Volume 37, Number 5 · March 29, 1990
Greed
By Michael M. Thomas
Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco
by Bryan Burrough, by John Helyar
Harper and Row, 528 pp., $22.95
True Greed: What Really Happened in the Battle for RJR Nabisco
by Hope Lampert
New American Library, 259 pp., $18.95
Reading these two books, an exhausting and not altogether agreeable diversion, invites recollection of Newton's statement that if he had seen far, it was because he stood on the shoulders of giants. The takeover of RJR Nabisco, the multi-billion-dollar food and tobacco enterprise, is the story of a number of men of no particular wit or distinction (most of whom, ironically, are also small physically, which may have a bearing on the story's psychological subtext) who were enabled to see further, as it were, because they were perched atop a mountain of liquidity—cash and credit available for hire.
Review, 3926 words
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