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Books > History > History of specific subjects > History of specific institutions
The History of Corporate Law by the Foremost Legal Historian, James
Willard HurstThis study, which is based on a series of lectures
delivered at the University of Virginia Law School, explores the
development of corporate law from the 1780s, a time when the
special charter was the only form of incorporation, to the 1960s, a
time when corporations were established exclusively through general
incorporation statutes. More than a chronicle, Hurst emphasizes how
legal institutions actively shaped the central traits of American
capitalism. CONTENTSAnalytical Table of ContentsIntroduction: Time,
Place and SubjectI.From Special Privilege to General Utility,
1780-1890II.Legitimacy: Utility and Responsibility,
1890-1970III.Institutional Contributions to PolicyConclusion: The
Social Impact of Corporation LawBibliographyIndexJames Willard
Hurst 1910-1997] revitalized the field of American legal history
with The Growth of American Law (1950) and helped establish the
study of law and American society in Law and Social Process in
United States History (1960). He had a particular interest in the
ways society and law influenced one another. He was a professor of
law at the University of Wisconsin Law School.
E Pluribus Kinko's describes how a highly democratic business
structure helped Kinko's grow and profit for thirty years, and how
the loss of democracy contributed to the company's decline and
disappearance. From 1970 to 1999, Kinko's grew from a
one-hundred-square-foot copy shop to a two-billion-dollar industry
leader with over 1,000 branches worldwide, with thousands of
engaged and participative citizen-coworkers. The foundations of our
democracy were The Philosophy, which was like a constitution that
clearly articulated stakeholder rights and expectations, our
Partnership Ethos, which used profit sharing to spread the benefits
and responsibilities of citizenship throughout the organization,
and our habit of Pot-Stirring, which produced the frequent
revolutions Thomas Jefferson believed were necessary in a healthy
democracy. It was very messy - and very profitable.
This is the story of the greatest might-have-been in the history of
the fast food business. How did a company that began almost by
accident become the innovation leader by 1960? What caused a
decade-long slide that began right at the moment of their greatest
success? Understanding begins with studying the experiences that
forged Burger Chef and its leaders, and then learning from the
mistakes corporations can make when they replace innovation and
entrepreneurship with process and control-a lesson as important
today as it was a half-century ago.
The world of CEOs and boards has become an entitled insiders'
club--virtually free of accountability--and the abject failure of
our corporate leaders to police themselves is costing Americans
trillions and seriously undermining the strength of our economy.
Whereas boards are supposed to act as watchdogs, guarding
shareholders' interests, they have become enabling lapdogs to CEOs,
who are aided and abetted in their pursuit of outrageous pay and
unfettered power by a bevy of supporting players, including
compensation consultants who justify exorbitant pay packages and
accountants and attorneys who see no evil.
Based on extensive original reporting and interviews with
high-level insiders at a host of leading companies, John Gillespie
and David Zweig--both Harvard MBAs with thirtyplus years of Fortune
100 experience--reveal the inner workings of this dysfunctional
culture and the many methods CEOs and boards use to shut
shareholders out, entrench themselves, and fight reforms with
shareholders' own money. "Money for Nothing "is a vital expose of
how the game is played and a powerful call for change, laying out
the specific reforms that are needed to fix the glaring
dysfunctions that are imperiling the health of American business.
With an updated Afterword by the author
This is the epic saga of the American automobile industry's rise
and demise, a compelling story of hubris, missed opportunities, and
self-inflicted wounds that culminates with the president of the
United States ushering two of Detroit's Big Three car
companies--once proud symbols of prosperity--through bankruptcy.
With unprecedented access, Pulitzer Prize winner Paul Ingrassia
takes us from factory floors to small-town dealerships to Detroit's
boardrooms to the White House. Ingrassia answers the big questions:
Was Detroit's self-destruction inevitable? What were the key
turning points? Why did Japanese automakers manage American workers
better than the American companies themselves did? Complete with a
new Afterword providing fresh insights into the continuing upheaval
in the auto industry--the travails of Toyota, the revolving-door
management and IPO at General Motors, the unexpected progress at
Chrysler, and the Obama administration's stake in Detroit's
recovery--"Crash Course" addresses a critical question: America
bailed out GM, but who will bail out America?
In September 1910, the activist Roger Casement arrived in the
Amazon jungle on a mission for the British government: to
investigate reports of widespread human-rights abuses in the
forests along the Putumayo River. Casement was outraged by what he
uncovered: nearly thirty thousand Indians had died to produce four
thousand tons of rubber for Peruvian and British commercial
interests, under the brutal rubber baron Julio Cesar Arana. In
1912, Casement's seven-hundred-page report of the Putumayo violence
set off reverberations throughout the world. Drawing on a wealth of
original research, "The Devil and Mr. Casement" is a haunting story
of modern capitalism with enormous contemporary political
resonance.
THIS 20 PAGE ARTICLE WAS EXTRACTED FROM THE BOOK: Pamphlets: Elbert
Hubbard's Selected Writings: Part 1, by Elbert Hubbard. To purchase
the entire book, please order ISBN 0766103846.
This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book
may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages,
poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the
original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We
believe this work is culturally important, and despite the
imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of
our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works
worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in
the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.
In "Right of the Dial," Alec Foege explores how the mammoth
media conglomerate Clear Channel Communications evolved from a
local radio broadcasting operation, founded in 1972, into one of
the biggest, most profitable, and most polarizing corporations in
the country. During its heyday, critics accused Clear Channel, the
fourth-largest media company in the United States and the nation's
largest owner of radio stations, of ruining American pop culture
and cited it as a symbol of the evils of media monopolization,
while fans hailed it as a business dynamo, a beacon of unfettered
capitalism.What's undeniable is that as the owner at one point of
more than 1,200 radio stations, 130 major concert venues and
promoters, 770,000 billboards, and 41 television stations, Clear
Channel dominated the entertainment world in ways that MTV and
Disney could only dream of. But in the fall of 2006, after years of
public criticism and flattening stock prices, Goliath finally
tumbled--Clear Channel Communications, Inc., spun off its
entertainment division and plotted to sell off one-third of its
radio stations and all of its television concerns, and to transfer
ownership of the rest of its holdings to a consortium of private
equity firms. The move signaled the end of an era in media
consolidation, and in "Right of the Dial," Foege takes stock of the
company's successes and abuses, showing the manner in which Clear
Channel reshaped America's cultural and corporate landscape along
the way.
On March 5, 2008, at 10:15 A.M., a hedge fund manager in Florida
wrote a post on his investing advice Web site that included a
startling statement about Bear Stearns & Co., the nation's
fifth-largest investment bank: "In my book, they are insolvent."
This seemed a bold and risky statement. Bear Stearns was about to
announce profits of $115 million for the first quarter of 2008, had
$17.3 billion in cash on hand, and, as the company incessantly
boasted, had been a colossally profitable enterprise in the
eighty-five years since its founding.
Ten days later, Bear Stearns no longer existed, and the calamitous
financial meltdown of 2008 had begun.
How this happened - and why - is the subject of William D. Cohan's
superb and shocking narrative that chronicles the fall of Bear
Stearns and the end of the Second Gilded Age on Wall Street. Bear
Stearns serves as the Rosetta Stone to explain how a combination of
risky bets, corporate political infighting, lax government
regulations and truly bad decision-making wrought havoc on the
world financial system.
Cohan's minute-by-minute account of those ten days in March makes
for breathless reading, as the bankers at Bear Stearns struggled to
contain the cascading series of events that would doom the firm,
and as Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, New York Federal Reserve
Bank President Tim Geithner, and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke began to
realize the dire consequences for the world economy should the
company go bankrupt.
But HOUSE OF CARDS does more than recount the incredible panic of
the first stages of the financial meltdown. William D. Cohan
beautifully demonstrates" why" the seemingly invincible Wall Street
money machine came crashing down. He chronicles the swashbuckling
corporate culture of Bear Stearns, the strangely crucial role
competitive bridge played in the company's fortunes, the brutal
internecine battles for power, and the deadly combination of greed
and inattention that helps to explain why the company's leaders
ignored the danger lurking in Bear's huge positions in
mortgage-backed securities.
The author deftly portrays larger-than-life personalities like Ace
Greenberg, Bear Stearns' miserly, take-no-prisoners chairman whose
memos about re-using paper clips were legendary throughout Wall
Street; his profane, colorful rival and eventual heir Jimmy Cayne,
whose world-champion-level bridge skills were a lever in his
corporate rise and became a symbol of the reasons for the firm's
demise; and Jamie Dimon, the blunt-talking CEO of JPMorgan Chase,
who won the astonishing endgame of the saga (the Bear Stearns
headquarters alone were worth more than JP Morgan paid for the
whole company).
Cohan's explanation of seemingly arcane subjects like credit
default swaps and fixed- income securities is masterful and crystal
clear, but it is the high-end dish and powerful narrative drive
that makes HOUSE OF CARDS an irresistible read on a par with
classics such as LIAR'S POKER and BARBARIANS AT THE GATE.
Written with the novelistic verve and insider knowledge that made
THE LAST TYCOONS a bestseller and a prize-winner, HOUSE OF CARDS is
a chilling cautionary tale about greed, arrogance, and stupidity in
the financial world, and the consequences for all of us.
If Rupert Murdoch isn't making headlines, he's busy buying the
media outlets that generate the headlines. His News Corp.
holdings--from the" New York Post," Fox News, and most recently
"The Wall Street Journal," to name just a few--are vast, and his
power is unrivaled. So what makes a man like this tick? Michael
Wolff gives us the definitive answer in "The Man Who Owns the
News."
With unprecedented access to Rupert Murdoch himself, and his
associates and family, Wolff chronicles the astonishing growth of
Murdoch's $70 billion media kingdom. In intimate detail, he probes
the Murdoch family dynasty, from the battles that have threatened
to destroy it to the reconciliations that seem to only make it
stronger. Drawing upon hundreds of hours of interviews, he offers
accounts of the Dow Jones takeover as well as plays for Yahoo! and
"Newsday" as they've never been revealed before.
Written in the irresistible stye that only an award-winning
columnist for "Vanity Fair" can deliver, "The Man Who Owns the
News" offers an exclusive glimpse into a man who wields
extraordinary power and influence in the media on a worldwide
scale--and whose family is being groomed to carry his legacy into
the future.
"From the Hardcover edition."
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