The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It

In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto

Michael Pollan · 244 pages

What to eat, what not to eat, and how to think about health: a manifesto for our times"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." These simple words go to the heart of Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food, the well-considered answers he provides to the que

Crude World: The Violent Twilight of Oil

Peter Maass · 276 pages

Oil is the substance that allows our world to work. Over the course of a century it has taken on such a variety of functions that even a small decrease in oil output would cause economic chaos and nightmarish shortages. We know, of course, that this reliance is a disaster but what we are perhaps less clear about is the terrible damage done by oil to those countries that produce it: the people who

Bailout Nation: How Greed and Easy Money Corrupted Wall Street and Shook the World Economy

Barry Ritholtz, Bill Fleckenstein, Aaron Task · 332 pages

An engaging look at what led to the financial turmoil we now find ourselves in Bailout Nation offers one of the clearest looks at the financial lenders, regulators, and politicians responsible for the financial crisis of 2008. Written by Barry Ritholtz, one of today's most popular economic bloggers and a well-established industry pundit, this book skillfully explores how the United States evolved

Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion

Elizabeth L. Cline · 258 pages

Evaluates the costs of low-priced clothing while tracing the author's own transformation to a conscientious shopper, a journey during which she visited a garment factory, learned to resole shoes, and shopped for local, sustainable clothing.

An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back

Elisabeth Rosenthal · 432 pages

"An award-winning New York Times reporter Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal reveals the dangerous, expensive, and dysfunctional American healthcare system, and tells us exactly what we can do to solve its myriad of problems. It is well documented that our healthcare system has grave problems, but how, in only a matter of decades, did things get this bad? Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal doesn't just explain the symp

Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt

Michael Lewis · 320 pages

Argues that post-crisis Wall Street continues to be controlled by large banks and explains how a small, diverse group of Wall Street men have banded together to reform the financial markets.

Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power

Steve Coll · 704 pages

Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture

Ellen Ruppel Shell · 296 pages

An Atlantic correspondent uncovers the true cost—in economic, political, and psychic terms—of our penchant for making and buying things as cheaply as possibleFrom the shuttered factories of the rust belt to the look-alike strip malls of the sun belt—and almost everywhere in between—America has been transformed by its relentless fixation on low price. This pervasive yet little examined obsession is

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

Naomi Klein · 619 pages

**The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism** is a 2007 book by the Canadian author and social activist Naomi Klein. In the book, Klein argues that neoliberal free market policies (as advocated by the economist Milton Friedman) have risen to prominence in some developed countries because of a deliberate strategy of "shock therapy". This centers on the exploitation of national crises (dis

All the Devils are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis

Bethany McLean, Joe Nocera · 389 pages

According to the authors, both business journalists, no one has put all the pieces of the financial crisis together. This title explores the motivations of everyone from CEOs and politicians to anonymous lenders, borrowers and Wall Street traders. It goes back more than twenty years to reveal, how Wall Street, the mortgage industry, and the government conspired to change the way Americans bought t

League of Denial: The NFL, Concussions and the Battle for Truth

Mark Fainaru-Wada, Steve Fainaru · 419 pages

Both ESPN investigative reporters, the authors reveal how the NFL, over a period of nearly two decades, sought to cover up and deny mounting evidence of the connection between football and brain damage. This narrative moves between the NFL trenches, America's research labs and the boardrooms where the NFL went to war against science; it examines how the league used its power and resources to attac

Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal

Eric Schlosser · 383 pages

To a degree both engrossing and alarming, the story of fast food is the story of postwar Amerca. Though created by a handful of mavericks, the fast food industry has triggered the homogenization of our society. Fast food has hastened the malling of our landscape, widened the chasm between rich and poor, fueled an epidemic of obesity, and propelled the juggernaut of American cultural imperialism ab

The Panic Virus: A True Story of Medicine, Science, and Fear

Seth Mnookin · 429 pages

A searing account of how vaccine opponents have used the media to spread their message of panic, despite no scientific evidence to support them. In this searching exposé, the recent hysteria over childhood vaccinations and their alleged link to autism becomes a cautionary tale of bad science amplified by media sensationalism.

Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation

Dan Fagin · 538 pages

Recounts the decades-long saga of the New Jersey seaside town plagued by childhood cancers caused by air and water pollution due to the indiscriminate dumping of toxic chemicals.

The Invisible Cure: Africa, the West, and the Fight Against AIDS

Helen C. Epstein · 352 pages

"The Invisible Cure will change the way we think about AIDS, a disease without precedent; and it will change the way we think about Africa and Africans, whose insight, wisdom, and care for the stranger will be as crucial as money and medical know-how if they are to overcome this terrible health crisis."--Jacket.

Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients

Ben Goldacre

Sick: The Untold Story of America's Health Care Crisis---and the People Who Pay the Price

Jonathan Cohn · 302 pages

America's health care system is unraveling. Every day, millions of hard-working people struggle to find affordable medical treatment for themselves and their families—unable to pay for prescription drugs and regular checkups, let alone hospital visits. Some of these people end up losing money. Others end up losing something even more valuable: their health or even their lives. In this powerful wor

Concussion

Jeanne Marie Laskas · 288 pages

The unlikely story of Dr. Bennet Omalu, the pathologist who made one of the most significant medical discoveries of the twenty-first century, a discovery that challenges the existence of America's favorite sport and puts him in the crosshairs of football's most powerful corporation: the NFL. In 2002 forensic pathologist Dr. Bennet Omalu picked up a scalpel in a Pittsburgh morgue and made a discov

The Secret History of the American Empire: The Truth about Economic Hit Men, Jackals & How to Change the World

John Perkins · 365 pages

A riveting expose of international corruption—and what we can do about it, from the author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, which spent over a year on the New York Times bestseller list.In his stunning memoir, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, John Perkins detailed his former role as an "economic hit man" in the international corporate skullduggery of a de facto American Empire. This rivet

The Bill Gates Problem: Reckoning with the Myth of the Good Billionaire

Tim Schwab · 496 pages

Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army

Jeremy Scahill · 464 pages

On September 16, 2007, machine gun fire erupted in Baghdad's Nisour Square leaving seventeen Iraqi civilians dead, among them women and children. The shooting spree, labeled "Baghdad's Bloody Sunday," was neither the work of Iraqi insurgents nor U.S. soldiers. The shooters were private forces working for the secretive mercenary company, Blackwater Worldwide. This is the explosive story of a compan

And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic

Randy Shilts · 651 pages

The blueprint of 20th century investigative journalism. Tracing the course of HIV/AIDS through society; from its earliest as then unknown incarnation, to the height of this 1980s hysteria – the death of Rock Hudson: Shilts's book should be in every High School's final academic examinations coursework reading list, as a compulsory item. An unregrettable read.

28: Stories of AIDS in Africa

Stephanie Nolen · 384 pages

Twenty-eight anecdotal stories that chronicle men, women, and children involved in every aspect of the African AIDS crisis.

House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street

William D. Cohan · 468 pages

'House of Cards' is a narrative about corporate greed on a truly epic scale. Cohan relates how the lack of foresight and regulation in an uncertain economy forced the government and Wall Street to take increasingly desperate and unprecedented measures to stop the carnage before the entire economy melted down.