A journalist's breezy and bemused but on-the-money account of a frog who became, however briefly, a merchant prince. In evident wonder, Rothchild (A Fool and His Money, etc.) recounts how Robert Campeau, a French-Canadian entrepreneur who had achieved success as a real-estate developer in his own country, began looking for new worlds to conquer during the mid-1980's. With exquisite timing, the vaultingly ambitious speculator somehow convinced Wall Street that it made good business sense to advance him $4 billion to gain control of Allied Stores (whose holdings included Bonwit Teller, Brooks Brothers, Jordan Marsh, etc.). Within months, he managed to borrow another $7 billion to buy Federated, a carriage-trade chain with such outlets as Bloomingdale's, Bullock's, and Filene's. Having overbid for both acquisitions, Campeau was in deep trouble from the start. As Rothchild makes clear, the upstart debtor-baron's penchant for wishful thinking made him a difficult client for the white-shoe commercial and investment bankers who put up with his capricious ways. In hopes of handsome fees, putatively prudent intermediaries nonetheless raised the capital Campeau needed to realize his flights of fancy. Once securities markets broke and the retailing industry took a turn for the worse, however, the rookie proprietor's lack of operational and financial savvy hastened the collapse of his highly leveraged enterprise. The fallout from the resultant Allied/Federated bankruptcy was widespread. In addition to the owner, the casualty list ranges from investors in the junk bonds used to underwrite the takeovers through brokerage houses stuck with bridge loans, rival merchandisers forced to meet or beat price cuts instituted to unload excess inventory, suppliers not paid for their goods, and (at last count) over 25,000 others whose claims aggregate $8.2 billion. A marvelously entertaining and tellingly detailed recap of fiscal folly that reflects precious little credit upon any of the principals. (Eight pages of b&w photos—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 19, 1991
ISBN: 0-671-72593-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1991
BOOK REVIEW
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
A readable, persuasive argument that our ways of doing business will have to change if we are to prosper—or even survive.
A well-constructed critique of an economic system that, by the author’s account, is a driver of the world’s destruction.
Harvard Business School professor Henderson vigorously questions the bromide that “management’s only duty is to maximize shareholder value,” a notion advanced by Milton Friedman and accepted uncritically in business schools ever since. By that logic, writes the author, there is no reason why corporations should not fish out the oceans, raise drug prices, militate against public education (since it costs tax money), and otherwise behave ruinously and anti-socially. Many do, even though an alternative theory of business organization argues that corporations and society should enjoy a symbiotic relationship of mutual benefit, which includes corporate investment in what economists call public goods. Given that the history of humankind is “the story of our increasing ability to cooperate at larger and larger scales,” one would hope that in the face of environmental degradation and other threats, we might adopt the symbiotic model rather than the winner-take-all one. Problems abound, of course, including that of the “free rider,” the corporation that takes the benefits from collaborative agreements but does none of the work. Henderson examines case studies such as a large food company that emphasized environmentally responsible production and in turn built “purpose-led, sustainable living brands” and otherwise led the way in increasing shareholder value by reducing risk while building demand. The author argues that the “short-termism” that dominates corporate thinking needs to be adjusted to a longer view even though the larger problem might be better characterized as “failure of information.” Henderson closes with a set of prescriptions for bringing a more equitable economics to the personal level, one that, among other things, asks us to step outside routine—eat less meat, drive less—and become active in forcing corporations (and politicians) to be better citizens.
A readable, persuasive argument that our ways of doing business will have to change if we are to prosper—or even survive.Pub Date: May 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5417-3015-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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