Charles Fishman – Author Biography
Charles Fishman is an American investigative journalist and bestselling author whose books — including The Wal-Mart Effect and The Big Thirst — explain how giant organizations and essential resources really work.
Early Life
Charles Fishman grew up in Miami, Florida, and earned his bachelor’s degree from Harvard University. He began his journalism career at The Washington Post, where he worked as a metro and national reporter.
Career
Fishman spent six months covering the Challenger space shuttle disaster as a national reporter for the Post, and later served as an editor at the Orlando Sentinel and the News & Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina. Since 1996 he has been a senior writer at Fast Company magazine, where his reporting on business and technology has won numerous honors, including three Gerald Loeb Awards — the most prestigious prize in business journalism. His first book, The Wal-Mart Effect: How the World’s Most Powerful Company Really Works — and How It’s Transforming the American Economy (2006), was a New York Times bestseller that cracked open the retail giant’s wall of secrecy. He followed with The Big Thirst: The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water (2011) and One Giant Leap: The Impossible Mission That Flew Us to the Moon (2019), and co-authored the bestseller A Curious Mind with Hollywood producer Brian Grazer.
Major Works
His major works include The Wal-Mart Effect (2006), The Big Thirst (2011), One Giant Leap (2019), and A Curious Mind (2015, with Brian Grazer).
Writing Style and Themes
Fishman writes explanatory journalism at its best: deeply reported, story-driven, and relentlessly curious about how things actually work. His signature move is getting inside secretive organizations — he was the first reporter ever allowed inside a Tupperware factory and inside America’s only bomb factory. His themes are the hidden machinery of modern life: how a retailer reshapes the economy, how water reaches our taps, how thousands of people cooperated to reach the moon.
Legacy
Fishman is one of the leading practitioners of “how it works” journalism, and The Wal-Mart Effect remains the standard account of the retailer’s impact on American life. His work has shown that business reporting can be as gripping — and as important — as any other kind.
