White Shoe: How a New Breed of Wall Street Lawyers Changed Big Business and the American Century
Written by John Oller
Narrated by Stephen Graybill
3/5
()
Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this audiobook
The fascinating true story of how a group of visionary attorneys helped make American business synonymous with big business and Wall Street the center of the financial world.
The legal profession once operated on a smaller scale — folksy lawyers arguing for fairness and justice before a judge and jury. But by the year 1900, a new type of lawyer was born, one who understood business as well as the law. Working hand in glove with their clients, over the next two decades, these New York City “white shoe” lawyers devised and implemented legal strategies that would drive the business world throughout the 20th century. These lawyers were architects of the monopolistic new corporations so despised by many and acted as guardians who helped the kings of industry fend off government overreaching. Yet they also quietly steered their robber-baron clients away from a “public be damned” attitude toward more enlightened corporate behavior during a period of progressive, turbulent change in America.
Author John Oller, himself a former Wall Street lawyer, gives us a richly written glimpse of turn-of-the-century New York, from the grandeur of private mansions and elegant hotels and the city’s early skyscrapers and transportation systems, to the depths of its deplorable tenement housing conditions. Some of the biggest names of the era are featured, including business titans J. P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller, lawyer-statesmen Elihu Root and Charles Evans Hughes, and presidents Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Woodrow Wilson.
Among the colorful, high-powered lawyers vividly portrayed, White Shoe focuses on three: Paul Cravath, who guided his client George Westinghouse in his war against Thomas Edison and launched a new model of law-firm management — the “Cravath system”; Frank Stetson, the “attorney general” for financier J. P. Morgan who fiercely defended against government lawsuits to break up Morgan’s business empires; and William Nelson Cromwell, the lawyer “who taught the robber barons how to rob” and was best known for his instrumental role in creating the Panama Canal.
In White Shoe, the story of this small but influential band of Wall Street lawyers who created big business is fully told for the first time.
Related to White Shoe
Related audiobooks
The Hellhound of Wall Street: How Ferdinand Pecora's Investigation of the Great Crash Forever Changed American Finance Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Wall Street Crash Course Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFifty Years in Wall Street Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Moneyland by Oliver Bullough: key Takeaways, Summary & Analysis Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Day the Bubble Burst: A Social History of the Wall Street Crash of 1929 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Death of Capital: How New Policy Can Restore Stability Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/513 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Servants of the Damned: Giant Law Firms, Donald Trump, and the Corruption of Justice Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Day the Markets Roared: How a 1982 Forecast Sparked a Global Bull Market Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Eternal Decline and Fall of Rome: The History of a Dangerous Idea Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Great American Bank Robbery: The Unauthorized Report About What Really Caused the Great Recession Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Last Gold Rush…Ever!: 7 Reasons for the Runaway Gold Market and How You Can Profit from It Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFear City: New York's Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dictators Without Borders: Power and Money in Central Asia Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fraud: An American History from Barnum to Madoff Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5All the Presidents' Bankers: The Hidden Alliances That Drive American Power Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The New Empire of Debt: The Rise and Fall of an Epic Financial Bubble Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5American Business History: A Very Short Introduction Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Company: A Short History of a Revolutionary Idea Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Day Wall Street Exploded: A Story of America in Its First Age of Terror Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5History of New York Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDen of Thieves Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Riders Come Out at Night: Brutality, Corruption, and Cover Up in Oakland Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5History of Banking Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
United States History For You
The Fourth Turning Is Here: What the Seasons of History Tell Us about How and When This Crisis Will End Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Killing the Guys Who Killed the Guy Who Killed Lincoln: A Nutty Story About Edwin Booth and Boston Corbett Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Land of Delusion: Out on the edge with the crackpots and conspiracy-mongers remaking our shared reality Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Killing the Witches: The Horror of Salem, Massachusetts Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/51776 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lies My Teacher Told Me: 2nd Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of September 11, 2001 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Book of Charlie Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Untold History of the United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dragonfire: Four Days That (Almost) Changed America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Astor: The Rise and Fall of an American Fortune Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Valiant Women: The Extraordinary American Servicewomen Who Helped Win World War II Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Waco: David Koresh, the Branch Davidians, and A Legacy of Rage Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5John Adams Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5UFO: The Inside Story of the US Government's Search for Alien Life Here—and Out There Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of the Donner Party Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ghosts of Honolulu: A Japanese Spy, A Japanese American Spy Hunter, and the Untold Story of Pearl Harbor Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for White Shoe
1 rating0 reviews