Can there be a better business writer than John Brooks? The clarity and verve of his articles, many from The New Yorker, convey a sense of a world that now seems long gone: the corporate world of the late 1950s and the 1960s. This is the age before hedge funds and lords of finance; it is the dying end of the era of white shoes, good clubs, and good schools.
Among the choices are "One Free Bite" about an engineer being recruited by a competitor and the effort his current employer invested in keeping him from accepting new employment while also reminding him that his career with the current firm was now destroyed. The article looks at the legal basis of noncompetitive clauses in employment contracts.
Another fine piece is "A Reasonable Amount of Time" which looks at the SEC's difficulties in proving insider trading in a case at Texas Gulf Sulphur.
"Stockholder Season" looks at the culture of the shareholders' meeting and how corporate boards use them to maintain the status quo.
Perhaps the prize of the collection is "The Fate of the Edsel." The piece asks how one of the world's largest manufacturers with decades of experience in marketing consumer goods could fail so miserably in introducing a new product within their own markets. Brooks takes the reader through the entire development process from identifying a need, creating a design, setting up a distribution network, and planning a marketing campaign. The entire project failed miserably within three years of product launch. Brooks' insights into why are the most surprising.
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