Students of economic and legal history will find Oller’s book insightful and revealing.
A lucid account of the rise of the modern law firm and the concomitant rise of the modern corporation.
Massive law firms abound in the world’s financial capitals, organized according to principles set forth by a young lawyer named Paul Cravath in the last years of the Gilded Age. Lawyers today know his last name in connection with organizational methods that are still in place—what Oller (The Swamp Fox: How Francis Marion Saved the American Revolution, 2016, etc.), who spent three decades as a Wall Street lawyer, calls “the creation of a new organizational society.” However, as the author shows, Cravath had more in mind than just regularizing office procedures. He and other “white shoe” lawyers of his time, such as William Cromwell and Elihu Root, carved legal paths that led to the current notion that a corporation has legal personhood, organizing a body of laws that helped corporations avoid regulations while enjoying as much economic freedom and wealth as possible. As Oller notes, these lawyers tended to be conservative, even reactionary; a notable example was John Foster Dulles, an entrenched foe of the New Deal, “which Dulles viewed as a threat to free enterprise.” At the same time, however, the white shoe lawyers helped develop legal limits that kept the corporations from pushing too hard, with Cravath developing methods for raising capital that curbed the practice of “watering stocks” and proposing “greater restrictions on the issue of new securities than in the past.” The corporations were not always grateful, and though the rise of the modern company tracks closely with the parallel rise of the big modern law firm, not all the Wall Street players followed suit in Cravath’s devotion to institution-building. Most, however, opted for the big-firm, multipartner, all-for-one model, and even if Cravath would later call big business “the most serious menace of our age in its social consequences upon American life," his model prevails.
Students of economic and legal history will find Oller’s book insightful and revealing.Pub Date: March 19, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-4325-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
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