I learned so much from this book, and the writing was accessible and engaging. I really enjoyed the focus on people affected by private equity as opposed to pure numerical analysis or business trends. As with all nonfiction (imo) the book basically boils down to a couple main points repeated in different ways, and therefore felt a bit too long. Still, definitely worth a read.

In Bad Company: Private Equity and the Death of the American Dream, author Megan Greenwell profiles four American workers whose jobs and lives have been impacted by actions taken by Private Equity firms. I appreciated the way Greenwell was able to illuminate the human impact of this industry, especially her account of how private equity has impacted the healthcare system in rural communities.

I believe this book would have benefited from some additional interviews and insights from the Private Equity firms themselves. The pairing of these human stories with the history, business structure, and goals of the Private Equity industry would make a stronger thesis about the role of Private Equity in both the economy as well as the lives of Americans.

Thank you to Net Galley and Dey Street Books for this advanced copy.

In Bad Company, Megan Greenwell delivers a sharply written indictment of private equity and its corrosive influence on American life. With clarity and urgency, she examines how the financial engineering behind billion-dollar deals has quietly, often devastatingly, reshaped the lives of ordinary workers, families, and communities.

Greenwell doesn't just follow the money; she follows the people caught in its wake. The book centers on four very human stories: a Toys "R" Us employee watching her livelihood vanish, a rural doctor seeing healthcare gutted by cost cutting, a journalist at a hollowed out local newspaper, and a housing advocate fighting rising rents and subpar buildings. Through their experiences, Greenwell brings abstract economic forces down to the street level, where their impacts are felt most acutely.

What sets the book apart is its blend of narrative journalism and incisive economic critique. Greenwell makes a compelling case that private equity isn't just a niche financial sector, it’s become a shadowy force controlling some of the most vital institutions in our lives, from hospitals to housing to public services. She shows how firms extract wealth not by creating value, but by stripping it, often leaving nothing but debt and disrepair in their wake.

Greenwell connects the dots between private equity's rise and the fraying of the so called "American Dream". Job security, affordable housing, community newspapers, and quality healthcare, each is shown as a casualty of an economic model that prioritizes short term profit over long term stability.

In a moment when economic inequality continues to widen and many Americans feel increasingly disempowered, the book is both a diagnosis and a demand for accountability. It should be essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the invisible hands shaping our world, and who they’re really working for.

An incredibly readable look at the world of private equity. Megan Greenwell's research and reporting is top-notch, and her storytelling is both impactful and powerful.

Eminently readable look at private equity and the industries and places it holds sway over now. This book is uniquely formatted to tell four different and very personal stories before, during, and after private equity bought out an industry relevant to the subject's daily life.

It works well here. This is a largely arcane industry, by intent, and Greenwell does a fantastic job of pointing that out, keeping it interesting, and demystifying the financial details in small bites where it might otherwise have been a slog. I also appreciate this book for its ability to show solutions not as many financial non-fictions do with aspirational what-could-be-done or what-this-may-do but hard examples of what is currently working.

And this book is incredibly current. I was blown away by the recency of what it discusses. This is a book about industry for the past century (necessarily, to show how we got to where we are). It assumes no prior knowledge, explains all it needs to of law, of retail design, of real estate and pensions and so on, and yet has a laser-guided focus on being relevant to today. It succeeds wholly. Many books in this genre are Important as in "I should probably care about this!" but they don't often have the writing to back up more than that feeling of moral obligation. This does. It's a genuinely good read, and an important one.

I really hope this gets a wide audience. It deserves one.

My bookclub recently read George Packer's THE UNWINDING to see if it still stood up. it does, and BAD COMPANY is its worthy successor, picking up the story by putting a face to the anti-social capitalism that, in the Packer, made Youngstown a ghost town, and is now thoroughly destroying both the US economy and the fabric of American society: private equity firms.

Private equity firms have devoured around half the of companies on the stock market and now own around 20% of US corporate equity, making their rapacious ways largely inescapable. And their ways are no different than a mafia bust out. They take-over a company, sell every piece of it for cash, fire as many people as possible, drain it of equity, and load it with debt to pay off its own acquisition and to funnel the PE firm "management fees." Sustaining the business is, at best, the lowest priority; at worst, a mistake to be corrected by more plundering. They are aided by legislation that undertaxes their booty and overprotects their methods, having used that booty to buy off legislators on both sides of the aisle (Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell, for example, are majors beneficiaries of PE's blood money).

In BAD COMPANY, Greenwell covers four areas of the economy that PE is rapidly destroying: housing, healthcare, retail and journalism. She does so brilliantly by centering each area not just on specific example: a housing complex in northern Virginia, a hospital in rural Wyoming, Toys R Us and several newspapers, but through a person at each of the places who first suffers the depredations of their new PE overlords, then demonstrates how they can be fought. This strategy makes the book incredibly engaging and easily grasped, as well as humane and personal, and it gives readers some hope that PE firms can be beaten back. I knew a fair amount about how Toys R Us was destroyed and how once great newspapers have been turned into pennysavers, but the detail and depth made these parts of the book still eye-opening.

If there is any hole in the book it's that it could cover ten more areas of the economy and be three times as long, that's how bad the problem is. But that's not really necessary.

If you were enraged by books such as Matt Stoller's GOLIATH, Kurt Anderson's EVIL GENIUSES and Shoshana Zuboff's THE AGE OF SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM, you'll find this book as enlightening and important.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the early look.

Megan Greenwell's Bad Company is a very readable account of private equity, its growth over the years and its very-real impact on everyday people like their livelihoods, their workplaces, their homes and communities by following the stories of four people from very different parts of the country, backgrounds and occupations. Private equity is a term that I've heard in the news and media, but Greenwell's explanations make a complex subject much more digestible. This should be required reading in order for people to really understand how private equity works.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Dey Street books for the e-arc.

Bad Company is an excellent storytelling approach to explain and uncover private equity's insidious entanglement in our lives! The author, Megan Greenwell, is a former reporter and editor whose own job and career were affected by private equity.

Economics typically makes my eyes glaze over, so I was expecting to have to really lock in to read about private equity, but Greenwell does a fantastic job of illustrating private equity through some definition and explanation but mostly through real life examples. Her case studies follow four regular Americans impacted by the scourge of private equity in housing, healthcare, journalism, and retail. These stories are the best way to explain what private equity is and to emphasize how it has and will affect every one of us financially, emotionally, and physically.

Nonfiction written by reporters is always my favorite, and this is no exception. This book is easy to read, even amongst some necessary facts and figures and economics topics. The narrative is structured in three main parts: before private equity takeover, during the takeover, and after. In those sections, Greenwell moves between case studies, which kept me engaged and intrigued to read more. The four individuals followed in this book feel very real, which is impressive in a relatively short book. I am also especially impressed that Greenwell was able to leave me with some feelings of optimism despite the very grim present reality.

Greenwell chose a great array of case study areas, so I think this book would be interesting to anyone living in the US. I will definitely be recommending this book to anyone who wants to know why things are getting worse (and how they could get better!) and I would love to read more by Greenwell.

Thank you, Dey Street Books, for the arc!

This book should be required reading for everyone to help understand what is going on in this country. Focusing on the stories of 4 people is a masterful idea by the author as it not only humanizes the story but it draws a connection to every reader as our lives intersect with the mentioned industries every day.

You have always heard the term Private Equity banded about in business. I had a vague idea of what it was.
I knew that it was taking distressed businesses and selling them off piece by piece till there was nothing left of the original company, meanwhile the private equity would make millions of dollars.

The author says yep that is what Private Equity does, BUT SO MUCH MORE!

The author found 4 people affected by Private Equity when their companies that they worked for, lived in were bought out by private equity groups. One was in health care, journalism, one rented an apartment, and the other worked for Toys R Us.

With mounting dread, the author takes the reader into the seedy side of private equity. How they are robbing the American People of their taxes (thanks to Fannie and Freddie Mac low interest loans that private equity takes out) and money (higher prices for rent and medical care).

The author does NOT stop there, she puts real faces onto the situation, real companies, real apartments. She doesn't do it in a clinical way, she mixes the human interest, real lived experience with that of how private equity did it.

This book is vital and so desperately needed. I truly enjoyed the ending where the 4 human stories fought back against private equity and we all can too.