Items20The creator’s order
  1. 1Ida TarbellIda TarbellBorn 5 Nov 1857Ida Tarbell's The History of the Standard Oil Company, serialised in McClure's Magazine from 1902 to 1904, explained how John D. Rockefeller's firm used secret railway rebates and pipelines to crush rivals. She built it from court records, legislative testimony and interviews, including with a…0i
  2. 2Robert CaroRobert CaroBorn 30 Oct 1935Robert Caro, a former Newsday reporter, spent seven years on The Power Broker, published in 1974, showing how Robert Moses, who never won an election, shaped New York's roads, bridges and parks through public authorities he controlled. Its account of the neighbourhoods cleared for the Cross Bronx…0i
  3. 3Michael LewisMichael LewisBorn 15 Oct 1960Michael Lewis drew on his years as a bond salesman at Salomon Brothers for Liar's Poker in 1989, and in The Big Short in 2010 explained mortgage bonds and credit default swaps through the few investors who bet against them. He makes finance readable by following individuals, which critics note can…0i
  4. 4Carl ZimmerCarl ZimmerBorn 13 Jul 1966Carl Zimmer, a long-time New York Times science columnist, has explained parasites, evolution, heredity and viruses in books from Parasite Rex in 2000 to She Has Her Mother's Laugh and Air-Borne. He builds his accounts from the primary research papers and interviews with the scientists involved,…0i
  5. 5Barbara EhrenreichBarbara EhrenreichBorn 26 Aug 1941Barbara Ehrenreich took low-wage jobs as a waitress, cleaner, care-home aide and Walmart worker for Nickel and Dimed in 2001, testing whether the wages could cover rent and food. She was open about the limits of the experiment: she had savings, a car and a way out. The book made the arithmetic of…0i
  6. 6Eric SchlosserEric SchlosserBorn 17 Aug 1959Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation, published in 2001 from his Rolling Stone reporting, followed the system behind a burger, from potato and cattle farms to meatpacking plants where injury rates were high. Later, Command and Control, in 2013, used declassified documents and interviews to explain how…0i
  7. 7Tim HarfordTim HarfordBorn 27 Sept 1973Tim Harford's Financial Times column and book The Undercover Economist, from 2005, used everyday puzzles such as the price of coffee to explain how markets work. As presenter of BBC Radio 4's More or Less from 2007 he and the team checked the statistics behind news stories and political claims, and…0i
  8. 8Michael PollanMichael PollanBorn 6 Feb 1955Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma in 2006 traced four meals back through their supply chains, from industrial maize and feedlots to organic and foraged food, and showed how farm subsidies shape what Americans eat. He reported by following the food himself; for an earlier article he bought a…0i
  9. 9Elizabeth KolbertElizabeth KolbertBorn 6 Jul 1961Elizabeth Kolbert of The New Yorker explained climate change in Field Notes from a Catastrophe, from 2006, by visiting the places and scientists recording it, from Greenland ice sheets to Alaskan permafrost. The Sixth Extinction, which won the 2015 Pulitzer prize for general non-fiction, did the…0i
  10. 10Robert PestonRobert PestonBorn 25 Apr 1960Robert Peston, as BBC business editor from 2006, explained the 2007 to 2008 banking crisis to a broad audience, breaking the news that Northern Rock had sought emergency Bank of England support. His blog and broadcasts walked viewers through bank funding and bailouts as they happened. Critics…0i