#1 New York Times bestseller and arguably the best business narrative ever written, Barbarians at the Gate is the classic account of the fall of RJR Nabisco at the hands of a buyout from investment firm KKR. A book that stormed both the bestseller list and the public imagination, a book that created a genre of its own, and a book that gets at the heart of Wall Street and the '80s culture it helped define, Barbarians at the Gate is a modern classic—a masterpiece of investigatory journalism and a rollicking book of corporate derring-do and financial swordsmanship. The fight to control RJR Nabisco during October and November of 1988 was more than just the largest takeover in Wall Street history. Marked by brazen displays of ego not seen in American business for decades, it became the high point of a new gilded age and its repercussions are still being felt. The tale remains the ultimate story of greed and glory—a story and a cast of characters that determined the course of global business and redefined how deals would be done and fortunes made in the decades to come. Barbarians at the Gate is the gripping account of these two frenzied months, of deal makers and publicity flaks, of an old-line industrial powerhouse (home of such familiar products a Oreos and Camels) that became the victim of the ruthless and rapacious style of finance in the 1980s. As reporters for The Wall Street Journal, Burrough and Helyar had extensive access to all the characters in this drama. They take the reader behind the scenes at strategy meetings and society dinners, into boardrooms and bedrooms, providing an unprecedentedly detailed look at how financial operations at the highest levels are conducted but also a richly textured social history of wealth at the twilight of the Reagan era. At the center of the huge power struggle is RJR Nabisco's president, the high-living Ross Johnson. It's his secret plan to buy out the company that sets the frenzy in motion, attracting the country's leading takeover players: Henry Kravis, the legendary leveraged-buyout king of investment firm KKR, whose entry into the fray sets off an acquisitive commotion; Peter Cohen, CEO of Shearson Lehman Hutton and Johnson's partner, who needs a victory to propel his company to an unchallenged leadership in the lucrative mergers and acquisitions field; the fiercely independent Ted Forstmann, motivated as much by honor as by his rage at the corruption he sees taking over the business he cherishes; Jim Maher and his ragtag team, struggling to regain credibility for the decimated ranks at First Boston; and an army of desperate bankers, lawyers, and accountants, all drawn inexorably to the greatest prize of their careers—and one of the greatest prizes in the history of American business. Written with the bravado of a novel and researched with the diligence of a sweeping cultural history, Barbarians at the Gate is present at the front line of every battle of the campaign. Here is the unforgettable story of that takeover in all its brutality. In a new afterword specially commissioned for the story's 20th anniversary, Burrough and Helyar return to visit the heroes and villains of this epic story, tracing the fallout of the deal, charting the subsequent success and failure of those involved, and addressing the incredible impact this story—and the book itself—made on the world.

Public concern over sharp increases in undergraduate tuition has led many to question why colleges and universities cannot behave more like businesses and cut their costs to hold tuition down. Ronald G. Ehrenberg and his coauthors assert that understanding how academic institutions are governed provides part of the answer. Factors that influence the governance of academic institutions include how states regulate higher education and govern their public institutions; the size and method of selection of boards of trustees; the roles of trustees, administrators, and faculty in shared governance at campuses; how universities are organized for fiscal and academic purposes; the presence or absence of collective bargaining for faculty, staff, and graduate student assistants; pressures from government regulations, donors, insurance carriers, athletic conferences, and accreditation agencies; and competition from for-profit providers. Governing Academia, which covers all these aspects of governance, is enlightening and accessible for anyone interested in higher education. The authors are leading academic administrators and scholars from a wide range of fields including economics, education, law, political science, and public policy.

The English Competence Handbook provides a simple, clear, and thoroughly proven method of building non-fiction writing ability and increasing a writer's confidence. Cited as a tool for literacy by Time/I> magazine in its cover story "Why Johnny Can't Write," The English Competence Handbook provides teacher and student with a graduated, easy-to-use program to develop writing and reading skills. The program moves from the sentence, to the paragraph, to the whole essay, and brings the writer beyond competence to a sense of grace and style in composition. The English Competence Handbook has been used successfully in secondary schools and colleges throughout the country. The authors of the English Competence Handbook are long-time English teachers at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, America's oldest incorporated boarding school. Each of them has consulted with various school systems across the nation.