Best Business Crime Writing of The Year [Paperback]

James Surowiecki (Editor) (Author)

Book Description

Series: Vintage | Publication Date: November 26, 2002

A year ago it would have been difficult to conceive of an anthology of stories soley devoted to corporate malfeasance. Today, the challenge has been to keep it confined to one volume. From P.J. O’Rourke’s hilarious “How To Stuff A Wild Enron,” in which he compares trying to understand Enron’s finances to trying to buy an airline ticket at the best price, to Marc Peyser’s’s perceptive look at that American institution, Martha Stewart, to Joe Nocera’s investigation of how it all went wrong, the stories here are sometimes infuriating, often entertaining, and invariably informative. Best Business Crime Writing Of The Year is a report from the front lines of the war zone that has become American business today by some of our most talented and perceptive writers.

Includes:
• “The New Bull Market” by Michael Kinsley from Slate
• “In Praise of Corporate Corruption Boom” by Michael Lewis from Bloomberg News
• “HardBall” by David McClintick from Forbes
• “The Accountants’ War” by Jane Mayer from the New Yorker
• “Enron Debacle Highlights the Trouble With Stock Options” by Thomas Stewart from Business 2.0
• “Investigating ImClone” by Alex Prud’homme from Vanity Fair

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

A couple of short years ago, CEOs gracing the covers of magazines were hailed as heroes, as investors riding the wave of the "new economy." Today, if a CEO makes the cover of a magazine, it's likely for a different reason: business news is now dominated by stories of corporate fraud. Surowiecki, business writer for the New Yorker, has mined 27 columns from disparate periodicals, chronicling this fall from grace. The biggest scandals, such as the Enron and WorldCom debacles, are covered from several different perspectives, but there's also a dearth of shame revealed about ImClone, Tyco, Qwest, Adelphia, and other less well known names. Although it would be difficult to cite the numerous examples of fine investigative journalism here, the tenor of these articles can be summed up in a piece written by David Wessell for the Wall Street Journal entitled "What's Wrong," which reveals why the system continues to fail to prevent corporate leaders from cheating for their own gain. David Siegfried
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

“This is worth a read even if you take it chunk by chunk. They are all digestible nuggets of financial misdeeds …. The details are lovely and juicy. It's all about egos, excess, lack of caution.” -- USA Today

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Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Anchor (November 26, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400033713
• ISBN-13: 978-1400033713
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.6 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,297,421 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars should be read by all public accountants and investors, February 21, 2003

By 

Larry Mark "editor of MyJewishBooks.com" (nyc) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Best Business Crime Writing of The Year (Paperback)

This book will help to breed healthy skepticism. 2002 was a defining year for modern business crimes, or at least reported business crimes, and this book provides a succinct and clear review of the highflying companies, the colorful players, their notorious crimes, and the pertinent issues. I finally understand how Enron schemed and ImClone conned. The editor has selected some of the best reports of each crime, crimes where greed and vice, instead of virtue, were rewarded, and he has brought each story up to date with unfolding news. In Part One, Surowiecki selected stories about the corporate hucksters, conmen, CEOs, visionaries, and villains, from the Washington Post, Vanity Fair, Forbes, The New York Times, The LA Times, The WSJ, and even The Edmonton Journal. The stories illuminate the events at Enron, WorldCom, ImClone, CriticalPath, Quest, Tyco, and Adelphia. The Edmonton Journal's story on WorldCom's Bernie Ebbers is among the best I read. No Mississippi paper would touch that profile. You might never read a business press puff piece about a CEO, or trust a devoutly religious or visionary CEO the same way again. In Part Two, the stories focus on "Who Watches the Watchmen?" Stories from The New Yorker, The New York Times, BW, USBanker, and The WSJ highlight the SEC and NY Attorney General Elliot Spitzer, and the corruptions of Wall Street analysts, "independent knowers," and at the self regulating Big Five accounting firms, especially Andersen Worldwide. The profile of Jack Grubman, a disgraced telecom analyst who lacked objectivity is a delight to read. In Part Three, the selected stories concern "What Went Wrong, and How Do We Fix It?" Stories from the WSJ, Business 2.0, Slate, Bloomberg, Fortune, The Weekly Standard, and The Atlantic Monthly investigate whether corruption is an always a byproduct of bull market bubbles, whether stock options lead to the rewarding of bad behavior, and whether greedy investors themselves are to blame for what befalls them.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A little dated, but still valuable..., December 2, 2004

By 

Thomas Duff "Duffbert" (Portland, OR United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Best Business Crime Writing of The Year (Paperback)

Although it's a bit dated (the stories are from 2002), I decided to read Best Business Crime Writing Of The Year edited By James Surowiecki. Definitely a good read for those looking to make sense of an ugly period of corporate America.

The book is a compilation of various columns and articles from publications over the year 2002, and they all deal with the criminal aspect of businesses like Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, and others. As most of the articles are "feature length", there's a solid level of coverage on each story, so you don't feel like you're just getting a taste of the real story. The chapters are grouped by section, so you get stories about the main players, the accountants and auditors who were supposed to be watching the store, and some analysis about how the companies imploded.

Even though the material is a couple years old, it doesn't suffer much with the lag time. In fact, it's sort of interesting to see how things have progressed since the story was written. I think the parts that are most valuable and will continue to be are the biographies of the CEOs who led the companies to their demise. Definitely worth reading, especially if you were involved in any way with these fiascoes.

3.0 out of 5 stars disappointing, April 20, 2011

By 

Theresa Grdina (Munster, IN United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Best Business Crime Writing of The Year (Paperback)

Had I read this book years ago, I would be raving about it. However, most of it detailed incidents that have been discussed, written about, and reported on ad nauseum. Otherwise, it was a good book. The writing was excellent.