Riveting and indispensable. It's not until you see the events of 2012 laid out in order -- from hacking scandals to debt crises, Steve Jobs, and continuing fallout from the financial crisis -- that you realize what a strange and tumultuous year we've been through.--Malcolm Gladwell, author of "Outliers: The Story of Success"

Dean Starkman is editor of the Columbia Journalism Review's business section, The Audit, which tracks financial journalism in print and on the web, and is the magazine's Kingsford Capital Fellow. A reporter for two decades, he worked eight years as a Wall Street Journal staff writer and was chief of the Providence Journal's investigative unit. He has won numerous national and regional journalism awards and helped lead the Providence Journal to the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Investigations. Martha M. Hamilton is a writer and deputy editor with PolitiFact.com, which, in 2009, became the first non-print winner of the Pulitzer Prize. She also investigates complaints about financial journalism for CJR's The Audit. She was a writer, Wall Street and corporate crime editor, and personal finance columnist for The Washington Post until 2008. Hamilton is also the author, along with former Post colleague Warren Brown, of Black and White and Red All Over. Ryan Chittum is deputy editor of CJR's The Audit. He's a former reporter for The Wall Street Journal and has written for numerous other publications, including the New York Times. He is also a contributor to Bad News: How America's Business Press Missed the Story of the Century. His recent work can be seen at http://www.cjr.org/author/ryan-chittum-1/. Felix Salmon is the finance blogger for Reuters. He arrived in the United States in 1997 from England, where he worked at Euromoney magazine. He also wrote daily commentary on Latin American markets for the former news service, Bridge News, and created the Economonitor blog for Roubini Global Economics.

IntroductionAcknowledgmentsPart I. On the Ground1. The Sharp Sudden Decline of America's Middle Class, by Jeff Tietz, Rolling Stone2. The Great American Foreclosure Story: The Struggle for Justice and a Place to Call Home, by Paul Kiel, ProPublicaPart II. Bad Medicine3. Bad to the Bone: A Medical Horror Story, by Mina Kimes, Fortune4. Prescription for Addiction, by Thomas Catan, Devlin Barrett, and Timothy W. Martin, Wall Street Journal5. Anemia Drugs Made Billions, but at What Cost? Peter Whoriskey, Washington PostPart III. Big Business6. Making the World's Largest Airline Fly, by Drake Bennett, BusinessWeek7. Gusher, by Steve Coll, The New YorkerPart IV. Bad Business8. Vast Mexico Bribery Case Hushed Up by Wal-Mart After Top-Level Struggle, by David Barstow, New York Times9. Chesapeake and Rival Plotted to Suppress Land Prices Brian Grow, by Joshua Schneyer, Reuters10. Fear Fans Flames for Chemical Makers, by Patricia Callahan and Sam Roe, Chicago TribunePart V. Media and Marketing11. His. Hers., by Jessica Pressler, New York12. Top Five Ways Bleacher Report Rules the World!, by Joe Eskenazi, San Francisco Weekly13. Why India's Newspaper Industry Is Thriving, by Ken Auletta, The New Yorker14. The Frequent Fliers Who Flew Too Much, by Ken Bensinger, Los Angeles TimesPart VI. Big Think15. Trade-offs Between Inequality, Productivity, and Employment, by Steve Randy Waldman, Interfluidity16. The Naked and the TED, by Evgeny Morozov, The National ReviewPart VII. Adventures in Finance17. Wall Street Bonus Withdrawal Means Trading Aspen for Coupons, by Max Abelson, Bloomberg18. The Tale of a Whale of a Fail, by Matt Levine, Dealbreaker19. Case Against Bear and JPMorgan Provides Little Cheer, by Bethany McLean, Reuters20. How ECB Chief Outflanked German Foe in Fight for Euro, by Brian Blackstone and Marcus Walker, Wall Street Journal21. From The Trouble is the Banks, Edited by Mark Greif, Dayna Tortorici, Kathleen French, Emma Janaskie, and Nick Werle, n+122. Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs, by Greg Smith, New York Times23. Death Takes a Policy: How a Lawyer Exploited the Fine Print and Found Himself Facing Federal Charges, by Jake Bernstein, ProPublicaPart VIII. Brave New World24. How Companies Learn Your Secrets, by Charles Duhigg, New York Times Magazine25. Glass Works: How Corning Created the Ultrathin, Ultrastrong Material of the Future, by Bryan Gardiner, Wired26. Skilled Work, by Without the Worker, by John Markoff, New York Times27. I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave, by Mac McClelland, Mother Jones28. In China, Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad, by Charles Duhigg and David Barboza, New York Times29. How Apple and Amazon Security Flaws Led to My Epic Hacking, by Mat Honan, WiredPermissionsList of Contributors