From the Inside Flap
The Rise and Fall of the Conglomerate Kings is the behind-the-scenes story of the financial wizards and bare-knuckled businessmen who created the conglomerates, the glamorous multiform companies that marked the high noon of post-World War II American capitalism. Covering the period from the end of the war to 1983, Robert Sobel explains why and how the conglomerate movement originated, how it mushroomed, and what caused its startling and rapid decline. He chronicles how the era gave rise to a cadre of imaginative, bold, and often ruthless entrepreneurs who took advantage of a buoyant stock market to create giant enterprises, often through the exchange of overvalued paper for real assets. This authoritative and unprecedented books sheds light on the careers of the leading "conglomerateurs": Royal Little of Textron, Tex Thornton of Litton, James Ling of LTV, Charles Bluhdom of Gulf + Western and Harold Geneen of ITT.
About the Author
Robert Sobel was born in 1931 and died in 1999. He was a prolific historian of American business life, writing or editing more than 50 books and hundreds of articles and corporate profiles. He was a professor of business at Hofstra University for 43 years and held a Ph.D. from New York University. Besides producing books, articles, book reviews, scripts for television and audiotapes, he was a weekly columnist for Newsday from 1972 to 1988. At the time of his death he was a contributing editor to Barron's Magazine. Other Beard Books by Robert Sobel: AMEX: A History of the American Stock Exchange Dangerous Dreamers: The Financial Innovators from Charles Merrill to Michael Milken Inside Wall Street ITT: The Management of Opportunity Panic on Wall Street: A History of America's Financial Disasters The Big Board: A History of the New York Stock Market The Curbstone Brokers: The Origins of the American Stock Exchange The Entrepreneurs: Explorations Within the American Business Tradition The Fallen Colossus The Money Manias: The Eras of Great Speculation in America 1770-1970 Thomas Watson, Sr.: IBM and the Computer Revolution
