Though we never stop working for you, summer gives us at Bowen Asset Management a chance to leave our electronic devices in the RV or mountain cabin and take some time for a swim or a hike (while always checking for news and messages the minute we get back). What we look forward to most is catching up on our reading when the active day is done. Here are three books that we’ve read so far this summer and found worthwhile.
1929: The Inside Story of the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History—and How It Shattered a Nation by Andrew Ross Sorkin. (Viking, 592 pages)
Reviewed by Linda Bowen, co-principal
Andrew Ross Sorkin, the author of Too Big To Fail (about the 2008 financial crisis), now takes us inside the chaos of the Wall Street crash of October 1929 that precipitated the Great Depression of the 1930s. Sorkin goes behind the scenes of Wall Street and Washington, delving into diary entries, newspaper stories, architectural records, and board minutes to describe the larger-than-life characters around the events, from the financiers and investors whose delusions, ambition, and naïveté led to the disaster to the skeptics who saw the crash coming—only to be dismissed until it was too late. The book is a very readable and interesting journalistic investigation of this extremely important historical moment.
Sorkin’s tale is about more than money, examining the dynamics of power and psychology, and the seductive illusion that “this time will be different.” It also is about the responsibility of leadership and the disregarded warning signs that were dismissed until it was too late. Many influential figures in 1929 had the power to slow the risky behavior but failed to act decisively.
Sorkin’s fable of is one of greed, corruption, and incompetence. We witness just about every big player on Wall Street running “pump-and-dump” schemes—hyping a stock with fellow titans, watching prices spiral upward as the operators sell to one another at deliberately inflated values while other speculators pile on to drive prices still higher, until the schemers sell out at the top of the market price, leaving the suckers holding the bag.
A time of easy credit, loose oversight, and widespread confidence created an environment where risks were ignored or misunderstood. One of the clearest takeaways from 1929 is that success without discipline often leads to vulnerability. Many businesses at the time were growing quickly but lacked safeguards, transparency, and accountability.
Sorkin’s book does not really point to any specific cause of the Great Depression, but the inference that 1929 draws is that rampant debt-funded speculation with minimal regulation is never a great idea. It’s less than ideal to have a financial system built around the whims of a few powerful people whose individual decisions shape the lives of many millions.
Ultimately, 1929 is valuable not because it may help us predict the future, but because it explains dangerous patterns that often repeat. Markets may evolve and technologies change, but human behavior remains consistent.
Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America by Christopher Leonard. (Simon & Schuster, 704 page.)
Reviewed by Zack Bowen, co-principal
Founded by Fred Koch in 1940 in Wichita, Kansas, Koch Industries has evolved well beyond a small family oil-pipeline business to become one of the largest (and possibly most secretive) privately held multinational conglomerates in the United States. Koch Industries’ reach runs throughout financial and industrial America as a result of its trading prowess to business-to-business suppliers of commodity products. Koch subsidies are involved globally in everything from petroleum and petroleum products to fertilizers to chemicals to synthetics to lumber to the trading desks investing in these commodities.
Corporate historian and investigative journalist Christopher Leonard looks at the 50-year growth of the influential firm in a book that is not exactly a celebration of a company that has established deep political ties in the conservative and Republican movement that has recently dominated American life (the book ends with the first Trump administration).
The sons of Fred Koch, CEO Charles Koch and his brother David (who died in 2019) are largely credited with the growth and success of the family company. Fred Koch was a founding member of the ultraconservative and conspiracist anti-communist John Birch Society in the late 1950s (the group once claimed that even President Eisenhower was a communist). Though both Koch sons identified as libertarians (David ran for vice president in 1980 on the Libertarian Party ticket) they eventually became influential donors to Republican candidates, before their network made a turn away from overt partisan politics in 2019.
Charles Koch is known for his secretive, market-based management style and investment patience, and his ruthlessness in dealing with organized labor. Koch’s opacity extends to his political activities. In the early 2000s, the brothers established a shadowy network of think tanks, foundations, supposed grassroots or “astroturf” organizations (such as Americans for Prosperity), academic programs, and advocacy and legal groups, to shape public opinion toward favoring minimal government, limiting federal healthcare, and downplaying climate-change science.
Leonard’s book takes us deep into the family history, looking at the conflicts both of the company and the Kochs, portraying a series of brilliant (but sometimes morally suspect) business successes and political actions eventually leading to the founding of the Koch network and its part in the creating the current widening income divide, the dismantling of unions, and the rollback in environmental standards. Whatever your partisan outlook, Kochland is relevant to the business, cultural, and political environment in America today.
Mansfield and Dirksen: Bipartisan Giants of the Senate by Marc C. Johnson, (University of Oklahoma Press, 295 pages)
Reviewed by Michael Harrington, editorial director
Historian Marc C. Johnson begins his account of the remarkable across-the-aisle senatorial relationship between Democratic Majority Leader Mike Mansfield of Montana and Republican Minority Leader Everett Dirksen with this note: “This is the story of a United States Senate that no longer exists.”
This assertion of a bygone era of collaboration and compromise between the party leaders is true, up to a point. A great deal of significant legislation on civil rights, housing, and poverty was accomplished in the 1960s heyday of the two leaders, but the geographic makeup of the Senate has mostly just realigned now. Johnson describes a time when both parties were split along geographical and demographic lines that would now be described as purple, with Republican delegations from Vermont and Delaware along with Democratic pairs from Florida and West Virginia. These lines have since largely shifted and hardened into red and blue, with the conservative Democrats of the south now become solidly Republican and the liberal Republicans of the northeast mostly now reliably Democratic.
However, it is true that the leadership displayed by Mansfield and Dirksen is now sorely lacking. Mansfield, a copper miner-turned-history professor, was a low-key, reticent politician who preferred to remain behind the scenes, tallying votes and eschewing public credit for accomplishments. Dirksen was a former actor and bakery owner renowned for his oratory delivered in a distinctive growling and theatrical basso profundo who delighted in publicity and never turned down an opportunity to be on TV, photographed, or quoted.
What they had in common was a dedication to public service, civility, and an inclination to put the country’s interests over that of their respective political parties. In that respect, we do not see their type of legislator much anymore (though Dirksen may have established a political persona too much in evidence these days).
It is certainly amazing to revisit a time when partisan politics could be overcome. The Senate these days sees much more legislation done through party-line reconciliation votes, and an increasing amount of time is now devoted to confirmations of judges and political nominees rather than deliberation.
Johnson’s book is engaging and informative, with the narrative flow of a novel. It also has many implications for our current politics. We are now experiencing a reassessment of the societal changes from the monumental legislative of the 1960s, albeit with far less civility, decorum, and cooperation than in the days of the more consequential Senate brokered by these two outstanding public servants.