Spoiling for a Fight: The Rise of Eliot Spitzer (Hardcover)

by Brooke A. Masters (Author)
Key Phrases: finite insurance, contingent commissions, concrete club, New York, Wall Street, Merrill Lynch (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Masters's examination of the New York State attorney general's seven years in office is timely, given Spitzer's prosecutions of powerful financial industries and his candidacy in the Democratic gubernatorial primary. Even if Spitzer fails in his bid for the governorship, the book is worthy of study because it clearly explains the complicated, unsavory practices of insurance companies, mutual funds, Wall Street brokerages and the New York Stock Exchange. The author also skillfully places Spitzer in the context of previous reformers within government, especially Theodore Roosevelt, Louis Brandeis and Rudy Giuliani. She shows, too, how philosophical differences between state and federal regulators over the past 100 years set the stage for the crusading Spitzer. Masters, a New York–based reporter for the Washington Post, holds degrees from Harvard University and the London School of Economics that prepared her well for dissecting the arcane, corrupt industry routines usually unknown to consumers. Though Masters received cooperation from the 46-year-old Spitzer and many of his aides, this warts-and-all book demonstrates how the mostly sincere, mostly decent Spitzer can be hurt by his overweening ego and quick temper. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post
If you're not a political junkie, a New Yorker or a financial- services executive, the name Eliot Spitzer may not ring a bell. In the next few years, I'll wager, you'll be hearing it often. Spitzer is the New York attorney general who -- much like Rudolph Giuliani in the late 1980s -- is becoming a national figure by spearheading a series of high-profile investigations into the brokerage, mutual-fund and other financial industries. As the presumptive Democratic nominee in New York's gubernatorial race, he should move up the Hudson River to Albany in January, at which point his name will be thrown into far bigger hats. Obama-Spitzer 2012, anyone?

As Brooke A. Masters ably demonstrates in her new biography, Spoiling for a Fight, what makes Spitzer special is that he appears to be that rare political animal: a mainstream liberal Democrat with an actual, functioning backbone. As attorney general, he has been a one-man wrecking crew, taking on and besting everyone from Merrill Lynch to the somnolent Securities and Exchange Commission, which sought gradual change over coffee at Starbucks with Wall Streeters while Spitzer took the Merrills of the world to court. Reading this book, one comes to believe that he is the real deal: honest, fearless and very, very smart. While Spitzer has yet to perfect the role of glad-handing Gotham pol, there is nevertheless an unmistakable whiff of Clinton or Kennedy in his story.

Masters, who covers white-collar crime for The Washington Post, does a fine job here, briskly tracing Spitzer's rise to public office, parsing his headline cases and, to her credit, shining the spotlight on the individual lawyers in the attorney general's office who actually initiated many of the investigations that form the foundation of the Spitzer legend. The book is well-researched, even-handed and thoughtful; Masters will no doubt become cable television's leading Spitzerologist for years to come. About the only mark against Spoiling for a Fight is that Masters never truly finds an authorial voice; thorough as her research is, the book reads like a 300-page newspaper article.

Masters is especially adept at placing Spitzer in a historical, political and legal context, drawing parallels, for instance, between his career and that of another progressive New York attorney general, Theodore Roosevelt. (Don't laugh; she makes the case.) Spitzer, who granted Masters several interviews, goes to great lengths to emphasize (convincingly) that he is not some rock-throwing, anti-capitalist radical; like Roosevelt, he embraces the free-market system, working inside it to correct deficiencies.

The fact that a New York official pursued the cases that Washington should have -- it was Spitzer, for instance, who felled Merrill's two-faced Internet analyst Henry Blodget for his conflicts of interest -- was as much a product of the SEC's coddling of Wall Street as of the attorney general's own aggressiveness. (An SEC friend, speaking at a Spitzer roast, read a mock telegram "from Eliot to the Vatican. 'Dear Pontiff: I have some comments on recent papal edicts. . . . As I read the Stamp Act of 1785, I have the authority to tax and regulate all items passing through New York, which we believe includes Catholicism.' ") Spitzer justifies his incursions onto federal turf by citing the Bush administration's efforts to palm off the provision of legal and other services onto the states. Washington's retreat left a gaping hole, Spitzer contends, which states -- to the dismay of corporate chieftains -- had a duty to fill. Talk about your law of unintended consequences.

Spitzer has been criticized by the usual suspects for over-aggressiveness, publicity-hogging and precedent-stretching -- the kinds of things every chesty attorney general gets accused of. Masters's portrayal of his upbringing undercuts these charges. The son of a wealthy, up-from-the-Lower-East-Side real-estate developer, Spitzer grew up in one of those frighteningly intellectual Upper West Side households (actually, the Riverdale section of the Bronx, which is a de facto Upper West Side colony) where every child must come to the dinner table with a topic for debate and everyone argues about Kant and Kierkegaard while families like mine are watching SportsCenter. If you didn't know the Spitzer family, you'd really need to hate them.

By the time he went to Princeton, Spitzer was already a wonk's wonk, the kind of earnest young heir who spent summers interning for Ralph Nader and working construction and wearing destiny on his arm like a tattoo. He took a star turn at the Manhattan district attorney's office and tried private practice for a few years, but his obvious ambition -- the rare topic Masters refrains from exploring -- propelled him prematurely into the 1994 race for state attorney general. He was roundly thrashed, but his poise and intellect got him noticed. Four years later, thanks in no small part to his family's millions, he won the brass ring.

One anecdote in Spoiling for a Fight particularly epitomizes Spitzer. In the middle of his investigation into duplicitous securities analysts, he accepted an invitation to speak at an Institutional Investor banquet honoring the "all-star" analysts of the year. Spitzer had a fire-breathing speech prepared and resisted an aide's entreaties to tone it down. Instead, he lectured the crowd on how the "star" analysts had let their clients down. "When measured by the performance of their stock recommendations," he said, "only one of this year's fifty-one first-team all-stars . . . ranked first in their sector." The audience actually began streaming to the exits. "I'm not going to sit here and listen to this [expletive]," one snapped.

Like him or loathe him, you can't help but admire a man who can pull off something like that.

Reviewed by Bryan Burrough
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Times Books (July 25, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805079610
• ISBN-13: 978-0805079616
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #744,189 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars An attorney general willing to take on unscrupulous corporate giants (3.5*), September 3, 2006

By	One Man's View (Lawrenceville, GA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

For a book that supposedly focuses on him, Eliot Spitzer for the most part remains a rather obscure character who operates in the background orchestrating a crackdown on various financial institutions engaged in all manner of highly unethical, if not criminal, behavior in the state of New York. It should be a disturbing book. The dishonesty and disrespect for the public evidenced in this book by major financial institutions is appalling.

The reader is supplied with Spitzer basics: wealthy upbringing, the best schools, good grades, etc. Given his background, he should have joined the club - the club that winks at financial shenanigans. But as a true believer in correct behavior, prosecutor, and later attorney general of New York, Spitzer became aware of cheating, collusion, and other assorted misdeeds among financial institutions and set out to do something about it.

The book is more or less a step-by-step account of several cases involving numerous companies, lawyers, analysts, brokers, CEOs, etc. The illegalities are often subtle and much debated, though the intent is always clear: make lots of money at the expense of the other guy. Conflicts are a big part of the author's story, not only with those that the AG's office was hounding, but with the SEC and other regulators. Not trusting the inaction of the SEC through the years, Spitzer's office constantly intruded on the SEC's turf and moved quickly to address the issues. The myriad players and details, some of which are presented better than others, get to be quite a chore to keep straight.

The author seems to assume that the reader will get to know Spitzer through his, or his proxy's, legal actions. But it is difficult to separate out Spitzer from the endless day-to-day detail of the cases. The reader gets snippets of Spitzer: a press conference, a document release, a decision made, etc. Beyond limitations on revealing Spitzer, one may have expected more general commentary and perspective on the questionable corporate actions. How widespread is cheating and collusion? And how much of that is technically legal? And why has there been so little action in regulating this? After all agencies are in place. Is American business really this degenerate?

The details tend to overwhelm the story, both the story of Eliot Spitzer and the greater story of corporate skullduggery. That is why the impact of the book is less than it could be. I'm certain that the only nomination for a Pulitzer prize will come from one of the earlier reviewers, who happens to hail from New York. New York insiders will probably enjoy the book simply to see who got caught, not to mention perhaps some minimal understanding of New York's next governor. It will be interesting to see if Spitzer has any lasting impact on corporate shenanigans and what the next chapter in his life will be.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars She Did Her Homework, But..., April 1, 2008

By	R. SELIG "lovable rogue" (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Spoiling for a Fight: The Rise of Eliot Spitzer (Paperback)

Like the Bright Girl Ms. Masters no doubt was, and is, she reports every phone call, every e-mail, everything said at every meeting according to every participant. It's thorough but oddly, disappointingly, lifeless. There will be a bounce in the sales of this book what with the recent fall of the Governor amid scandal and disgrace. Alas, those who seek an insight as to how it all could have happened will have to look elsewhere.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A balanced look at Spitzermania, August 30, 2006

By	Sanjay A. Paul "Avid Reader" (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book will intrigue anyone interested in the political process and law.

Masters offers a balanced view of Spitzer's war against wall street. The gist of the book is Spitzer's background and education (rich, ivy league, privilleged) and his ambitious rise to NY Attorney General where he has whipped into shape Wall Street. In doing so, Spitzer has caught the ire of many people who beleive that he is trespassing on sacred SEC and federal government grounds.

Others feel Spitzer is doing the job the SEC SHOULD have been doing. Whether you like him or not, the book offers an interesting perspective into a rising politician and the reaons why he will probably never have a legitimate shot at the White House (hint, its for the same reasons he's been thus far succesful).