My longread of the week is ‘At Sears, Eddie Lampert’s Warring Divisions Model Adds to the Troubles,’ by Mina Kimes in Bloomberg Businessweek. This is not a profile of Eddie Lampert, the hedge fund manager who masterminded Kmart’s acquisition of Sears and is now running the struggling retailer. The piece, based on interviews with former Sears executives and employees, is instead an examination of what happened to Sears after Lampert took over and implemented a strategy based on his Ayn Rand inflected worldview. Lampert’s big idea is that the 30-plus different segments of Sears operate more or less independently and compete for resources and attention. Kimes is never able to actually speak with Lampert in person or see him operate, and so she paints a portrait not of the man — which is where so much business magazine journalism starts and ends — but of something far more important: the results.
"Could there be a more appropriate hero for our time than Nate Silver? We can quantify and track and poll and log almost everything—and so we usually do, even if we're not sure how to make sense of it all. But Silver is—or at least, he can tell you exactly how likely it is that he's right.
"His nerd-god omniscience during the 2012 election cycle made him a blast to watch, read and retweet. He was consistent, and he was right, and it made a lot of people think a little differently about the relentlessness of our political pageantry and punditry.
"Here, in the first chapter of his new book, he revisits the housing crash, and the failure of the ratings agencies to spot it. It's not new criticism. Even so, the prediction game is Silver's strength, and he makes the whole thing feel outrageous again. He takes to task the errors in the rating agencies' models and in their psychology. There are charts, graphs, and 101 footnotes, and in the end, it's reassuring: If Silver thinks we can avoid making the same mistakes again—well, even a skeptic like me wouldn't bet against him. After all, he knows the odds better than I do."
Could there be a more appropriate hero for our time than Nate Silver? We can quantify and track and poll and log almost everything—and so we usually do, even if we’re not sure how to make sense of it all. But Silver is—or at least, he can tell you exactly how likely it is that he’s right.
His nerd-god omniscience during the 2012 election cycle made him a blast to watch, read and retweet. He was consistent, and he was right, and it made a lot of people think a little differently about the relentlessness of our political pageantry and punditry.
Here, in the first chapter of his new book, he revisits the housing crash, and the failure of the ratings agencies to spot it. It’s not new criticism. Even so, the prediction game is Silver’s strength, and he makes the whole thing feel outrageous again. He takes to task the errors in the rating agencies’ models and in their psychology. There are charts, graphs, and 101 footnotes, and in the end, it’s reassuring: If Silver thinks we can avoid making the same mistakes again—well, even a skeptic like me wouldn’t bet against him. After all, he knows the odds better than I do.
“Aaron Sorkin knows the weight of last words, and his last words to me, as we walk-and-talk out of the HBO press room, are: ‘Write something nice.’ He says this in the ‘Smile, honey’ tone of much less successful jerks.”
Those words launch Prickett into a funny, cutting attack on the pretentions and assumptions of screenwriter Aaron Sorkin. Through her eyes, the creator of A Few Good Men and The Social Network is guilty of an insufferable nostalgia for white male power, and she uses a press junket interview for Sorkin’s HBO show The Newsroom to diss the iconic writer in a way that’s both entertaining and thought-provoking.
Liveliest Profile of a Sprawling Corporation and its Straight-Laced Chief Executive
Big companies and their CEOs are tough to report on. Disney, led by the profoundly un-flamboyant Bob Iger and guarded by its disciplined phalanx of PR professionals, may be one of the toughest. That’s why Reingold’s story is so masterful—it explains Iger in way that’s vivid, thoughtful, and rigorous, giving us a sophisticated picture of him and his plans for the company. I wish Reingold would profile News Corp., Viacom, and every other American company, for that matter.
Investigative Story Responsible for Spurring Most Unintended “Holy Shit!” Uttterances
For me, this story’s surprises came in waves. First, there was the shock at how systematically and rampantly Wal-Mart bribed its way into Mexican retail. Next, there was awe at how Barstow nailed every crucial aspects of the ensuing cover-up. This is investigative reporting at its best—even-handed and rigorous, with no room for perpetrators’ excuses or squirming.
Best Confirmation that Super PACS and Karl Rove are Just as Creepy as We Thought They Were
You probably remember the media firestorm that followed this story, which quoted Karl Rove joking about killing Todd Akin (“If he’s found mysteriously murdered, don’t look for my whereabouts!”). The glimpse of the inner workings of Super PACs that follows in Kolhatkar’s fly-on-the-wall account is fascinating reading, even months after the election.
Best Confirmation of, Admit It, What We All Were Kind of Wondering While Watching the Olympic Opening Ceremony
Those hot-bodied Olympians are having lots and lots of sex! Alipour illustrates hook-up culture in the Olympic Village with kickass reporting (big-name athletes go on the record, and are surprisingly candid) and just the right tone: The story is lighthearted and detailed without being prurient or icky, a tough order for a gossipy sex piece.
Clearest Portrait of a Misunderstood and Deadly American Subculture
Following the Tucson, Arizona shooting, Laskas set out to understand gun culture by working at a gun store in Yuma and profiling its clerks—the last line of defense between us and mass murderers. I love the way she leaves politics aside and zeroes in on her subjects’ humanity. The story appears in Laskas’s new book, Hidden America, a collection of her GQ stories about the many professional subcultures that make the U.S. work, from oil drillers to coal miners to migrant fruit pickers. Read it, read it, read it.
From The Daily Beast’s David Sessions, a collection of stories on gun violence and policy in the U.S., featuring The Atlantic, Washington Post, Bloomberg Businessweek and Mother Jones.
Our latest Exclusive comes from Andrew Rice, a contributing editor to New York magazine whose work has also appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic and Bloomberg Businessweek. He’s been featured on Longreads many times in the past, and we’re excited to feature “The Miracle Man,” a story that Andrew wrote in Uganda as a fellow of the Institute of Current World Affairs, about a pastor accused of working for the devil. See an excerpt here.
p.s. You can support Longreads—and get more exclusives like this—by becoming a member.
Our latest Member Exclusive (sign up here to join) comes from Andrew Rice, a contributing editor to New York magazine whose work has also appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic and Bloomberg Businessweek. He’s been featured on Longreads many times in the past, and we’re excited to feature “The Miracle Man,” a story that Andrew wrote in Uganda as a fellow of the Institute of Current World Affairs. He explains:
“This piece, ‘The Miracle Man,’ is one my all-time favorite articles. On one level, it’s a small tale of scandal—the sort of colorful story that you only pick up on if you actually live in a place, and one you’d have a hard time selling to a New York editor. But I think it speaks volumes about an enormous transformation of African society: the rise of a new brand of evangelical Christianity, which doesn’t always conform to American expectations.”
The billionaire oilman had the perfect plan to help his alma mater Oklahoma State University raise money—by taking out $10 million life insurance policies on him and 27 other people:
Unfortunately for Oklahoma State, Pickens, and the other men and women who thought their demise would benefit their favorite university, Gift of a Lifetime has turned into the Present from Hell. First it fell apart. Then came the lawsuits. And this past March came a decision from a federal judge who declared that not only was the university not entitled to a refund of $33 million in premium payments, it was also responsible for the court costs incurred by the people it had sued.
So how did a sure bet turn into a lost cause? Pickens and the school aren’t talking, as they’ve since appealed the judge’s decision. Neither are the insurance brokers and agency that sold the policies. Yet because it’s a matter of interest in federal court, the arc of Gift of a Lifetime’s downfall can be traced in the thousands of pages of internal e-mails and deposition testimony that are now a part of the public record. Those documents reveal a plan sunk by impatience, hubris, and a belief that the hour of death could be predicted. One that all began when Pickens took his shirt off.
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