Books about Debacle from Amazon.com

Originally published in 1961, before the United States escalated its involvement in South Vietnam, Street without Joy offered a clear warning about what American forces would face in the jungles of Southeast Asia: a costly and protracted revolutionary war fought without fronts against a mobile enemy. In harrowing detail, Fall describes the brutality and frustrations of the Indochina War, the savage eight-year conflict-ending in 1954 after the fall of Dien Bien Phu-in which French forces suffered a staggering defeat at the hands of Communist-led Vietnamese nationalists. With its frontline perspective, vivid reporting, and careful analysis, Street without Joy was required reading for policymakers in Washington and GIs in the field and is now considered a classic..
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Conservative and working-class, Jean Macquart is an experienced, middle-aged soldier in the French army, who has endured deep personal loss. When he first meets the wealthy and mercurial Maurice Levasseur, who never seems to have suffered, his hatred is immediate. But after they are thrown together during the disastrous Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71, the pair are compelled to understand one other. Forging a profound friendship, they must struggle together to endure a disorganised and brutal war, the savage destruction of France's Second Empire and the fall of Napoleon III. One of the greatest of all war novels, "The Debacle" is the nineteenth novel in Zola's great Rougon-Macquart cycle. A forceful and deeply moving tale of close friendship, it is also a fascinating chronicle of the events that were to lead, in the words of Zola himself, to the murder of a nation'..
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“AOL had found itself at the edge of disaster so frequently that one of its first executives, a brassy Vietnam veteran and restaurateur named Jim Kimsey, had taken the punch line of an old joke popularized by Ronald Reagan and made it into an unlikely mantra for the company. It concerned a very optimistic young boy who happened upon a huge pile of horse manure and began digging excitedly. When someone asked him what he was doing covered in muck, the foolish boy answered brightly, ‘There must be a pony in here somewhere!’” —From the Prologue

If you’re wondering what happened after “a company without assets acquired a company without a clue,” as Kara Swisher wryly writes, it’s time to crack open this trenchant book about the doomed merger of America Online and Time Warner. On a quest to discover how the deal of the century became the messiest merger in history, Swisher delivers a rollicking narrative and a keen analysis of this debacle that is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand what it all means for the digital future. Packed with new revelations and on-the-record interviews with key players, it is the first detailed examination of the merger’s aftermath and also looks forward to what is coming next.

It certainly has not been a pretty picture so far—with $100 billion in losses, a sinking stock price, employees in revolt, and lawsuits galore. As Swisher writes, “It is hard not to feel a bit queasy about the whole sorry mess...It felt a bit like I was watching someone fall down a flight of stairs in slow motion, and every bump and thump made me wince. It made me reassess old ideas and wonder what I had gotten wrong. And it left me deeply confused as to what had happened and, more important, what was coming next.”

For Swisher, finding the answers to what went awry is important because she remains a staunch believer in the digital future—maybe not in the AOL Time Warner merger, but in the essential idea at the heart of it that someday the distinction of old and new media will no longer exist. Borrowing from Winston Churchill, Swisher calls it “the end of the beginning” of the digital revolution. “By that, I mean that it is from the ashes of this bust that the really important companies of the next era will emerge. And that evolution will, I believe, be shaped by what happened—and what is happening now—at AOL Time Warner.”

To figure it all out, Swisher takes her reader on a journey that begins with a portrait of two wildly different corporate cultures and businesses that somehow came to believe, in the crucible of the red-hot Internet era, that they could successfully join forces and achieve unprecedented growth and success. When the merger was announced in early 2000, the irresistible combination was hailed as the new paradigm and its executives—Steve Case, Jerry Levin, Bob Pittman—as popular icons of the future. But after the boom so spectacularly turned to bust and the visions of New Media Supremacy lay in ruins, Swisher searches for clues about where the merger went wrong and who is to blame.

More important, she looks to the future of both AOL Time Warner and the Internet as she seeks to answer the key question that the noise of the disaster has all but drowned out. Will the demise of the AOL Time Warner merger be the final and inevitable chapter of the dot-com debacle or will it herald a new paradigm altogether? This book, then, is a primer for the time to come, using the story of the AOL Time Warner merger as the vehicle to show the troubled journey into the future.

“Swisher narrates human foible and brilliance, a train-wreck tale brightened by plenty of personality—including her own, sparkling through in laugh-out-loud observations on almost every page.” —Boston Globe

“Swisher displays a finely honed hogwash detector and maps AOL’s inevitable fall with the perfect amount of cynicism and whimsy.” —Newsday

“Swisher delivers a readable account of the gigantic merger and why it didn’t work. She mixes in distinctive humor with hard-core reporting to expose a monumental exercise in ineptness.”—Dallas Morning News

“[Readers] will be entertained by Swisher’s barbed wit and carried along by her expertly constructed narrative.” —Forbes.com

“Swisher moves her narrative along swiftly and adopts a pleasingly irreverent tone...Better yet, Swisher diligently reconstructs the optimism with which many Time Warner officials (including Ted Turner) greeted the merger. The merger was not a total loss...Swisher has produced an enjoyable book about it.” —Washington Post

“Swisher explains in her excellent new book why the merger turned out to be a rotten egg...Pony is a wickedly funny, insider-y tale...Swisher deftly paints the characters of the top executives, then exposes all the bickering and backstabbing.” —San Francisco Weekly

“Swisher has a wicked sense of humor and a keen eye for human foibles and folly.” —Chicago Sun-Times

“[An] entertaining and sharply written analysis of the fateful AOL Time Warner merger.” —Variety.com.
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This book describes what the authors identify as an emerging political crisis in U.S. politics: the possible winning of the presidency by a candidate with far fewer votes than his or her opponent. David W. Abbott and James P. Levine stress both the irrationality and peculiar nature of the current electoral system, emphasizing recent and current political developments. On the basis of their computer analysis of past elections and modern political realities, the authors predict that within twenty years it is very likely that the United States will produce a "wrong winner." In explaining how this phenomenon could occur, Abbott and Levine introduce the concept of the "wasted vote;" the fact that winning lopsided majorities in states is worth no more than winning states by one vote, due to the antiquated winner-take-all principle. The opening chapter gives a brief historical overview of the electoral college and the structure of the existing electoral system. The method of selection of state electors is then scrutinized, along with the set of procedures that the electors work with until the formal announcement of the electoral votes. The authors also note that, under an odd set of ground rules, if no candidate gets a majority of votes in the college, the House of Representatives must choose the president. Whenever there is a third party candidate, there is a danger of a stalemate in Congress, creating the potential for "all kinds of nefarious political shenanigans." The authors conclude that the only satisfactory solution to the electoral system's shortcomings is the total abrogation of the electoral college and a shift to direct election of the president by the people. Wrong Winner will be an excellent supplementary text in Public Choice, Campaign and Elections, and American Government courses, as well as of interest to political professionals and political scientists..
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The former FDIC/RTC chief, chosen to clean up the S&L debacle, reveals who was involved in the mess, how the government let it occur, and insider information about the resulting lawsuits. 35,000 first printing $35,000 ad/promo. Tour..
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This book analyzes in depth all major derivatives debacles going back to Citibank's forex losses in its Belgian branch in 1964, to Amaranth's $5.4 billion loss on gas futures in 2006 and Societe Generale's loss of $7.8 billion in early 2008. Contrary to widespread belief, derivatives products are welfare-enhancing from a macroeconomic point of view. Unfortunately, financial innovations are used and abused by financial institutions and corporations when control systems are not properly designed. The proliferation of financial derivatives does not increase systemic risk but allows players in speculative markets to optimize their risk-return profile in line with their strategic goals and comparative advantages in the marketplace.Regulation is not necessarily called for; instead, proper guidelines for the use and monitoring of derivatives by firms should be established and enforced. The book groups cases by derivatives category, starting with the simplest and building up to the most complex - namely, Forwards, Futures, Swaps and Options, in that order, with applications in commodities, foreign exchange, stock indices and interest rates. Each chapter deals with one derivatives debacle, providing a rigorous and comprehensive but non-technical elucidation of what had happened..
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Market forces, not scoundrels, destroyed the savings and loan business So says Martin Lowy in what is truly an inside look at the savings and loan crisis. Drawing upon his experience as a practicing attorney, bank officer, and savings and loan director, Lowy provides an expert account of the problems that have overwhelmed the nation's savings institutions and their government regulators. High Rollers is the first book on the S&L crisis that provides an analytical groundwork for technical and nontechnical readers--so that both can comprehend what happened. Lowy's clear, readable style allows him to quickly describe the origins of the problems in new market forces and new technologies, and how the problems grew out of control as a result of regulatory mistakes and congressional inaction. Even his discussions of real estate lending practices and accounting issues are, in the words of Professor Horvitz, "both clear to the novice and instructive to the professional.".
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This book is a case study in international relations and contemporary history, as seen from the standpoint of a constitutional, international and human rights lawyer involved in 25 years of negotiations to agree on a federation reuniting the divided Island of Cyprus. Based for the most part on personal knowledge, the writer describes recent international attempts to settle the long-standing disputes over Cyprus and provides a warning to those who invoke UN "good offices" machinery of risks they run. In explaining the UN Secretariat's activities, the roles played by major Powers are emphasised, together with consequential local perceptions which ultimately led to failure of the international effort. Analysis of what went wrong in that effort's later phases indicates procedural and substantive approaches needed for any renewed negotiations to achieve success. Subsequent developments until the end of 2004, including the EU's agreement to open accession negotiations with Turkey and potential positive measures, are also outlined, as are the issues which all parties should now properly consider. Accompanying the text, which concentrates on the 2002-2004 period, is an extensive photographic record since 1954 of "the Cyprus problem" and of previous and recent attempts at negotiation. The illustrations, sometimes light-heartedly captioned, put events in context and illuminate the attitudes of significant actors in a manner no written text (other than one by a novelist) can do. The writer, both in text and photographs, frankly avows the prejudices and selectivity inevitable in any account of controversial and divisive events. But the resulting alternative narrative should facilitate a deeper understanding of the Cyprus situation than that currently afforded by the received picture, which has been presented by the UN Secretariat and certain major Powers. Such deeper understanding could assist in achieving a positive resolution of the conflict-ridden relationships in, around and about Cyprus..
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Classic naturalist novel, in the original French. First published in 1892. According to Wikipedia: "Émile Zola (2 April 1840 â€" 29 September 1902) was an influential French writer, the most important example of the literary school of naturalism, and a major figure in the political liberalization of France...After his first major novel, Thérèse Raquin (1867), Zola started the long series called Les Rougon Macquart, about a family under the Second Empire... More than half of Zola's novels were part of this set of 20 collectively known as Les Rougon-Macquart. Unlike Balzac who in the midst of his literary career re synthetized his work into La Comédie Humaine, Zola from the outset at the age of 28 had thought of the complete layout of the series. Set in France's Second Empire, the series traces the "environmental" influences of violence, alcohol, and prostitution which became more prevalent during the second wave of the industrial revolution.".
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