THERE IS plenty of greed, but not much glory, in Ken Auletta’s intricate account of the decline and fall of Lehman Brothers. Until it was auctioned off to American Express in 1984, Lehman Brothers was Wall Street’s oldest continuing partnership, and arguably the nation’s premier investment banking firm.
DeLOREAN By John Z. DeLorean with Ted Schwarz Zondervan Books. 349 pp. $17.95 HARD DRIVING My Years with John DeLorean By William Haddad Random House. 193 pp. $17.95 WHAT ARE WE TO MAKE OF John DeLorean? For nearly 20 years now, DeLorean has been driving at breakneck speed against the grain of Detroit’s automotive establishment, and nothing — abject failure included —
THE CHALLENGE OF HIDDEN PROFITS Reducing Corporate Bureaucracy And Waste By Mark Green and John F. Berry Morrow. 453 pp. $19.95. MAYBE THERE ARE A FEW FOLKS out there who still believe that big corporations actually are efficient, but the rest of us know otherwise. We know the truth. We’ve called the telephone company and gotten: 1) a busy
Poor Rupert Murdoch. For quite a while now, the Australian media tycoon has had something of a love-hate relationship with his competitors and critics. Murdoch, it seems, is just the kind of man they love to hate.
Ken Berents, reporter-turned-handicapper, is on something of a roll. Lots of people with money want to know what’s on his mind these days—the inside dope, you might say—and the phones into his Baltimore office are busier than ever. “I’ve been on a hot streak,” he says. “I’ve been damn lucky, but I’m hanging my neck out right now.”
This chart depicts O. Roy Chalk’s expensive — and expansive — plans for a research and development limited partnership centered around the machine-tool industry. It accompanied Chalk’s draft prospectus for DCTECH Research Center Partners, Ltd. Here’s what it means: General Partner. In the center of the chart is the general partner, DCTECH Research Centers, a wholly owned subsidiary of
UP ON MICHIGAN AVENUE, N.E., where Washington’s battered buses once rumbled into huge garages for a night of rest and rehabilitation, the machines, materiel, and manpower are quietly being readied. Inside these cavernous quarters, an impressive array of sleek state-of-the-art equipment — some of it said to be one of a kind — has been assembled, tested, and retested.
THE LIFE INSURANCE GAME By Ronald Kessler Holt, Rinehart and Winston 289 pp. $16.95 NO MATTER HOW — OR HOW LONG — you look at life insurance, the laws of averages are not encouraging. If you let an agent inside your home, the chances are 1 in 2 you will wind up buying a policy. The chances are 4 in 5 you will buy
“There is as much chance of repealing the Eighteenth Amendment,” said its author, Senator Morris Sheppard of Texas, “as there is for a hummingbird to fly to the planet Mars with the Washington Monument tied to its tail.”
Some sobering thoughts, wry toasts, and dry humor inspired by the golden anniversary of Repeal