The sudden implosion of Toys R Us came about six months after the company sketched out an ambitious reinvestment plan to get back on its feet by using bankruptcy to achieve a fresh start. What happened? Toys R Us confirmed Thursday that it plans to close all of its U.S. stores, barring a last-second deal to keep the 200 best locations alive, after its best-laid plans to survive Chapter 11 went awry.

Amazon has grown so large and difficult to comprehend that it’s worth taking stock of why and how it’s left corporate America so thoroughly freaked out. Executives at the biggest U.S. companies mentioned Amazon thousands of times during investor calls last year, according to transcripts—more than President Trump and almost as often as taxes.

How can anyone call higher education wasteful in an age when its financial payoff is greater than ever? The earnings premium for college graduates has rocketed to 73 percent—that is, those with a bachelor’s degree earn, on average, 73 percent more than those who have only a high-school diploma, up from about 50 percent in the late 1970s. The key issue, however, isn’t whether college pays, but why. The simple, popular answer is that schools teach students useful job skills. But this dodges puzzling questions.

Mark Cuban grew up working class in Pittsburgh. Today, Cuban is worth more than $3 billion, owns the Dallas Mavericks and is a star on ABC's hit reality television show, "Shark Tank." He chased any number of random side-hustles on his way to the top, but there's one thing Cuban did not do was to follow his passion. "One of the great lies of life is 'follow your passions.'" Cuban says that's bad advice because you may not excel at what you are passionate about.

Work came before the Fall of Man, not after. Adam was given a job in the Garden. And there's no reason to believe that in Heaven we're going to sit around on clouds all day. We'll be working. Indeed, the sweat and pressure of work is a result of sin, but not work itself. True, many times we need to understand the value of rest--that's another conversation. But often, we also need to understand the value of work. And not just because work is how we eat and pay the mortgage, but the intrinsic value of work--even work we are not paid for.

Like just about every story these days about revolutionary tech platforms, Airbnb is a story both of democratized access to commerce and the unintended consequences of those democratizing efforts, even when they succeed on their own terms.

Barnes & Noble provides a compelling, if imperfect, alternative to local bookstores in cities that can't sustain them. But its retail strategy more closely resembles those of struggling department stores — selling too many things in too big a space — than more innovative counterparts like Apple and Warby Parker. Barnes & Noble is a better store than Amazon Books, but it's tied to a worse business model.

Overnight shipping is an incredible feat of logistics. Here’s how it works.

Once they retire, athletes are often left clueless about education, employment, and real life. A new national initiative seeks to change that—will it work?

Tech giants are just like the monopolists and robber barons that ruled the American economy a century ago. But, while Standard Oil’s monopoly was as obvious as the smoke-belching refineries it controlled, the powers of Facebook, Google, Apple and Amazon are less transparent — if not entirely secret. America’s biggest tech giants have at least as much power as John D. Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan did in the early 20th century; it is just much harder to see.