These 8 Books Pull Back the Curtain on Institutional Scandals

A Wall Street Journal and New York Times bestseller, award-winning journalist David Enrich chronicles the rise and fall of Deutsche Bank. Known today as the face of financial ruin and criminality, the bank was revealed to be involved in money laundering, tax fraud, and sanctions violations, among a host of other crimes.

Beginning with Deutsche's origins, including funding the building of Auschwitz, Enrich details how, in the 1990s, they went global, namely in the pursuit of Wall Street riches. In the following years, they would loan money to an array of scandalous clients, including convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Dive into what the Philadelphia Inquirer calls "A jaw-dropping financial thriller," in a story of when greed goes unchecked. 

In a harrowing account, investigative journalist Maria Laurino unpacks centuries of deception, in which the Vatican instructed mothers to exploit their children.

Between the years of 1950 and 1970, the church sent over three thousand Italian children, often labelled "illegimate" in one way or another, to the United States.

From there, they were adopted into "good" Catholic homes, but would grow up without answers, which Laurino uncovers, while also holding the church and its leaders accountable.

Described by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Elizabeth Strout as "[a]n amazing read [...] [that] unfolds the nefarious history of the Italian 'war adoptions' in a manner that is entirely readable and clear," dive into this overlooked facet of history.

In this illuminating transcription, Brinkley and Nichter "capture[] a dark and dramatic year in presidential history—and the words of Richard Nixon himself (New York Times Book Review).

From 1971 to 1973, the taping system in the White House recorded over 3,700 hours of conversations, with this account focusing on the final year.

Covering everything from the Vietnam ceasefire to the Watergate investigation, scandals abound on every page, offering a never-before-seen look into Nixon's tumultuous presidency. 

For fans of Netflix's The Crown, this #1 New York Times-bestselling book, which offers an insider look at the world's most recognized family, is for you. Award-winning journalist and biographer Kitty Kelley sets foot in Buckingham Palace, finding all the skeletons stashed away in closets. 

With iconic figures like Queen Elizabeth, Prince Charles, and Princess Diana, from chaotic marriages to lovers, there is no shortage of drama.

Peel back the curtain and step into "pages that genuinely illuminate the careers of the flawed humans who have occupied and circled the throne this century" (Washington Post).

Joining forces in a New York Times-bestselling account, reporters Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang chronicle Facebook's epic loss in public favor.

A Fortune, Cosmopolitan, and WIRED Book of the Year, the duo draws on insider knowledge, unraveling the tech giants' politics and rivalries that ultimately led them to neglect consumers' best interests.

From mishandling data to platforming hate speech, executives Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg routinely demonstrated that profits were their major concern—and, to the company's demise, left morals on the back burner. 

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist John Carreyrou was the first to break the story: that a company worth $9 billion, promising to revolutionize the blood test process, was actually built on a technology that didn't work.

In 2014, the founder of Theranos, Elizabeth Holmes, was widely accepted as the female Steve Jobs, recruiting investors as big as Larry Ellison and Tim Draper, to support her startup. 

The Stanford dropout, at Theranos' peak, was estimated to be worth $4.7 billion—but after receiving a tip from one of Holmes' employees, Carreyrou, would reveal it all to be a sham.

Despite receiving threats of legal response, Carreyrou pushed forth, and his journey is recounted in this captivating story, set against the backdrop of the frenzied Silicon Valley. 

In 2011, a mid-20s programmer named Ross Ulbricht managed to build a billion-dollar empire from his bedroom—a market called the Silk Road, where anything could be traded for a price. Under the protection of the Dark Web, Ulbricht was free from the government's watch.

That is, until the media got involved, and an epic two-year search to find the culprit ensued.

Vanity Fair correspondent and New York Times-bestselling author Nick Bilton draws on insider information, with key players helping him to chronicle the twists and tales of a terrible idea gone way too far. 

In 2017, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Ronan Farrow led a routine network television investigation, only to uncover something far more sinister: a corrupt system of abuse, with Harvey Weinstein, one of Hollywood's most famous producers, at the helm. 

Digging up decades of sexual misconduct and predatory behavior, Farrow was met by a wall of hardball lawyers and lucrative operators, all working to silence victims and evade accountability.

In what is now an HBO documentary series, Farrow reveals all the tactics these high-powered individuals attempted to deploy—and how, despite everything, he delivered the world the truth. 

In December 1972, Jean McConville, a mother of ten, was kidnapped from her Belfast home, never to be seen again. Representing only one of countless brutal attacks of the I.R.A., no one said anything, for fear of retaliation.

New Yorker staff writer Patrick Radden Keefe offers a "masterful history of the Troubles," where I.R.A. members, rather than achieving the initial objective of peacefully uniting Ireland, killed people and committed heinous crimes (Maureen Corrigan, NPR).