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End of the Line: The Rise and Fall of AT&T [Hardcover]

Leslie Cauley (Author)
4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews) |

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

There is much more fall than rise in this riveting account of AT&T's disastrous recent history from USA Today telecom reporter Cauley. While offering only a brief look at AT&T's long, iconic history, Cauley digs in with gusto near the end of Robert Allen's reign as CEO and chairman in the mid-1990s, when the company lost precious years as its long-distance cash cow began wasting away. Cauley is hitting on all cylinders by the time she reaches the heart of the book, the period after Allen was belatedly deposed and Michael Armstrong came to power. Armstrong latched onto cable as AT&T's lifeline to the future, a laudable vision that, the journalist makes mercilessly clear, was butchered in execution. As Armstrong's team overpaid for second-rate companies and bobbled the complex integration issues, the stock market implodes, taking with it the company's capacity to manage its debt load; the competitive pressures, along with WorldCom's massive fraud, destroyed the margins in long distance. Add it all up and you have what Cauley characterizes as a "perfect storm."
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

In July 2004, when AT&T announced that it would stop marketing long-distance phone service to consumers, it sent a shock wave through the financial community and through the hearts and minds of ordinary people as well. Today the company has already been broken up and swallowed by competitors. How could one of the oldest, most respected, and most dependable American companies be brought to the brink of financial ruin in a few short years? A combination of bad management decisions and worse market timing brought about the perfect storm. Cauley gives a historical overview of American Telephone and Telegraph, beginning with Alexander Graham Bell himself, but focuses primarily on the events around the turn of the new millennium, when former IBM executive Mike Armstrong took over amid twin crises of price wars and internal conflicts. It is a grueling day-to-day account of how ego, bureaucracy, and changing times killed off a beloved institution. David Siegfried
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 320 pages
  • Publisher: Free Press; First Printing edition (August 2, 2005)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0743250257
  • ISBN-13: 978-0743250252
  • Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #908,479 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Leslie Cauley
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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
15 of 18 people found the following review helpful
Weak December 27, 2005
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
I managed to finish this book because the story is captivating, but the book definitely is not. The analysis is superficial, and Cayley clearly runs out of new things to say so she ends up repeating the same things over and over and over again. As one example, she mentions AT&T strong balance sheet (pre-Armstrong) a half dozen times, and even gets it wrong - on one page, she says AT&T long-term debt was $126 billion; elsewhere she says $12 billion. Her description of the personalities involved is likewise superficial and repetitive. She mentions Armstrongs "Big Blue way of looking at things" at least a dozen times (I am not exaggerating). There's even a entire discussion (regarding negotiations with Time Warner Cable) that is given in its entirety twice (pp. 189 and 190).

Another serious complaint is that the language of the book is inappropriately informal for the subject matter, even downright vulgar in a couple of places. Her very poor writing style just adds to the book's generally sloppy impression. This impression is not aided by the careless errors that pepper the book (e.g., referring to Microsoft as a cable giant). Didn't anybody edit this thing before it hit the shelves?

Most annoying of all is the approach of following parallel lines to that fateful summer of 2000, then backing up to follow another line of thought. It seems to be an attempt to highten the drama, but it fails miserably. A chronological order would have made the story much more interesting as well as making it much easier for the reader to figure out what went wrong with AT&T and perhaps learn something from the book. But perhpas this is just as well as Cauley's research would not have been up to this task.

I bought this book expecting some new insights, but there was nothing in here one wouldn't already know from reading the Wall Street Journal as the collapse was happening. Cauley simply did not do any homework or dig beneath the surface in the least. Overall, a very weak effort. I give it a low C or high D mark.
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5 of 7 people found the following review helpful
AWESOME August 19, 2005
Format:Hardcover
I am (still) a current employee of AT&T. I am on the 'front-line' which is all the way at the bottom of the totem pole as a customer service rep in consumer long distance. I started working at AT&T in February of 1997 and everything that Leslie Cauley wrote in this novel-happened!!! I kept nodding my head at every turn of the page and remembering everything that happened. I decided to work for the company because of its name and in my 8 years I can't believe what has happened and how quickly it has deteriorated. Thank you Leslie Cauley for writing a book that the public (and customers) can read how fudged up Corporate America really is!!!! With the SBC merger Ms. Cauley can write a sequel to this book and hopefully call it "A New Era: The Triumphant Return of AT&T"
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7 of 10 people found the following review helpful
By Tom W
Format:Hardcover
David Isenberg wrote a paper called "Rise of the Stupid Network" that describes an obvious future in early 1990 communications. Any book on AT&T of that period must discuss these Bell Labs predictions.

Relevant terms including Packet Switching verses Circuit Switching, the Death of Distance, and the Last Mile were the future for communications and for AT&T. Packet switching would obsolete those multi-million AT&T switches. Death of Distance meant a long distance call from New York to Washington costs no more than a call from New York to Australia. - a stunning relevation of that time with serious consequences for AT&T's entire future. The Last Mile was a bottleneck that would restrict access to maybe 97% of the installed fiber optic backbone, restrict computer use, and result in a Federal 1996 Communications law to break the stifling of technology (including a stifled 1981 technology called ADSL).

"The Rise and Fall of AT&T" must discuss this. Instead it discusses personalities, pettiness, and speculations of corporate executives who (if the book was insightful) had little grasp - no idea - of basic industry technologies. Decisions such as buying two cable companies without learning that the infrastructure was defective should have at least been discussed. Who did not have a clue? Gross technical mismanagement by AT&T corporate executives was that flagrant and is not discussed by Cauley. Instead Cauley's book discusses how they felt.

Somehow the AT&T story is only about infighting among personalities as if that was important. The book ignores gross technical ignorance by AT&T management who had little if any technology grasp. Some of that ignorance is mentioned as if a peripheral story rather than a story about why AT&T created so little innovation.

I would have expected a fiasco involving the famous AT&T Unix to have at least been mentioned as a perfect example of stifled innovation; an example of why AT&T was repeatedly foundering. Or AT&T's complete failure in PCs. Almost no internet products. Critical facts that demonstrated why AT&T was failing were repeatedly avoided - often never even once mentioned. Even a massive and wrongheaded engineering effort to create "TrueVoice Plus" was ignored.

Why would a company spend $billions for cable companies only to discover much later that those cables - the hardware - would not support a technology? Why does Leslie Cauley not discuss this obvious technical stupidity at highest levels in AT&T management? A book that discusses AT&T top management completely ignores technology ignorance that beset most if not every AT&T top executive? Appreciate technical frustration that confronted David Isenberg, demonstrated in his famous paper, and ignored in Cauley's book.

I found Cauley's book deceptive if not naive because it does not address fundamental reasons for AT&T's repeated fiascos and resulting demise. AT&T quashed or fumbled innovation after innovation. This book hardly mentions any of this. Would you buy a cable company for billions of dollars when the entire cable network must be replaced? We should expect Cauley to identify who in AT&T had no idea and yet spent that money anyway. Instead, the book discusses who did not like whom, who was angry, and when they finally realized that they were going bankrupt. I was completely disappointed by no useful facts from Leslie Cauley.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
End of the Line: The Rise and Fall of AT&T
I had previously purchased this book when it first came out. I was recently reading it for a second time and bought 2 additional copies for friends. Read more
Published on September 12, 2009 by Music Lover
On time and in excellent condition
The book arrived promptly as if it was almost new. The Amazon description was accurate and useful when I made the decision to buy this most interesting retrospective of my former... Read more
Published on July 7, 2009 by Mac Maven
An Odd Perspective
For such a serious subject with grave impact on many shareholders, the author is far too flippant and cavalier. Read more
Published on June 26, 2007 by John Turner
End of the Line: The Rise and Fall of AT&T
Not of the same caliber as Ms. Cauley's "Optical Illusions", but a good read nonetheless. If you're not part of the the turbulent telecom industry, this is not your cup of tea. Read more
Published on January 14, 2007 by John Adams
End of the line for one of America's Icons
How did the Big Bell collapse? This book gives you the answer. From the government break up of the monopoly to the sheer ineptitude of its managers this book shows what happened... Read more
Published on December 17, 2006 by Lehigh History Student
Another one bites the dust
Well written, easy to read. Fascinating look at the executive culture of AT&T and its peers.
Published on August 3, 2006 by John Doe
End of The Line
As a retired AT&T employee, I found this book very gripping in describing the downfall of this great company. Read more
Published on March 6, 2006 by Gerald Arnst
Interesting read, but not very insightful
The book hinges on the fact that AT&T's core business, long-distance service, had seen it's best days gone, and therefore serves as the poignant backdrop for most of the book. Read more
Published on December 30, 2005 by Edward Y. Wong
Technology Change + Anti-trust + Poor Management = End of an Icon
Cauley traces the history of AT&T from Alexander Bell's first public demonstration through the sales of its final piece in January, 05. Read more
Published on December 27, 2005 by Loyd E. Eskildson
Leslie Cauley NAILS the AT&T story
Full disclosure: I've known Ms. Cauley for a number of years, and haven't known her to be anything but a consummate professional, a dogged reporter and a solid verbal stylist. Read more
Published on November 14, 2005 by Mark A. Kellner
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Wall Street, New York, Time Warner, Dan Somers, John Malone, Mike Armstrong, John Zeglis, United States, Brian Roberts, Basking Ridge, Bob Allen, Bell Cablemedia, Leo Hindery, Western Union, Business Services, Changing of the Guard, John Walter, Chuck Noski, Consumer Services, John Petrillo, Theodore Vail, Alexander Graham Bell, American Bell, Giant Leap of Faith, Silicon Valley
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