Tombstones: A Lawyer's Tales from the Takeover Decades

Rating:
Summary: Great read...
Review: Excellent read - fun, informative, insightful. Should be great learning tool for those new to the M&A world, and both healthy and entertaining to those who have experience already. Lederman is a very bright guy, and his writing style is that of a fine story-teller. Always clear... always interesting. An "older" book now, but gives interesting fundamentals to foundational strategies still important in 2000. (I just re-read, and am glad I did)

Rating:
Summary: Great read...
Review: Excellent read - fun, informative, insightful. Should be great learning tool for those new to the M&A world, and both healthy and entertaining to those who have experience already. Lederman is a very bright guy, and his writing style is that of a fine story-teller. Always clear... always interesting. An "older" book now, but gives interesting fundamentals to foundational strategies still important in 2000. (I just re-read, and am glad I did)

Rating:
Summary: Ever wonder what was really happening in the 1980's
Review: Great book. Hearing the stories from the inside, it'll make you skin crawl to read about the largess of the 1980's. The book covers all the "greats": Keating, Pickens, Reagan and Miklen to name a few. This book would make a great movie.

Rating:
Summary: Ever wonder what was really happening in the 1980's
Review: Great book. Hearing the stories from the inside, it'll make you skin crawl to read about the largess of the 1980's. The book covers all the "greats": Keating, Pickens, Reagan and Miklen to name a few. This book would make a great movie.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Personal Story of Legal Side of Corporate Finance
Review: I enjoyed Lederman's writing style and imagine him to be a fairly modest man of extraordinary talent. I hold the CFA designation and my reading choices tend to be finance oriented with an occasional foray into pulp like "Rainmaker", "Predator's Ball", "Liar's Poker", and the other usual suspects. "Tombstones" renewed my appreciation for the legal aspects of M&A, which are introduced here by way of an interesting personal history. Lederman provides an introduction, rather than an exhaustive study, of tax and legal issues. This book drew me in much more than "Big Deal", which I have yet to finish. I recommend both, given Wasserstein's obvious accomplishments and his more contemporary account. "Tombstones" is first and foremost a very good story and thus more engrossing. Also, the lengthy disourse on Ian Reich was heartfelt and of peculiar interest given his reemergence on the front page of the WSJ.