Though its last rites were pronounced by a final bang of the auctioneer’s hammer on August 27, 1994, Dominique’s restaurant died with a whimper. Out, in the satisfied hands of auction-goers, went the autographed photographs of presidents, celebrities, and other famous folk, from Teddy Kennedy and Ronald Reagan to Warren Beatty and Frank Sinatra. Out, from the 30-foot-high Garden
THE DEAL OF THE CENTURY The Breakup of AT&T By Steve Coll Atheneum. 400 pp. $18.95 THROUGHOUT MOST OF THIS CENTURY, it was the behemoth of American business: the largest corporation in the world, the purveyor of goods and services virtually no one could do without, and, for better or worse, a monopoly of mammoth dimensions. In its early
Used to be that managers were for baseball, not business. In the old days, American industry and finance were ruled by titans, czars, moguls, and robber barons. There are, sadly enough, few villains of this ilk in business anymore. They’ve been replaced by a new, and infinitely more respectable, breed of corporate executives. These managers scrutinize the balance sheet, tend to the bottom line, and, increasingly, see themselves as members of the Me Generation’s million-dollar club.
In his 1975 book, The Accountability of Power, Walter Mondale described why he had abandoned his campaign for the 1976 Democratic presidential nomination in midstream. “I simply did not have the overwhelming desire necessary to do what had to be done to get elected,” he wrote. By 1981 Mondale had put that hesitation aside. He was ready to do
Forty years ago, Memorial Day moviegoers at the Ambassador Theater, 18th Street and Columbia Road, N.W., saw Ann Sheridan and Ronald Reagan in “King’s Row.” In probably his best motion-picture performance, Reagan’s leg is amputated, and he utters a classic line — “Where’s the rest of me?” — which later would become the title of his autobiography.
By 6:30 a.m. each morning, President Jimmy Carter had finished reading the New York Times, Washington Post, Washington Star, Atlanta Constitution, and Atlanta Journal. President Reagan is not getting to the newspapers on his Oval Office desk that early, but he has one fewer to read — the two Atlanta papers have been replaced by the Los Angeles Times. “He’s a voracious reader of