Fortune

“Last summer a monster storm tore across Iowa, leaving billions of dollars damage in its wake. It was a brutal blow to an economy already reeling from a deadly pandemic and a state divided by politics like never before.”

“Are women in the startup world being unfairly targeted?”

Guided By Voices has complete creative autonomy over its musical existence, but it has to work twice as hard for half the money now. To founding member Robert Pollard, it’s a worthy trade.

The quest for a zero-calorie sweetener is getting more urgent — and harder than ever. Will the science and economics of Big Food finally get us to the fake-sugar grail?

From the archives: Beth Kowitt goes deep into the notoriously close-lipped world of Trader Joe’s.

Can Target’s new CEO help the struggling retailer?

An excerpt from Isaacson’s book The Innovators: How a pioneering group of women led the way with its work on one of the earliest computers.

How the Obama Commerce Secretary’s early family tragedies shaped her path to business and political success:

Earlier this year her youngest brother, J.B., told Chicago magazine of his mother’s battles with alcohol and how the children were often left to fend for themselves. As the oldest, Penny says, she stepped in to take care of her brothers, especially J.B., who was only 7 when their dad died. “I tried to be positive and hold us together as a family,” she says. But she remains protective of her mother’s legacy. For all her troubles, Sue was a mother who instilled in her daughter the confidence to take risks. “She believed I could do everything,” Penny says.

This week, we’re thrilled to share a new Longreads Member Pick from Fortune magazine. “How to Fail in Business While Really, Really Trying” is Jennifer Reingold’s definitive account of what really happened inside J.C. Penney—from the dramatic reinvention of the company, led by new CEO Ron Johnson, to its disastrous unraveling (and Johnson’s firing) less than two years later.

The inside story of Ranbaxy, a generic drug maker that committed criminal fraud by fabricating data to win FDA approvals:

“Thakur knew the drugs weren’t good. They had high impurities, degraded easily, and would be useless at best in hot, humid conditions. They would be taken by the world’s poorest patients in sub-Saharan Africa, who had almost no medical infrastructure and no recourse for complaints. The injustice made him livid.

“Ranbaxy executives didn’t care, says Kathy Spreen, and made little effort to conceal it. In a conference call with a dozen company executives, one brushed aside her fears about the quality of the AIDS medicine Ranbaxy was supplying for Africa. ‘Who cares?’ he said, according to Spreen. ‘It’s just blacks dying.'”