Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco

This was obviously a book about a single private equity deal (at the time, the largest LBO in history). But as I worked through the book, I was struck by how multifaceted the story and its implications were. First, the actual authorship: this was a masterclass in investigative journalism. The story of how Burrough and Heylar were able to, within a matter of months, and amidst so much chaos, interview every single major player in the Nabisco deal, in many cases interviewing every person in each boardroom discussion, is remarkable. This also felt like a valuable manual of individual/group strategy and psychology — studying how Kravitz and Roberts behaved during the bidding negotiations compared to those of the First Boston and Management groups was fascinating.

And then, of course, this was most of all a book on greed and the ebbs and flows of an industry and that industry’s repercussions on millions of lives. I found it fitting how the book’s afterward ended, with the authors looking at the ensuing 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s and drawing similar parallels of repeated behavior — asking whether permanent lessons are ever truly learned in business and acted upon.