图书工作室 讯:
BR style="FONT-SIZE: 14px"> Barbarians at the Gate by Bryan Burrough and John Helyar (HarperCollins; 1990) chronicled a single transaction, the 1988 leveraged buyout of RJR Nabisco (nyse: RJR - news - people ). Today the final number on the deal--$25 billion--seems almost quaint, as do the excesses of the characters involved. But at the time it was the largest takeover in Wall Street history and buyout shop Kohlberg Kravis Roberts victory over Ross Johnson and RJRs management helped earmark an era. Liars Poker (W.W. Norton; 1989) by a then unknown bond salesman named Michael Lewis became a number one bestseller soon after its publication in 1989. Lewis himself says he doesnt think of it as a business book, but as a book that happens to be set in the business world. No matter, the author says he still gets letters from readers saying they read the book and decided against a career on Wall Street--and an equal number of letters from those who decided the opposite. In the end maybe its influence evens out. The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell (Little Brown; 2000) is not a narrative book in the traditional sense, and it lands in this category more out of default than design. Gladwells erudite analysis describes how [i]deas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do. This idea, of course, is not limited to business. The book, however, has become a favorite of the marketing and sales elites of corporate America. Den of Thieves by James B. Stewart (Simon & Schuster; 1991) described the darker side of Wall Street in the 1980s. The story of Ivan Boesky, Dennis Levine and Michael Milken--world-beaters who all went to prison--is, among other things, a precursor to the run of scandals today. Lewis makes the list again with The New New Thing (W.W. Norton 2000), his story of uber-entrepreneur Jim Clark and his second foray into the then-new, now-passé Internet economy with Healtheon. (nasdaq: HLTH - news - people ). By the time the book was published, the era it portrayed was nearly over, leading one panelist to call it a postscript to an amazing era. Rank Title Author(s) Publisher Year 4 Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco Bryan Burrough, John Helyar HarperCollins 1990 5 The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference Malcolm Gladwell Little Brown 2000 11 Den of Thieves James B. Stewart Simon & Schuster 1991 12 Liars Poker Michael Lewis W.W. Norton 1989 20 The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story Michael Lewis W.W. Norton 2000 Biography CEO biographies have become publishing staples. The book that started the trend, Iacocca, (Bantam; 1985) didnt quite make our list. Neither did the equally phenomenal Trump: The Art of The Deal (Random House; 1988)--though it came close, as did Katharine Grahams Pulitzer Prize-winning Personal History (Knopf; 1997). But the more recent Jack: Straight from the Gut (Warner; 2001), by former General Electric (nyse: GE - news - people ) honcho Jack Welch, one of the most celebrated CEOs of the era (even with the divorce), did make the grade. Welch wrote the book with the help of Business Weeks John Byrne, who also wrote Chainsaw: The Notorious Career of Al Dunlap in the Era of Profit-At-Any-Price. In a more historical vein is The House of Morgan by Ron Chernow (Atlantic Monthly Press; 1990). The sweeping narrative traces the trajectory of the J.P. Morgan empire from its obscure beginnings in Victorian London to the crash of 1987. It won the 1990 National Book Award for nonfiction and our panel placed it eighth on our list. Chernow just missed making our l 上一页 [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] 下一页
|