AFTER THE BALL: Gilded Age Secrets, Boardroom Betrayals, and the Party That Ignited the Great Wall Street Scandal of 1905
Patricia Beard, . . HarperCollins, $25.95 (416pp) ISBN 978-0-06-019939-5
The 1905 battle for control of the Equitable Life Assurance Society strikingly parallels the corporate scandals that dominate headlines a century later. For example, majority shareholder James Hazen Hyde, accompanied by a team of corporate lawyers, told an investigating committee he'd authorized questionable deals on the advice of executives whom he had trusted, while James W. Alexander, who sought to kick Hyde off the board, complained he was being punished for blowing the whistle on the company's shaky finances. But, as Beard, who's written for
Reviewed on: 05/19/2003
Genre: Nonfiction
Paperback - 416 pages - 978-0-06-095892-3