Books about Debacles 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..
Price: $11.94 [Notify me when price goes down.]

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'..
Price: $6.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Classic naturalist novel of the Franco-Prussian War, in English translation. 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.".
Price: $0.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]

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..
Price: $29.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

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..
Price: $54.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

“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..
Price: $0.88 [Notify me when price goes down.]

A colorful and insightful memoir on the creation and nurturing of the S& L debacle .
Price: $25.45 [Notify me when price goes down.]