The Rise and Fall of RadioShack, the Electronics Giant That Ruled America and Destroyed Itself

RadioShack turned a rented basement radio shop into the largest electronics retailer on the planet, built on a genius idea: get customers hooked on something free — a battery every month — and let loyalty do the rest. The company that put a computer in half of America's homes and helped train the very engineers who built Silicon Valley should have owned the future it invented. But decades of chasing trends, abandoning its own hobbyist roots, and hollowing out what made it special left America's neighborhood electronics store with nothing left to sell.