Bad Company: Private Equity and the Death of the American Dream

by Megan Greenwell Narrated by Dan Bittner

Overview

*ONE OF AV CLUB'S BEST BOOKS OF 2025*

""[An] indictment of an industry that has cannily tilted the playing field in its favor. Bad Company details how clichéd abstractions like `consolidation' and `efficiency' have given cover to real betrayals.” - The New York Times

A timely work of singular reportage and a damning indictment of the private equity industry told through the stories of four American workers whose lives and communities were upended by the ruinous effects of private equity takeovers.

Private equity runs our country, yet few Americans have any idea how ingrained it is in their lives. Private equity controls our hospitals, daycare centers, supermarket chains, voting machine manufacturers, local newspapers, nursing home operators, fertility clinics, and prisons. The industry even manages highways, municipal water systems, fire departments, emergency medical services, and owns a growing swath of commercial and residential real estate.

Private equity executives, meanwhile, are not only among the wealthiest people in American society, but have grown to become modern-day barons with outsized influence on our politics and legislation. CEOs of firms like Blackstone, Carlyle, KKR, and Apollo are rewarded with seats in the Senate and on the boards of the country's most august institutions; meanwhile, entire communities are hollowed out as a result of their buyouts. Workers lose their jobs. Communities lose their institutions. Only private equity wins.

Acclaimed journalist Megan Greenwell's Bad Company unearths the hidden story of private equity by examining the lives of four American workers that were devastated as private equity upended their employers and communities: a Toys R Us floor supervisor, a rural doctor, a local newspaper journalist, and an affordable housing organizer. Taken together, their individual experiences also pull back the curtain on a much larger project: how private equity reshaped the American economy to serve its own interests, creating a new class of billionaires while stripping ordinary people of their livelihoods, their health care, their homes, and their sense of security.

In the tradition of deeply human reportage like Matthew Desmond's Evicted, Megan Greenwell pulls back the curtain on shadowy multibillion dollar private equity firms, telling a larger story about how private equity is reshaping the economy, disrupting communities, and hollowing out the very idea of the American dream itself. Timely and masterfully told, Bad Company is a forceful rebuke of America's most consequential, yet least understood economic forces.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

"[An] indictment of an industry that has cannily tilted the playing field in its favor. Bad Company details how cliché abstractions like ‘consolidation’ and ‘efficiency have given cover to real betrayals.”
— New York Times

"Greenwell, through her thorough accounting of four companies' acquisitions and rapid declines, illustrates just how musty [the private equity playbook] has become, or maybe has always been"  — New Republic

“[A] deeply reported, briskly paced and highly disturbing account...Greenwell has written an essential guide to an industry that operates largely in the shadows” — Associated Press

“Greenwell gets at the heart of the industry’s inherently predatory business model. It’s a harrowing, vital, and timely depiction of late-stage capitalism.” — AV Club

“One of the more devastating indictments of the business in recent memory” — Bloomberg BusinessWeek

“[Greenwell] helps readers understand this perplexing topic by sharing relatable stories. This book will appeal to those who are interested in business, economics and finance.” — Booklist

“Greenwell’s debut does important work, scrutinizing a poorly understood sector of the economy that makes life more precarious for many Americans...An effective, humane look at financial practices hobbling venerable institutions.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“A scathing indictment of private equity...[The] stories outrage, but Greenwell finds reason for hope in ordinary people pushing back against private equity’s worst abuses...Greenwell also provides sound suggestions for reining in private equity...The result is a stark reminder of the human toll of corporate penny pinching.” — Publishers Weekly

“An absolutely riveting tour of the American economic system, told through the lives of four people whose jobs were swallowed by the beast we call private equity. Greenwell has single-handedly exposed the hidden economic machine that increasingly runs—and ruins—our lives. This bombshell of a book is indispensable to understand the economic forces running roughshod over America today.” — Christopher Leonard, New York Times bestselling author of Kochland and The Lords of Easy Money

“In Bad Company, one of our finest journalists embarks on a harrowing, humane inquiry into the state of American business and comes away with a classic statement on 21st century culture. It’s wonderful.” — Zachary D. Carter, New York Times bestselling author of The Price of Peace

“A hard and eloquent look at players who have far too long escaped public scrutiny.” — Eliza Griswold, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Amity and Prosperity and Circle of Hope

“With clear-eyed writing and honed investigative chops, Greenwell lays bare the private equity industry’s utter contempt for the rest of us. This is a book for this moment, a kind of cri de coeur. Reading these deeply reported tales left me shaking with anger.” — Alex Kotlowitz, award-winning author of There Are No Children Here and An American Summer

“Urgent and revelatory, Megan Greenwell leads us deep into the opaque world of private equity, where billion-dollar firms quietly seize control of the institutions and services we rely on. With wit, ferocity, and razor-sharp insight, Greenwell transforms what could be a dry financial story into a gripping mystery: how do these firms generate massive returns even as the businesses they buy collapse? Who, exactly, is cashing in on the wreckage? The result is both infuriating and galvanizing, a tour de force of investigative journalism that makes the harms of private equity not just legible but visceral.” — Brian Goldstone, author of There Is No Place for Us

“A beautifully written debut that takes a mostly abstract concept—private equity—and drills down to the human level, showing how a hyper-focus on profit is making life harder for everyone and destroying wide swaths of American life. The result is a crucial read that you won’t want to put down.” — Roxanna Asgarian, award-winning author of We Were Once a Family

Kirkus Reviews

★ 2025-04-15
Communities suffer when profiteers prevail.

Greenwell’s debut does important work, scrutinizing a poorly understood sector of the economy that makes life more precarious for many Americans. Private equity firms own hundreds of hospitals and newspapers, supermarket chains, countless smaller companies, and “the rights to Taylor Swift’s first six albums.” Yet the industry—as exemplified by Bain Capital, co-founded by Mitt Romney—has remained willfully “opaque,” spending tens of millions of dollars to elect lawmakers who protect its bountiful tax breaks and enable its ruthless profit-making maneuvers. Greenwell began her research after private equity bought and enfeebled her then-employer, sports website Deadspin. Spotlighting four people whose lives were adversely affected by private equity—a doctor, a retail worker, a journalist, and an affordable housing advocate—she carefully demonstrates the human cost of an industry playbook that prizes cutting workers, slashing services, and raising prices. The financial risk is small for private equity firms, which rely on money from investors—frequently, municipal pension funds and university endowments—and loans that they’re “not legally responsible for” because they’ve been taken out in the name of the company being purchased. As a result, vital hospitals and popular stores close or are driven into bankruptcy, and many people lose jobs. The retail worker Greenwell profiles was such a committed employee that she got a tattoo of the company’s mascot, but when private equity cut her job along with many others, she had to fight for even a sliver of the pay she was owed. While showing how private equity has recently shifted its emphasis from retail to “recession-proof” industries like health care, Greenwell also finds reason for hope in her subjects’ nascent activism. One of her subjects helped address a private equity–created health care shortage by helping found a new hospital.

An effective, humane look at financial practices hobbling venerable institutions.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940190876697
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	06/10/2025
Edition description:	Unabridged

Videos