Modern mergers and acquisitions, or M&A as it's more commonly known, is a new phenomenon. The buying and selling, the breaking up and combining of companies-the essence of M&A-has been a part of commerce throughout history, but only in our era has M&A itself become a business. In 2007, before the recession hit, it was a $4.4 trillion global enterprise. And yet, it remains largely unexplored. Discrete stories have been pulled from the annals of M&A, both true and fictionalized, that have become touchstones for wealth and excess. Who can forget Gordon Gekko and his "Greed is Good" speech? But while there have been a few iconic characters and tales to emerge, no one has told the rich history of M&A, until now. This is a look into that world and the people who created it. This reads like Dallas meets Wall Street, told through an intriguing narrative that not only brings to light in gritty detail all of the back room drama of such powerful players as Carl Icahn and Ronald Perelman, Marty Lipton and Joe Flom, Jimmy Goldsmith and Sumner Redstone, but also reveals how the new generation, including activist whirlwind Bill Ackman and iconoclastic new Delaware judge Leo Strine, will dominate the next tsunamic, and imminent, M&A boom.

The epic battle of the fascinating, flawed figures behind America's deal culture and their fight over who controls and who benefits from the immense wealth of American corporations. Bloodsport is the story of how the mania for corporate deals and mergers all began. The riveting tale of how power lawyers Joe Flom and Marty Lipton, major Wall Street players Felix Rohatyn and Bruce Wasserstein, prominent jurists, and shrewd ideologues in academic garb provided the intellectual firepower, creativity, and energy that drove the corporate elite into a less cozy, Hobbesian world. With total dollar volume in the trillions, the zeal for the deal continues unabated to this day. Underpinning this explosion in mergers and acquisitions -- including hostile takeovers -- are four questions that radically disrupted corporate ownership in the 1970s, whose force remains undiminished: Are shareholders the sole "owners" of corporations and the legitimate source of power? Should control be exercised by autonomous CEOs or is their assumption of power illegitimate and inefficient? Is the primary purpose of the corporation to generate jobs and create prosperity for the masses and the nation? Or is it simply to maximize the wealth of shareholders? This battle of ideas became the "bloodsport" of American business. It set in motion the deal-making culture that led to the financialization of the economy and it is the backstory to ongoing debates over competitiveness, job losses, inequality, stratospheric executive pay, and who "owns" America's corporations.

A few corrections to these pieces have been made. For the most part I have left them as they were sent out. Some or many of these pieces, it has been suggested to me, have been posted on a bulletin board at the Harvard Law School. Whether or not anyone pays any attention to them, I cannot say. Most have been sent to various members of the Harvard, Yale and other university faculty. There has been little or no direct feedback from these recipients, as to even whether the emails were opened. Occasionally, perhaps twice, I was asked to stop sending the emails. My methodology has been to follow the news and news analysis of various journalists and social scientists; to build my analyses upon those of others, hopefully leading to a set of prescriptions which, if taken seriously, might better the overall conditions of the United States as well as that of the world at large. What I am urging is a shift in the SEC's and DOJ criteria for approving M and A;s away from intra sectoral approvals, justified apparently if not always nominally, by economies of scale and abilities to control the markets and pricing, toward cross sectoral actions justified by the increased ability to lower prices and raise wages. Other parts of the book deal with the subject of deferred or not fully distributed corporate or other forms of institutional pay on the grounds that initial recipients might not be mature enough for immediate receipt, or now, in hindsight, that the potential recipient would find herself or himself in some crucial senses compromised or otherwise hampered by full receipt of accurately earned rewards.

In A Mirror for History, author Marc Egnal uses novels and art to provide a new understanding of American society. The book argues that the arc of middle-class culture reflects the evolution of the American economy from the near-subsistence agriculture of the 1750s to the extraordinarily unequal society of the twenty-first century. Fiction offers a rich source for this analysis. By delving deep into the souls of characters and their complex worlds, novels shed light on the dreams, hopes, and goals of individuals and reveal the structures that shape character’s lives. Additionally, paintings of the time periods expand upon these insights drawn from literature. Egnal’s lively exploration of the changing economy, fiction, art, and American values is organized into four expansive periods—the Sentimental Era, Genteel America, Modern Society, and Post-Modern America. Within that framework, A Mirror for History looks at topics such as masculinity, childhood, the status of women, the outlook of African Americans, the role of religion, and varying views of capitalism. Readers will be enthralled to find discussions of overlooked novels and paintings as well as discover new approaches to familiar pieces. A Mirror for History examines over one hundred authors and dozens of artists and their works, presented here in full color.

The Assault on Labor details the 1986 Independent Federation of Flight Attendants (IFFA) strike against Trans World Airlines (TWA), one of the most dramatic instances of the heightened labor conflict in the 1980s. Using extensive court, union, and company documents, The Assault on Labor shows how the expanded use of permanent replacements in labor disputes has fundamentally altered workers’ legal right to strike. Set within one of the biggest corporate raids of the time, it was a strike of a predominantly female labor force that garnered respect throughout the labor movement for its solidarity and determination. Faced with the permanent replacement of over 5000 strikers, IFFA waged a three year struggle to return all workers to the line, mobilizing political, economic, and legal actions to secure their jobs and survive as a union. Despite critical successes in the courts in the aftermath of the strike, the Supreme Court would render a decision that further strengthened permanent replacements. Since the 1980s, labor’s major form of protest, the right to strike, has all but disappeared.

A focus on creating and sustaining a flow of profitable transactions, in other words, the creation of sustainable competitive advantage is the seemingly simple, yet complex goal of strategic leaders and managers. Allen Amason and Andrew Ward approach the topic of strategic management with this focus in mind. Rather than simply teaching theory and research, Amason and Ward seek to convey the fundamental keys to how strategy works. This book is designed to help students think critically and understand fully how to strategically manage their future firms. In so doing, it will enable them to adapt and learn, even as their circumstances change; to apply sound logic and reasoning, even in new and unfamiliar settings. By conveying enduring and fundamental principles of economic and human behavior rather than simply reporting on the latest innovations, this book succeeds in preparing students to excel in the business environment over time, regardless of how it evolves.

For decades, the public company has played a dominant role in the American economy. Since the middle of the 20th century, the nature of the public company has changed considerably. The transformation has been a fascinating one, marked by scandals, political controversy, wide swings in investor and public sentiment, mismanagement, entrepreneurial verve, noisy corporate "raiders" and various other larger-than-life personalities. Nevertheless, amidst a voluminous literature on corporations, a systematic historical analysis of the changes that have occurred is lacking. The Public Company Transformed correspondingly analyzes how the public company has been recast from the mid-20th century through to the present day, with particular emphasis on senior corporate executives and the constraints affecting the choices available to them. The chronological point of departure is the managerial capitalism era, which prevailed in large American corporations following World War II. The book explores managerial capitalism's rise, its 1950s and 1960s heyday, and its fall in the 1970s and 1980s. It describes the American public companies and executives that enjoyed prosperity during the 1990s, and the reversal of fortunes in the 2000s precipitated by corporate scandals and the financial crisis of 2008. The book also considers the regulation of public companies in detail, and discusses developments in shareholder activism, company boards, chief executives, and concerns about oligopoly. The volume concludes by offering conjectures on the future of the public corporation, and suggests that predictions of the demise of the public company have been exaggerated.