Academic Research

Flutter Entertainment, the parent company of Paddy Power, is the largest gambling business in the world. The evidence of that success is visible everywhere, from shop fronts and bus shelters to sporting arenas and smartphone screens. The company’s rise to this point has been rapid, but like any gambler worth their salt, Paddy Power has always succeeded in finding an edge.

Series editor Andrew Leckey and guest editor Marshall Loeb have scoured the print media and have consulted with editors of major business and general-interest publications and with the deans of several schools of journalism in order to find the 30 best business stories from the past 12 months. Among the articles selected: Ken Auletta on Herb Allen's CEO retreat, from The New Yorker; Diane Brady on Martha Stewart, from Business Week; and Steve Silberman on creating a borderless global cyber-marketplace, from Wired.

Francesco Clark was a 24-year-old with a bright future when he went to the Hamptons for the weekend. A nocturnal dive into the pool's shallow end changed everything. Paralyzed from the neck down, doctors announced that he'd never move from his bed or breathe without assistance. But Francesco fought back....

Newspaperman tells the story of how an immigrant's shy son from Queens, New York, rose to the top of his industry, powered by little more than passion, brains, and hard work. Phillips began his career working as a copyboy for the New York Herald Tribune for 16 dollars a week... and ended it as publisher of The Wall Street Journal and CEO of its parent corporation, Dow Jones & Company. The life story of Warren Phillips is the story of the American newspaper business.

Erin Arvedlund, the financial reporter who questioned the amazing returns of Bernie Madoff's hedge funds way back in 2001, traces the life of the infamous swindler and addresses the tough questions surrounding the collapse of his Ponzi scheme.

At its best, business is both purposeful and profitable, dynamic and gainful, commercial and rewarding. Far from being opposites, good business and good behavior go hand-in-hand, and biblical principles can align with best practices. In Wisdom-Based Business, marketing and supply-chain professor Hannah J. Stolze draws principles from the Bible's wisdom literature and from evidence-based research to create a framework for business that is oriented toward excellence and sustainability.

This is Mary Lasker's story. Americans now recognize the National Institutes of Health as the national treasure that it is, but when she began her crusade, her first challenge was persuading elected leaders and federal officials that the health of the American public was even their problem. Armed with the knowledge she was right, and supported by her husband, the famed ad man Albert Lasker, and close friend Florence Mahoney, she built a coalition of noted physicians and scientists that fundamentally changed how we think about medical research funding.

Every shelf is different and every bookshelf tells a different story. One bookshelf can creak with character in a bohemian coffee shop and another can groan with gravitas in the Library of Congress. Writer and historian Lydia Pyne finds bookshelves to be holders not just of books but of so many other things: values, vibes, and verbs that can be contained and displayed in the buildings and rooms of contemporary human existence.