Corporate espionage takes many forms and is known by a number of names. At its most benign, it’s “competitive-intelligence,” which is the kind of information gathering that George Chidi describes in Inc. On the other end of the spectrum is the far more exciting—and illicit—line of work seen in Richard Behar’s 1999 story about the pharmaceutical industry. Here are five stories that delve deep into the murky world of corporate information gathering.
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Posted inNonfiction
Mr. and Mrs. B
When Alexander Chee was a struggling young writer, working as a cater-waiter for William F. and Pat Buckley.
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Inside Story Of How Greenpeace Built A Corporate Spanking Machine To Turn The Fortune 500 Into Climate Heroes
How a “bunch of commies” are forcing the world’s biggest corporations to stop destroying rain forests, overfishing, and burning fossil fuels. Though they too wore business suits and what looked like P&G employee badges, they didn’t work for the consumer-goods giant. They were from Greenpeace, and they’d come to save tigers. Wordlessly, the nine activists […]
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
The Art and Science of Failure
We are excited to share a reading (and watching!) list on science and failure from guest contributor Louise Lief. In 2014 Louise Lief began the Science and the Media project, an initiative that explores how science relates to our everyday lives. She is the former deputy director of the International Reporting Project.
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List, Top 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Our favorite stories of the week.
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Story
Hell—Nothing Less—And Without End: Six Days in Warsaw
“The uprising,” we told each other immediately, like everyone else in Warsaw. Strange. Because no one had ever used that word before in his life. Only in history, in books.
Posted inNonfiction, Story
By the Reflection of What Is
On the aesthetics, performance, and “majestic wrath” of Frederick Douglass, the most-photographed American of the nineteenth century.
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
Immersive Reporting from the Bakken Oil Fields: A Reading List
Oil production in the Bakken region of North Dakota has topped 1 million barrels a day. The seven-year boom has flooded the area with new residents seeking their fortunes, and many journalists have also joined the labor force, sending dispatches from the new Wild West.
Posted inNonfiction, Story
How the Emperor Became Human (and MacArthur Became Divine)
The end of divine rule in postwar Japan, and the absolute power of General MacArthur.
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Story
The Politics of Poetry
The New York Times’s poetry columnist on the intersection between poetry and politics.
