Patricia Beard

I've been reading books on Wall Street and its people since Karen Ho's excellent Liquidated, but this is the first one that revolved around a single firm. In short, Morgan Stanley had an extremely rigid culture that its longtime employees took very personally, and as a result they were largely horrified when their first CEO from the outside started making changes. It was relatively interesting to see the machinations that went into eventually ousting him, but unless you are especially interested in the i-banking culture, you probably wouldn't want to start with this very specific title.… (mehr)

A very disappointing biography of the longtime newspaper publisher, editor and reporter. Even aside from the fact that the book is riven with strange glitches (like calling Vichy France "Free" France, and having Eisenhower elected in November, 1953), the book treats Howard, for the most part, with kid gloves. For example, Howard's connections with Joseph McCarthy are disposed of in one anodyne paragraph. Given that a Howard family member introduced the book, you know nothing went into this that would blacken his name. Not recommended.… (mehr)