Transaction Man, Nicholas Lemann
Transaction Man, Nicholas Lemann
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Transaction Man
The Rise of the Deal and the Decline of the American Dream

Author: Nicholas Lemann

Narrator: Chris Ciulla, Nicholas Lemann

Unabridged: 11 hr 54 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/10/2019

Includes: Bonus Material Bonus Material Included


Synopsis

This program includes a prologue and epilogue read by the author.

Over the last generation, the United States has undergone seismic changes. Stable institutions have given way to frictionless transactions, which are celebrated no matter what collateral damage they generate. The concentration of great wealth has coincided with the fraying of social ties and the rise of inequality. How did all this come about?

In Transaction Man, Nicholas Lemann explains the United States’—and the world’s—great transformation by examining three remarkable individuals who epitomized and helped create their eras. Adolf Berle, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s chief theorist of the economy, imagined a society dominated by large corporations, which a newly powerful federal government had forced to become benign and stable institutions, contributing to the public good by offering stable employment and generous pensions. By the 1970s, the corporations’ large stockholders grew restive under this regime, and their chief theoretician, Harvard Business School’s Michael Jensen, insisted that firms should maximize shareholder value, whatever the consequences. Today, Silicon Valley titans such as the LinkedIn cofounder and venture capitalist Reid Hoffman hope “networks” can reknit our social fabric.

Lemann interweaves these fresh and vivid profiles with a history of the Morgan Stanley investment bank from the 1930s through the financial crisis of 2008, while also tracking the rise and fall of a working-class Chicago neighborhood and the family-run car dealerships at its heart. Incisive and sweeping, Transaction Man is the definitive account of the reengineering of America—with enormous consequences for all of us.

About Nicholas Lemann

Nicholas Lemann, born in New Orleans in 1954, began his journalistic career there and then worked at Washington Monthly, Washington Post, and Texas Monthly, of which he was executive editor. A frequent contributor to national magazines, he was national correspondent of The Atlantic Monthly and is now a staff writer at The New Yorker. His books include the prizewinning The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America (1991).


Reviews

Goodreads review by Marks54 on October 03, 2019

This is a recent addition to the growing literature of political economy for the post financial crash age - to take stock of US economic developments in the past several decades and try to make sense out of it. Among recent books, it can be compared to “The Economists’ Hour: False Prophets, Free Mar......more

Goodreads review by Emmanuel-francis on March 18, 2023

It is always bracing to be reminded how most things we take for granted and deem permanent are, in fact, relatively recent. The Transaction Man by Nicholas Lemann examines the transformation of the organising principles of Industrial America. A period that runs, by my estimation, from 1880 till date......more

Goodreads review by Dan on October 27, 2019

I loved the title, and it sucked me in. The book didn't engage me near as much as I expected. It's a good exploration into three schools of thought, institutions, markets, and networks, and a semi-biography of three leaders at the forefront of each school. Transaction Man is a sort of economic hist......more

Goodreads review by Mal on October 30, 2019

The Industrial Revolution came late to the United States, but when it started in earnest following the Civil War its impact on American society was nothing short of revolutionary. Suddenly, an institution called the corporation assumed an ever-greater role in the life of the American people. Its inf......more

Goodreads review by Jay on July 13, 2021

I tend to enjoy these kinds of books. I found this to be the same kind of book as Alvin Toffler’s “The Third Wave”. Toffler divides human history into 3 “waves”, or defining eras. Here, the author divides the post WW1 times into 3 “eras” related to economics. Interesting, and with some similar thoug......more


Awards

  • Amazon.com Best Books of the Year