Posted inMember Pick, Nonfiction

How to Fail in Business While Really, Really Trying: The True Story of J.C. Penney

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 […]

Posted inMember Pick, Nonfiction, Story

How to Fail in Business While Really, Really Trying: The True Story of J.C. Penney

Jennifer Reingold | Fortune | March 2014 | 29 minutes (7,108 words) Download as a .mobi ebook (Kindle) Download as an .epub ebook (iBooks) When you find a savior, you don’t quibble over details. So it was that J.C. Penney, the long-stagnating mid-tier department store chain, announced in June 2011 that it was hiring Ron […]

Posted inEditor's Pick

Inside Apple’s Plans for Its Futuristic, $5 Billion Headquarters

Steve Jobs had grand plans for Apple’s new headquarters, but now there are questions over whether the company should be going through with them: “Apple hasn’t announced any major changes to Jobs’s vision, so some of the sought-after $1 billion savings will likely come by rolling back his sky-high requirements for fit and finish. Rather […]

Posted inNonfiction

Everything to Live For

Jennifer Mendelsohn | Washingtonian | June 1998 | 36 minutes (8,995 words) Jennifer Mendelsohn is the “Modern Family” columnist for Baltimore Style magazine. A former People magazine special correspondent and Slate columnist, her work has appeared in publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Washingtonian, Tablet, Medium, McSweeney’s and Jezebel. This story first appeared in the June […]

Gift this article