143 thinkers, books, and ideas connected to this field.
American journalist — Wall Street Journal contributor — author of Irreversible Damage and Bad Therapy — who argues that social contagion and therapy culture are harming adolescents, particularly girls.
Polish dissident intellectual who was a leading figure in the Solidarity movement and founded Gazeta Wyborcza — Poland's first post-Communist newspaper.
American journalist and author — author of Endurance — who interviewed surviving crew members of the Shackleton expedition to write the definitive survival narrative.
American journalist and historian who wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning Gulag — the definitive history of the Soviet forced labor system — and Twilight of Democracy, a personal account of how friends became autocrats.
American journalist and socialist feminist who immersed herself in minimum-wage labor to write Nickel and Dimed — and who wrote influential critiques of positive thinking ideology.
American financial journalist — co-author of The Smartest Guys in the Room (on Enron) and Shaky Ground (on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) — whose 2001 Fortune article questioning Enron's earnings was the first published questioning of Enron's accounting, triggering the collapse.
American technology journalist — Bloomberg senior executive editor — author of The Everything Store (on Amazon) and Amazon Unbound — the most thorough journalist chronicler of Amazon and Jeff Bezos.
American technology historian, podcaster, and author of How the Internet Happened, documenting the history of the commercial internet from 1993 to 2000.
American journalist and author who placed the first DoorDash order in 2013 while living near Stanford, and later wrote Weed the People, a journalistic account of marijuana legalization.
Ronan Farrow's 2019 account of investigating Harvey Weinstein — including the attempts by Weinstein, AMI (National Enquirer), and NBC to suppress the story — the definitive account of the #MeToo investigations.
Charles Dickens was a Victorian novelist whose A Tale of Two Cities directly inspired The Dark Knight Rises.
American journalist and author — New York Times — Pulitzer Prize winner — author of The Power of Habit and Supercommunicators — who writes narrative nonfiction about the science of behavior.
British journalist and author — former editor of The Daily Telegraph and The Spectator — author of the three-volume authorized biography of Margaret Thatcher — life peer (Baron Moore of Etchingham) — the leading journalistic voice of British Thatcherite conservatism.
American journalist and author who wrote Hetty: The Genius and Madness of America's First Female Tycoon — a biography of Hetty Green — and other business and history books.
American journalist and former New York Times war correspondent who became a prominent left-wing critic of corporate media, American imperialism, and the liberal class.
British-American journalist and polemicist who was the most brilliant essayist of his generation — and whose support for the Iraq War, combined with his New Atheism, alienated his former left-wing allies.
American writer and professor who argued that the internet enables new forms of collective action and that cognitive surplus — time freed from television — will be used for creative production.
American Ivy League research university founded in 1754 as King's College, home of the Columbia Journalism School and a major center of social science, law, and medicine in the United States.
American journalist and social commentator — New York Times Op-Ed columnist — author of Bobos in Paradise, The Social Animal, The Road to Character, and How to Know a Person — who writes at the intersection of social science and moral philosophy.
American author — whose Best Evidence (1980) argued that President Kennedy's body was altered before the official autopsy to conceal evidence of conspiracy — one of the most extensively researched JFK assassination books.
American journalist and author specializing in business biography, best known for his books on Jamie Dimon and McKinsey & Company.
Uruguayan journalist and writer who wrote Open Veins of Latin America, Memory of Fire, and Soccer in Sun and Shadow — one of the most widely read Latin American leftist writers — who later partly repudiated Open Veins as 'too rigid and too dogmatic.'
Ellen Goodman is an American journalist and Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist who wrote for The Boston Globe for over 40 years on social, ethical, and political issues.
American investigative journalist whose Fast Food Nation exposed the industrial food system and whose Command and Control is the definitive account of nuclear weapons accidents.
American novelist and journalist whose prose style — short sentences, deliberate understatement, iceberg theory — transformed American fiction and whose life as an adventurer (Paris expatriate, WWI ambulance driver, WWII correspondent, big game hunter, deep sea fisherman) became as famous as his novels.
American men's magazine founded in 1933 — which published major literary nonfiction including Tom Wolfe's Noyce essay, Norman Mailer, Gay Talese, and others — and which served as a primary venue for New Journalism's most important work.
Every is a bundle of newsletters and analysis covering technology, AI, business, and culture — founded by Dan Shipper and Nathan Baschez — notable for its AI-first editorial approach and its model of bundling independent writers.
Hunter S. Thompson's 1972 Gonzo journalism classic — narrating a drug-fueled road trip to Las Vegas with his attorney — which functions as an autopsy of the 1960s dream and a portrait of American excess.
Stephen Dubner's podcast — extending the Freakonomics franchise into audio — covering economics, behavior, and incentives through reporting and interviews — one of the longest-running and most successful non-fiction podcasts.
American political journalist — co-founder of The Weekly Standard — long-time Fox News contributor and The McLaughlin Group panelist — who covered the Reagan and Bush administrations.
American editor and author — editor of the Saturday Evening Post for 36 years (1899–1937) — author of Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son — who transformed the Saturday Evening Post into the most widely read American magazine.
British novelist and essayist — author of 1984 and Animal Farm — who created the modern political dystopia and wrote the most influential political essays in English — died at 46 leaving two books that are still the primary reference points for totalitarianism.
American journalist and former constitutional lawyer who reported Edward Snowden's NSA surveillance revelations and has become a prominent critic of both the Democratic establishment and mainstream media.
American feminist activist and journalist who was one of the leading figures of second-wave feminism — co-founding Ms. magazine, writing influential feminist essays, and becoming the most recognizable face of the women's liberation movement.
Michael Lewis's 2023 account of Sam Bankman-Fried and the collapse of FTX, drawn from extensive personal access to SBF before and during his fraud trial.
American journalist and researcher who has covered the UFO/UAP phenomenon from a skeptical-but-open perspective, emphasizing the psychological and cultural dimensions.
American financial journalist — Wall Street Journal reporter and author — who wrote The Man Who Solved the Market (on Jim Simons and Renaissance Technologies) — the most credentialed journalist covering quantitative finance.
British writer and former GQ journalist whose Substack essays synthesizing psychology research, cultural criticism, and philosophical insight into long-form analytical pieces attracted a large following in the intellectual content creation space.
American journalist, critic, and social commentator — 'the Sage of Baltimore' — who wrote The American Language and dozens of cultural critiques, and who was responsible for introducing Nietzsche's philosophy to American readers through his 1908 study.
American journalist and cultural critic whose acerbic commentary on American democracy, religion, and culture defined an era of skeptical, elitist journalism.
The Harvard Crimson is the daily student newspaper of Harvard University, founded in 1873 and the oldest continuously published daily college newspaper in the United States.
American journalist — Washington Post contributor — author of Pound Foolish (a critique of the personal finance industry) and The Index Card — who critiques the personal finance advice industry.
American novelist and journalist — Nobel Prize in Literature 1954 — author of The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and The Old Man and the Sea — who created the most influential prose style in 20th-century American fiction.
American journalist and politician who co-founded the New York Times in 1851 and served as its first editor, establishing its moderate, factual tone.
American journalist — inventor of Gonzo journalism — author of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Hell's Angels — who placed himself at the center of his stories, blurring the line between reporter and participant — whose style influenced every major magazine journalist of the subsequent 30 years.
American investigative journalist who ran I.F. Stone's Weekly for nineteen years — a one-man newsletter that was the model for independent investigative journalism.
Ian Fleming was a British journalist and novelist who created James Bond in fourteen novels between 1953 and 1966, establishing the template for the modern spy thriller.
American investigative journalist whose History of the Standard Oil Company was the foundational work of American muckraking journalism — leading to the Supreme Court's breakup of Standard Oil.
Gunther's survey of Africa in the mid-1950s — just as independence movements were beginning, capturing the continent at the cusp of decolonization.
John Gunther's 1939 survey of Asia's political landscape — covering Japan, China, India, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East — providing American readers with an accessible account of Asia on the eve of World War II.
John Gunther's pioneering work of political journalism — a country-by-country survey of European leaders and politics in the mid-1930s, giving American readers their first accessible portrait of the forces shaping pre-war Europe.
John Gunther's survey of Latin American countries and their leaders in 1941 — applying his 'Inside' format to the Western Hemisphere at a moment of strategic importance.
Gunther's most ambitious application of the 'Inside' format — a state-by-state survey of postwar America, combining political analysis with vivid portraiture.
James Gleick is an American science writer best known for 'Chaos' (1987) and for making complex scientific ideas accessible to general readers.
American author and journalist — author of Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art — who synthesized research on breathing mechanics and ancient breathing practices in a book that created a mass interest in nasal breathing and breathwork.
American journalist and author who wrote The Richest Woman in America: Hetty Green in the Gilded Age — a biography of Hetty Green — and other historical biographies.
Jeffrey Gettleman is an American journalist who served as East Africa bureau chief for the New York Times and won a Pulitzer Prize; he participated in a post-university African road trip that Christopher Nolan filmed.
British-American journalist who wrote Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies — the most detailed journalistic account of the US military's STARGATE remote viewing program — providing the historical record of the program's personnel, methods, and results.
American journalist and author who wrote Emperors of Chocolate after securing rare access to the notoriously secretive Mars family company.
British journalist — author of Chasing the Scream (on the drug war), Lost Connections (on depression), and Stolen Focus (on attention) — who writes contrarian popular psychology that challenges official narratives on addiction, depression, and focus.
American journalist who wrote the 'Inside' series — Inside Europe, Inside Asia, Inside Latin America, Inside USA, Inside Africa — providing accessible accounts of world regions for American audiences in the mid-20th century.
American journalist and former editor-in-chief of Time Inc. who co-authored Sam Walton's autobiography Made in America.
British journalist and editor — former editor of National Review — former advisor to Margaret Thatcher — O'Sullivan's Law ('any organization or enterprise that is not explicitly right-wing will become left-wing over time') — current editor of Quadrant.
Australian investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker who spent 60 years reporting on war, imperialism, and Western foreign policy from a radical anti-imperialist perspective.
American conservative commentator — editor of Commentary magazine — former White House speechwriter (Reagan and H.W. Bush) — son of Norman Podhoretz — one of the leading voices in neoconservative political commentary.
British journalist and author who has written extensively on Africa — Africa: A Biography of the Continent, Man on Earth, Missing Links — combining photojournalism and historical research to produce comprehensive accounts of African history and human evolution.
American consumer affairs and libertarian journalist — ABC News 20/20 correspondent and co-anchor — Fox Business Network — whose career transformed from consumer advocate to free-market libertarian — author of Give Me a Break and No, They Can't.
Donald Katz's 1994 insider account of Nike at the height of its 1990s cultural dominance — covering the Air Jordan peak, the Michael Jordan relationship, and the internal culture of a company that had become a global phenomenon.
American journalist who co-hosts Blocked and Reported with Jesse Singal — covering media criticism, cancel culture, and heterodox positions from a left-leaning perspective skeptical of progressive orthodoxy.
Irish journalist and columnist — former Irish Times and Sunday Times Ireland columnist — whose writing on the Irish Free State, WWI, and the Troubles was influential and whose career ended after a 2017 column widely interpreted as antisemitic.
Kurt Andersen is an American journalist, novelist, and cultural critic known for co-founding Spy magazine and for his cultural analysis of American taste and technology.
American anti-trafficking activist and founder of the Justice Defense Fund who led the Trafficking Hub campaign that resulted in Mastercard and Visa suspending payments to Pornhub and the subsequent removal of millions of videos.
American muckraking journalist who exposed municipal corruption in The Shame of the Cities — the first systematic investigation of American urban political machines.
British documentary filmmaker known for his non-judgmental, curious approach to extreme subjects — Nazis, drug addiction, sex workers, autism — whose gentle interviewing style disarms subjects into revealing genuine vulnerability.
British author and journalist — author of The Case Against the Sexual Revolution — who argues from a feminist perspective that the sexual revolution has primarily benefited men and harmed women, and that traditional norms around sex existed for functional reasons.
Johann Hari's 2024 examination of GLP-1 weight loss drugs (Ozempic, Wegovy) — exploring their effectiveness, side effects, and what their existence reveals about the nature of obesity and appetite.
Canadian journalist — New Yorker staff writer — author of The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, and Talking to Strangers — the best-selling popular social science writer — whose books are simultaneously the most praised and most criticized in pop-psychology.
Russian-American journalist and author — staff writer at The New Yorker — author of The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin and The Future Is History — a leading analyst of Russian politics and authoritarianism.
American journalist who wrote for Rolling Stone and is known for his savage financial reporting and his role reporting the Twitter Files.
British journalist and military historian who edited the Daily Telegraph and the Evening Standard and has written authoritative histories of WWII, Korea, and Vietnam.
American journalist — former Washington Bureau Chief of TIME — co-author with Nancy Gibbs of The Presidents Club (on the relationships between living former presidents) and The Preacher and the Presidents.
American journalist and professor — author of The Comfort Crisis — who argues that modern comfort-seeking leads to physical and mental health decline, and that intentional exposure to discomfort is essential for wellbeing.
Michael Kinsley is an American political journalist and commentator, former editor of The New Republic and founding editor of Slate, known for his proposal that government exit the marriage business entirely.
American journalist who has written the most influential popular books on food, food systems, and recently psychedelics.
British journalist and editor at The Economist who wrote Forgotten Continent — the authoritative liberal survey of modern Latin American politics and development.
American independent journalist — who covered the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and the Caucasus as an independent blogger-journalist — one of the pioneer independent online war correspondents — author of The Road to Fatima Gate and Where the West Ends.
American conservative columnist — syndicated since 1987 — author of Useful Idiots and Sex Matters — who booed at CPAC 2018 for criticizing the Republican Party's treatment of women — one of the original Never Trump conservative voices.
American journalist — Managing Editor of TIME magazine (2013–2017) — who became the first woman to lead TIME — Harvard's Joan Shorenstein Center director — author of The Preacher and the Presidents (on Billy Graham's relationships with all US presidents).
American journalist — Rolling Stone contributing editor — author of The Game (on the pickup artist community) and The Truth (on sex addiction and relationships) — who became the most prominent journalist to document and then critique the seduction community.
The literary journalism movement of the 1960s–70s that applied fiction techniques (scene-by-scene construction, dialogue, point of view, status details) to nonfiction reportage.
American newspaper of record founded in 1851, which executed the most successful digital subscription transformation of any legacy print newspaper — growing to over 10 million subscribers by 2023.
American writer whose essay 'Is Google Making Us Stupid?' (2008) launched a major cultural debate about the internet's effect on cognition and deep reading.
American novelist and journalist who wrote The Naked and the Dead and became one of the defining literary-intellectual personalities of postwar America — combative, egotistical, and prolific.
British journalist — former Guardian columnist — author of Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals — who argues that productivity optimization is a death-anxiety coping mechanism and that accepting finite time is the path to meaningful life.
British historian and journalist who wrote sweeping histories of Christianity, Judaism, modern times, and the United States — and biographies of Napoleon, Churchill, Darwin, and Jesus — combining accessible narrative with strong Catholic conservative perspective.
American commentator and interviewer — host of Hoover Institution's Uncommon Knowledge — former Reagan White House speechwriter who wrote 'Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!' — one of the most capable long-form interviewers in conservative media.
Richard Hack is an American author and journalist who wrote 'Hughes: The Private Diaries, Memos and Letters' (2001), a biography of Howard Hughes that Castle Rock optioned for Christopher Nolan to adapt.
American biographer — author of The Power Broker and the multi-volume The Years of Lyndon Johnson — two Pulitzer Prize winners — the greatest living American biographer — whose work examines how power is accumulated and used in American democracy.
American journalist and author — author of Boyd and American Patriot — who wrote the definitive biography of John Boyd and John Glenn.
American political journalist — former Washington Post national political reporter — CBS News correspondent — co-author of Peril (with Bob Woodward) — known for his extensive Republican congressional source network.
American journalist and author — author of Shadow Divers, Crashing Through, and Pirate Hunters — who writes obsessive-quest narrative nonfiction.
American journalist and author — New Yorker — who broke the Harvey Weinstein sexual assault story and the Matt Lauer and Les Moonves stories — Pulitzer Prize 2018 — author of Catch and Kill — the journalist most associated with the #MeToo movement.
American journalist and historian — author of Empire of the Summer Moon (on the Comanche and Quanah Parker) and Rebel Yell (on Stonewall Jackson) — Texas Monthly senior editor — the most readable popular historian of the American West and Civil War.
American playwright and New Yorker journalist who wrote The Days of Duveen — the definitive profile of art dealer Joseph Duveen — and was one of the most successful Broadway playwrights of the 1930s and 40s.
American financial journalist — Wall Street Journal reporter — author of The Quants (on quantitative traders before the 2008 crash) and Dark Pools (on high-frequency trading) — who covers the intersection of technology and finance.
British journalist and author at the Council on Foreign Relations — who wrote The Power Law (venture capital history), More Money Than God (hedge funds), and biographies of Alan Greenspan and Robert McNamara — making him the leading historian of modern finance.
British television journalist and documentary maker known for immersive BBC investigations into global issues — child labor, sex trafficking, drugs — brought to mainstream audiences.
American political journalist — former Weekly Standard senior writer — co-founder of The Dispatch — author of the authorized biography of Dick Cheney — who left Fox News in 2021 over misinformation concerns.
The New York Times's flagship daily news podcast hosted by Michael Barbaro, delivering a single in-depth reported story per weekday in approximately 20 minutes.
The Economist is a British weekly newsmagazine covering global politics, economics, and culture.
Tom Wolfe's account of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters — the founding document of New Journalism and the defining portrait of the early 1960s psychedelic counterculture.
Neil Strauss's 2005 embedded journalism account of the pickup artist community — documenting the techniques (negging, peacocking, the Mystery Method) and the community's self-destruction — the most widely read document of the seduction community.
Upton Sinclair's muckraking novel of the Chicago meatpacking industry — intended as an argument for socialism and immigrant workers' rights, but remembered for its effect on food safety legislation.
The New York Times is America's newspaper of record, founded in 1851, and one of the world's most influential publications.
Tom Wolfe's account of the Mercury astronauts and the test pilots who preceded them — using New Journalism technique to explore the culture of military aviation and the nature of courage.
Nadège Forestier and Nazanine Ravai's out-of-print account of Bernard Arnault's acquisition of LVMH — written contemporaneously with the events — providing an insider view of the deals, the personalities, and the French business world reactions.
Anglo-American political radical and pamphleteer whose Common Sense made independence comprehensible to ordinary Americans and whose Rights of Man was the defining radical text of the French Revolutionary era.
Tom Hiney is a British journalist and author who wrote the biography 'Raymond Chandler' (1997), widely regarded as the definitive life of the noir novelist.
American investigative journalist — author of Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties — who spent 20 years investigating the Manson murders and found evidence suggesting CIA involvement and law enforcement cover-ups.
Tom Shone is a British film critic and author best known for his book-length studies of blockbuster cinema and director Christopher Nolan.
American journalist and novelist — founder of New Journalism — author of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, The Bonfire of the Vanities, A Man in Full, I Am Charlotte Simmons, and The Right Stuff — who created the most important American journalism genre of the 20th century.
American novelist and socialist activist whose The Jungle exposed the conditions of Chicago's meatpacking industry — accidentally producing the Pure Food and Drug Act while failing to achieve his intended socialist goals.
American biographer, journalist, and former CNN chairman whose biographies of Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, and Elon Musk defined the genre of technology genius biography and became the primary public intellectual accounts of each subject.
American journalist and political theorist who wrote the most important account of public opinion in modern democracy and ran the most widely syndicated newspaper column in American history.
Bruce Barcott's 2015 journalistic account of the marijuana legalization movement in America, following the political and cultural battles around cannabis policy.
British journalist and author — author of The Status Game, Selfie, and The Science of Storytelling — who writes accessible pop-psychology on narrative, identity, and social status.
American newspaper publisher — who built the Hearst Corporation (largest newspaper chain in the US) through sensationalism, invented yellow journalism, influenced US entry into the Spanish-American War, and built Hearst Castle — the model for Citizen Kane.
Ken Auletta's 2001 account of the US government's antitrust case against Microsoft — covering the trial, the lawyers, the government strategy, and Bill Gates's famous deposition — providing the definitive narrative of the most important antitrust case in technology history.
CNN (Cable News Network) is an American cable and satellite television channel launched in 1980 by Ted Turner as the world's first 24-hour cable news network. It pioneered continuous news coverage and became a global brand, though its ratings and reputation have been contested in the post-2016 media environment.
American journalist and author, former deputy editor at Bloomberg Businessweek, known for narrative business journalism including his biography of Glock.
American journalist and author of 1491 and 1493 — landmark popular histories that transformed understanding of pre-Columbian Americas and the Columbian Exchange.
William F. Buckley Jr.'s idiosyncratic journal of two weeks in his life — a model of the literary personal essay as self-portrait, blending commentary, anecdote, and confession.
The pen name and literary identity of Samuel Langhorne Clemens — Mark Twain — the defining voice of American literature and arguably the greatest American humorist.
Creator and host of Hardcore History — the most widely listened-to history podcast in the world, known for marathon-length episodes (4-6 hours) on military and political history.
Joseph Addison and Richard Steele — creators of The Tatler (1709) and The Spectator (1711-12), the periodical essays that invented the modern English essay form and created the 'public sphere.'
American automotive journalist and editor of Car and Driver — creator of the Cannonball Baker Sea-to-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash (the inspiration for the Cannonball Run films) and biographer of Enzo Ferrari.
British-American journalist and blogger — editor of The New Republic in the 1990s, pioneering political blogger (The Daily Dish), and early advocate for same-sex marriage from a conservative Catholic perspective.
American political journalist and blogger — co-founder of Vox, author of One Billion Americans, and writer of the Slow Boring newsletter advocating for economically liberal, demographically ambitious politics.
American journalist and columnist — known for applying economic reasoning to policy questions from a libertarian-leaning perspective at The Atlantic, Bloomberg View, and The Washington Post.
British journalist and author who has written the most accessible and rigorous accounts of East Asian economic development — particularly How Asia Works (2013) and Asian Godfathers (2007).
American author and feminist intellectual best known for The Beauty Myth (1990), a landmark feminist critique of beauty standards. In later years became controversial for heterodox positions on COVID policy, vaccine mandates, and civil liberties, moving away from mainstream progressive positions.
Australian politician (born 1957), 28th Prime Minister of Australia (2013-2015), Liberal Party leader known for his staunch social conservatism, opposition to carbon taxes, and border protection policies. Former Rhodes Scholar and Oxford-educated journalist-turned-politician.
Canadian journalist and researcher of South Asian origin, born c. 1975. A regular contributor to the National Post and other outlets, Subramanya covers Canadian immigration policy, multicultural politics, and economic issues from a centre-right to classical-liberal perspective. Has written critically on mass immigration's economic and social effects and on the Trudeau government's policy record.