Sandy Weill: The Travelers chairman is happy (Fortune, 1997)

Sandy Weill is best known for building Citigroup into the "too big to fail" banking institution it was when the financial crisis began in 2007. In the late 1990s, he pushed to overturn the Glass-Steagall Act, which made it impossible for investment banking, commercial banking, and insurance services to be combined under one company. Weill has been mostly quiet since he left the bank in 2006, but last week he MORE

Life in the Olympic cauldron from the producer's seat

Producers at NBC have been waiting for this day for years. No matter how much they prepared for it, only their adrenaline can help them react to the inevitable, unexpected events.

By Douglas Alden Warshaw

FORTUNE -- As the Olympic flame is carried closer and closer to its 17-day perch inside the cauldron at London's Olympic Stadium -- "cauldron," what a great word, with its echo of medieval castles, kings, magic and MORE

A novel take on the financial crisis

Fiction is sometimes better than fact. A review of A Fatal Debt, John Gapper's novelization of the fall of Wall Street.

By Katie Benner, writer

FORTUNE -- Few real-life events have produced as many villains, intriguing plot twists, and surprise endings as the recent financial crisis. But most of the non-fiction books on the topic have been dry, jargon-y tomes that read like McKinsey case studies and only hint at the MORE

Ford's delicate recall dance

No automaker wants to repeat Toyota's disastrous mistakes. With its most important launch in years coming up, Ford certainly can't afford to.

By Doron Levin, contributor

FORTUNE -- The 2013 Escape sport-utility vehicle, a rookie in Ford Motor Co.'s product lineup, stumbled in the starting blocks last week as the automaker ordered owners of the model to park their new cars immediately to avert the danger of a fire.

The design flaw leading MORE

Groupthink, (Fortune 1952)

The U.S. businessman has long kept a suspicious eye on what's been going on in Washington. Meantime some surprising things have been happening in his own backyard -- subtle but pervasive changes in American ideas that ultimately may prove more decisive than anything that has occurred in politics or economics.

By William H. Whyte, Jr.

Editor's note: Every Sunday, Fortune publishes a favorite story from our magazine archives. The Penn State abuse scandal MORE

How a con artist got conned

Inside one of the world's weirdest Ponzi schemes. A review of Octopus: Sam Israel, the Secret Market, and Wall Street's Wildest Con, by Guy Lawson.

By Jennifer Reingold, senior editor

FORTUNE -- Forget Bernie Madoff. If you want a really crazy story about a Ponzi scheme --one where the scheme itself is actually the least interesting part of the whole sordid saga -- take a look at Guy Lawson's Octopus: Sam MORE

GM's fearless bid to trounce BMW

After years of trying -- and failing -- General Motors finally has a shot at giving the German luxury manufacturer a run for its money.

By Doron Levin, contributor

FORTUNE -- With the introduction of the Cadillac ATS, General Motors Co. (GM) is anchoring its model lineup with a compact sedan aimed straight at the BMW 3 Series, Mercedes C-Class and Audi A4 -- the German triad that dominates global luxury car MORE

Elites still rule

Rumors of meritocracy's demise may be exaggerated. A review of Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy, by Christopher Hayes.

By Lisa Mogilanski, contributor

FORTUNE -- I could see them from my dorm room window. The signs on the tents in front of the John Harvard statue read: "We want a university for the 99%!" With this slogan, Occupy Harvard -- a student protest expressing solidarity with the larger Occupy movement MORE

Modern culture: Yogurt's unstoppable rise

It's the fastest-growing food segment in the nation with many more spoons to fill.

By Beth Kowitt, writer

FORTUNE -- Any way you want it, that's the way they make it: Swiss, Greek, drinkable, probiotic, nonfat, cream top, crumble top. At McDonald's (MCD) it's served as a parfait, at the farmers' market it's made out of goat milk (from local goats, natch). Yogurt's growth has outpaced the rest of the U.S. MORE

This man wants to run General Motors

But first Steve Girsky will have to fix GM's badly broken European operations -- a disaster that has burned through $14 billion in a decade and claimed many executives before him.

By Doron Levin, contributor

FORTUNE -- When Stephen J. Girsky was a Morgan Stanley equity analyst routinely criticizing General Motors' myriad shortcomings, executives at the Detroit automaker surely wondered how a Wall Street know-it-all might actually perform if he was in MORE