, the end of reliably low inflation and interest rates, political instability, and the fracturing of the dollar bloc.
By: Kenneth Rogoff
-
Empire of AI
- Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI
- By: Karen Hao
- Narrated by: Karen Hao
- Length: 17 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When AI expert and investigative journalist Karen Hao first began covering OpenAI in 2019, she thought they were the good guys. Founded as a nonprofit with safety enshrined as its core mission, the organization was meant, its leader Sam Altman told us, to act as a check against more purely mercantile, and potentially dangerous, forces. What could go wrong?
-
-
Well-researched. Timely. Informative. Karen is brilliant and kind!
- By Kahlil Andrews on 05-25-25
By: Karen Hao
-
The Dealmaker
- Lessons from a Life in Private Equity
- By: Guy Hands
- Narrated by: Simon Shepherd, Guy Hands - introduction
- Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Dealmaker is a frank and honest account of how a severely dyslexic child who struggled at school went on to graduate from Oxford and become a serial entrepreneur. It describes Guy Hand's career in private equity, first at Nomura and then as head of his own company, Terra Firma. It looks in detail at the huge deals that Terra Firma has done over the years, involving everything from cinema chains and pubs to waste management, aircraft leasing and green energy.
-
-
Very Interesting, rather self involved
- By Michael Bereslavsky on 03-06-24
By: Guy Hands
-
The Spinach King
- The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty
- By: John Seabrook
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 10 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The patriarch, C. F. Seabrook, was hailed as the "Henry Ford of Agriculture." His son Jack, a keen businessman, was poised to take over what Life called "the biggest vegetable factory on earth." But the carefully cultivated facade—glamorous outings by horse-drawn carriage, hidden wine cellars, and movie star girlfriends—hid dark secrets that led to the implosion of the family business. A compelling tale of class and privilege, betrayal and revenge three decades in the making, The Spinach King explores the author's complicated family legacy and the dark corners of the American Dream.
By: John Seabrook
-
False Claims
- One Insider’s Impossible Battle Against Big Pharma Corruption
- By: Lisa Pratta
- Narrated by: Dina Pearlman
- Length: 7 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As a rising star in pharmaceutical sales, Lisa Pratta wanted to believe that she was helping improve the lives of people who suffered from illness. But as she climbed the corporate ladder, she uncovered a sinister world of bribery, fraud, and sexual harassment—all papered over with a thin veneer of corporate respectability. At Questcor Pharmaceuticals, Lisa found herself at a small company with a blockbuster drug that could have been a lifeline for patients suffering from multiple sclerosis—that is, if it was prescribed properly.
-
-
A truth needed to hear out loud
- By Ryan Watson on 06-14-25
By: Lisa Pratta
It was well presented with a decent explanation of how PE firms typically function once they’ve become involved in a business.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I definitely recommend it.
Very informative
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.