Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #183593 in Books
• Published on: 1991-01-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 426 pages

Customer Reviews

The Unvarnished Truth
About 6 years ago I visited the White Eagle Conference Center in beautiful central New York. This is a quaint place that must have been a real marquee in its time. On one of their obviously long under used book shelves (seemed like nothing had been touched for at least 2 decades) I noticed this book, an original copyrighted 1932 version. I couldn't put it down. It presented a thoroughly well written, seminal treatment of the conflicts that senior leaders exhibit even today, a full 75 years later. It explained in vivid detail the deeply entrenched, inextricible human behavior that is observed consistently by senior leaders from organization to organization today. The plain and simple bottom line is that unless you're an insider, you're nothing more than overhead to be tolerated. The SEC was created by sheer necessity to protect the public. Businesmen 'talk' about how they care about other people but the unvarnished truth is that their friends and family are the only ones who matter. This book is great foundational work providing insight to the reasons why we need a strong SEC. The only thing that has changed in the human conditon is technology. The DNA that drives human behavior hasn't changed for thousands of years.

Dated Classic
"The Modern Corporation and Private Property" was hailed as an instant classic when it appeared in 1932. To my knowledge, it was the first book to spell out how modern corporate capitalism is characterized by pervasive oligopoly and the separation of management from ownership. These points are still valid today, and remind us that modern capitalism has little in common with the social system analyzed by Adam Smith and other Classical economists. However, most of "The Modern Corporation and Private Property" is taken up with an out-of-date, pre-SEC review of corporate finance law as it existed in 1930. As a result, the book will be of little interest to most modern readers, even though it is a "must" purchase for any serious library of books on economics or corporate governance.

Worthy of study today, as well as when it was written!
I was lucky to have Professor Berle as a teacher at the Columbia Law School. I read the book then (in the early 1960s) and re-read it recently. It is timely reminder that the corporation--that great engine of our prosperity--has undergone significant (and not for the better) changes--not only from when the book was written, but also in the forty-four years since I read it last.