A kaleidoscopic account of the financial carnage of the pandemic revealing the fear grit and
gambles that drove the economy’s winners and losers—from a leading business reporterA true
masterwork . . . perceptive well researched and captivating.”—David M. Rubenstein co-founder
and co-chairman of The Carlyle Group bestselling author of How to Invest It was the ultimate
test for CEOs and almost none of them saw it coming. In early March 2020 with the Dow Jones
flirting with 30 000 the world’s biggest companies were riding an eleven-year economic high.
By the end of the month millions were out of work iconic firms were begging for bailouts and
countless small businesses were in freefall. Slick consulting teams and country-club
connections were suddenly of little use: Business leaders were fumbling in the dark tossing
out long-term strategy and making decisions on the fly—decisions that they hoped might just
save them. In Crash Landing award-winning business journalist Liz Hoffman shows how the
pandemic set the economy on fire—but if you look closely the tinder was already there. After
the global financial crisis in 2008 corporate leaders embraced cheap debt and growth at all
costs. Wages flatlined. Millions were pushed into the gig economy. Companies crammed workers
into offices and airlines did the same with planes. Wall Street cheered on this relentless
march toward efficiency overlooking the collateral damage and the risks sowed in the process.
Based on astonishing access inside some of the world’s biggest and most iconic companies Crash
Landing is a kaleidoscopic account of the most remarkable period in modern economic history
revealing—through gripping fly-on-the-wall reporting—how CEOs battled an economic catastrophe
for which there was no playbook: among them Airbnb’s Brian Chesky blindsided by a virus in
the middle of a high-stakes effort to go public American Airlines’ Doug Parker shuttling
between K Street and the White House determined to secure a multibillion-dollar bailout and
Ford’s Jim Hackett as his assembly lines went from building cars to churning out ventilators.
In the tradition of Too Big to Fail and The Big Short Crash Landing exposes the fear grit
and gambles behind the pandemic economy while probing its implications for the future of work
corporate leadership and capitalism itself asking: Will this remarkable time give rise to
newfound resilience or become just another costly mistake to be forgotten?
