The 100 Best Business Books of All Time - Bonus Chapter on Industry Books

Industr Books

Part investigative journalism, part biography,

Industry books

are the true crime novels o the business book genre. Yet a successul industry book uncovers notonly the dark side o an industry, but also its appeal, its place in history,its essential contributions. Exposing the inner workings o oneindustry—and the habits o its consumers—can in turn reveal much aboutbusiness as a whole and even more about human nature.In a sidebar tucked into

The 100 Best Business Books o All Time

,

webriey recommended some o our avorite industry books. We declinedto include a ull chapter o reviews in the book because sometimes theshel-lie o these tales is too short and applicability is lost. But our ond-ness or this category o business book inspired us to create a “lost”chapter o

The 100 Best

—a peek into some investigative page-turners that will make you wiser about how the world and many o its essential indus-tries work.

introduction

The 100 Best Business Books o All Time

Industry

1

C o v e r i m a g e © i S t o c k p h o t o . c o m / E n r i c o F i a n c h i n i

describing the way he orced his ree-wheeling ways onto Nabisco’s tra-ditions and then tired o ghting or Nabisco’s uture against its upstartcompetitors. He “never bothered to ormulate any kind o master planor reshaping Nabisco” and, instead, met with RJ Reynolds Industries,the tobacco giant, in hopes o a merger.The authors continue by laying out the history o RJ Reynolds, themerger with Nabisco, and Johnson’s success in gaining the top oce andmoving the company headquarters out o Winston-Salem. But despite hisaccomplishments, Johnson once again got restless—he loved war and itsspoils, not the mundanity o maintenance. In the nancial climate o thattime, when takeovers and mergers and buy-outs were happening witherocity and requency, the masters o Wall Street predicted that RJR Na-bisco, led by the mercurial Johnson, would soon do something big. It did.Despite the act that the buyout o RJR would be three times biggerthan the biggest in history, and contrary to Johnson’s prediction, there were plenty o competitors in the race or RJR Nabisco. The second hal o the book details the warring actions amongst these competitors in thenancial industry and the strong personalities driving the deals and ma-nipulating the situation. While Johnson worked in tandem with Shear-son Lehman to organize his leveraged buyout, other equity rms joinedthe race, including the ultimate winner, KKR. At times it is a challenge tokeep all o the players straight once the competition begins, but Burroughand Helyar do a ne job o giving each a ace and history and inner lie tobe remembered.

Barbarians at the Gate

is a page-turner o the best sort. It’s engrossing,inormative, and revealing. And it provides a warning, still topical, thatit’s the people behind the money who make Wall Street both dramaticand dangerous.

“Jh wa gaci i efea.Aivig a nie We, he  hig he i wa pe he a.”

W

ritten by two ormer

Wall Street Journal

reporters,

Bar-barians at the Gate

took the business book world by stormin 1989. The

Los Angeles Times Book Review

called it “unawed.”The

New York Times Book Review

called it “a rst-rate thriller.” And while many o us, having lived through the subsequentnancial drama o the 1990s and the current economic crisis,may think this is an old story,

Barbarians at the Gate

remainsrelevant and riveting. The takeover o RJR Nabisco Corporationthrough a leveraged buyout by private equity rm KKR set the scene oreverything that has happened on Wall Street since. Authors Bryan Bur-rough and John Helyar say it best: “[F]or those six weeks in 1988, whena new set o business barons vied to own a huge company and to be topdog on Wall Street, the planets were so perectly aligned. The zeitgeist o an age was on ull display in the war or RJR: raw emotions and colliding egos; improbable plot twists and even more improbable characters.”They begin their book as any playbill does with an introduction o characters. Then they open their story with a tense scene: a meeting be-tween the RJR Nabisco board and its CEO, F. Ross Johnson, who uses anannual meeting to announce his plans to buy out the company. The boardagrees, but with one caveat: that they make a public announcement im-mediately. This means two things to everyone in the room: First, becauseo the enormous amount o capital needed or a leveraged buyout, a publicannouncement could kill a deal in its inancy. And, second, making thisnews public invited corporate raiders to make their own pitch. Johnsonagreed to the announcement, making the atal aw o believing no one would want or be able to buy such a behemoth.What ollows is the history o how this pivotal moment came to be, andthe ascinating atermath that resulted when, to everyone’s surprise (orperhaps naïveté), a number o competitors stepped in to compete or thecompany. Burrough and Helyar begin in 1976 when Johnson was a young executive, ull o ambition and aggression. Johnson was good at spend-ing money and making money. The authors chronicle Johnson’s rise atStandard Brands and the subsequent unpleasant merger with Nabisco,

baaia a he Gae

Bryan Burrough and John helyar

The 100 Best Business Books o All Time

Industry

32

The 100 Best Business Books o All Time

Industry

Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall o RJR,

Collins Business, Revised 2008, ISBN 9780061655548

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