具体描述
From Publishers Weekly
The 1905 battle for control of the Equitable Life Assurance Society strikingly parallels the corporate scandals that dominate headlines a century later. For example, majority shareholder James Hazen Hyde, accompanied by a team of corporate lawyers, told an investigating committee he'd authorized questionable deals on the advice of executives whom he had trusted, while James W. Alexander, who sought to kick Hyde off the board, complained he was being punished for blowing the whistle on the company's shaky finances. But, as Beard, who's written for Elle and Mirabella, ably shows, Hyde didn't resemble any modern-day CEO-more like several of them rolled into one. Inheriting his position while still a bachelor in his 20s, he was a fixture on New York's society pages, arguably more famous for his wardrobe and love of high-speed carriage racing than for his job. The titular ball was an all-night costume party, complete with a private theatrical performance, with a price tag of at least $50,000. That's even more expensive than it sounds; the failure to compare dollars in 1905 and 2003 is one of the book's few flaws. With a vivid cast of supporting characters, including some of America's greatest financial titans, this lively history offers all the vicarious thrills of family drama and boardroom intrigue without making readers apprehensive about their own investment portfolios. 24 b&w illus.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Booklist
The year, 1905. The setting, New York City. Flamboyant heir to the controlling interest in Equitable Life Assurance Society, James Hazen Hyde becomes the central figure in a financial scandal that shocks the country. The media's intense coverage discloses the corporate secrets of financial manipulation, and policyholders are enraged. When Hyde's father died in 1899, he assumed the elder Hyde's duties at Equitable and believed his responsibilities were a sacred trust. Yet his playboy inclinations were on display at his opulent costume ball in 1905, and false charges followed that Equitable was billed for that extravagance. Those charges led to a series of discoveries resulting in a major corporate scandal, and Hyde fled to Paris where he made a place for himself in cultural circles. The author draws parallels to the financial excesses recently revealed at Enron and Worldcom and shows us how the system at Equitable almost 100 years ago was rigged with techniques similar to those used today. Mary Whaley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Book Description
After the Ball is that rare true story that reads like an epic novel, a sweeping chronicle of an era, and an intimate account of the hope and betrayal of a son whose father gave him everything -- except the training to find his way in territory ruled by the rapacious.
James Hazen Hyde was twenty-three in 1899 when he inherited the majority shares in the billion-dollar Equitable Life Assurance Society. Only five years later, he fell from grace in a Wall Street scandal that obsessed the nation and commanded 115 front-page articles in the New York Times.
Hyde was intelligent, cultured, and ambitious, but he was no match for an older generation that had mapped the backstreets of high finance. Vying to control the Equitable's vast investment pool, the most famous financiers and industrialists of the era -- among them E. H. Harriman, Henry Clay Frick, and J. P. Morgan -- put Hyde on forty-eight boards and included him in deals that shook Wall Street. And then, at the pinnacle of social success, he made a fatal miscalculation.
On the last night of January 1905, James Hyde held a fabulously flamboyant, eighteenth-century, Versailles-themed costume ball. His enemies used the party as the hook to hang him on, claiming that he was too frivolous to run a company dedicated to protecting widows and orphans; and spread the rumor that he had spent two hundred thousand dollars of Equitable money on a night's entertainment. By the time a government investigation established that Hyde had paid the bills himself, his reputation was ruined.
The bitter campaign to wrest control of the Equitable and its vast investment capacity from Hyde followed on the heels of the ball. As the fight escalated, clandestine alliances between insurers and Wall Street burst to the surface, exposing techniques that are the stuff of twenty-first-century scandals: self-dealing, insider trading, accounting malpractice, and corporate funding of private pleasures.
After the Ball tells a tale that riveted millions of Americans a century ago. Its themes are as fresh today as they were in 1905: greed and chicanery, the flawed love between fathers and sons, and contradictory American attitudes about wealth -- all unfolding against a setting of magnificence, excess, and corrupting glamour.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
作者简介
Patricia Beard is the author of six nonfiction books and hundreds of nationally published magazine articles. She has been an editor at Elle, Town & Country, and Mirabella magazines. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
目录信息
读后感
用户评价
坦率地说，这本书的开篇并不算“好读”，它需要耐心，需要你愿意沉浸于作者精心编织的语言迷宫中。但一旦你适应了那种独特的语调和略显晦涩的表达方式，你会发现自己被一种强大的磁场所吸引。作者似乎对人类的脆弱性有着深刻的理解，他笔下的人物虽然身处逆境，却展现出惊人的生命韧性，他们的每一次反抗，无论多么微弱，都充满了史诗般的分量。最让我印象深刻的是对场景的氛围营造，比如书中描绘的那场无休止的雨夜，几乎让我感觉到了湿冷和绝望，那种感官上的沉浸感是极其罕见的。情节的发展并非那种传统意义上的“大起大落”，而是一种缓慢、持续的、如同地壳运动般的压力积累，最终导向一个无可避免的爆发点。这本书的精妙之处在于，它敢于直视人性的幽暗面，却没有流于说教，而是通过故事本身的力量，完成了对人性的深刻叩问。
初读之下，我几乎被那种浓郁的、近乎压抑的氛围所吞噬。这不是一本轻松愉快的读物，它更像是一面镜子，反射出我们内心深处那些不愿触碰的阴影。作者对于环境的刻画简直是教科书级别的——无论是喧嚣都市中那份冰冷的疏离感，还是某个偏僻角落里弥漫的陈旧气息，都通过精准的感官描写跃然纸上。我必须承认，故事中某些情节的隐晦性一度让我感到困惑，但这恰恰是其魅力所在，它要求读者投入全部心神去解码，去体验那种“读到最后才恍然大悟”的醍醐灌顶。人物的心理活动被剥开得极其彻底，那种深层次的、几乎是本能的驱动力，使得他们的每一个决定都显得既荒谬又必然。阅读过程更像是一场漫长而艰辛的考古挖掘，你必须耐心清理掉表面的尘土，才能看到埋藏在地下的真相的碎片。结尾的处理更是高明，它没有提供一个圆满的答案，而是留下了一个巨大的、可以供读者各自填充的空间，这种开放性，让人久久不能释怀。
这本小说的开篇着实抓人眼球，作者仿佛有一双魔术师的手，轻轻一挥，就将我们带入了一个光怪陆离的梦境。叙事节奏紧凑得恰到好处，每一次转折都出人意料却又在情理之中。我尤其欣赏主人公那种游走在道德边缘的挣扎感，那种深入骨髓的孤独与对救赎的渴望，被描绘得淋漓尽致。那些看似不经意的对话，实则暗藏玄机，字里行间跳动着时代的脉搏和人性的复杂。语言的运用达到了诗意的境界，细腻到仿佛能触摸到人物的呼吸和心跳。尽管故事情节跌宕起伏，但作者始终保持着一种冷静的旁观者视角，让读者得以在情绪的洪流中保持清醒，去审视那些被生活打磨得锋利又脆弱的灵魂。读到一半的时候，我甚至能感觉到作者对每一个角色的深沉的爱与无奈，他们不是符号，而是活生生、会犯错、会受伤的个体。这本书的结构如同一个精密的钟表，每一个齿轮都在精准地咬合，推动着最终那令人唏嘘的结局。
我是在一个安静的午后偶然翻开这本书的，却被迅速拉入了一个完全不同的时空维度。这本书的魅力，很大程度上来源于它对日常细节的捕捉——那些被我们匆匆略过的瞬间，在作者的笔下被赋予了新的、沉重的意义。人物之间的互动充满了张力，充满了未说出口的谎言和难以言明的渴望，那种微妙的心理博弈，比任何激烈的冲突都来得更具穿透力。语言的组织达到了近乎完美的韵律感，即使在描述最残酷的现实时，依然保持着一种近乎古典主义的美感。这本书探讨的主题非常宏大，关于记忆的不可靠性、关于身份的流动性，但作者从不空谈，而是将这些抽象的概念，巧妙地融入到主角的日常困境之中。它是一本需要反复阅读的书，因为每一次重读，你都会发现新的层次和新的隐藏的线索，仿佛一串被精心打磨的多面体，从不同的角度折射出不同的光芒。这绝对是一部经得起时间考验的文学作品。
这本书的叙事视角转换得非常流畅，高超地平衡了宏大背景与个体命运的交织。你会发现，作者对社会阶层和权力结构的洞察力非同一般，那些隐形的壁垒和无形的规则，被揭示得毫不留情。我特别喜欢作者在处理时间线时那种非线性的手法，它让过去、现在与未来的碎片相互碰撞，产生了意想不到的化学反应，极大地增强了故事的张力和宿命感。与其说这是一部小说，不如说是一部关于“失去”的哲学探讨。每个人物都在失去什么——是青春，是清白，是爱，还是对生活的掌控权？这种普遍性的失落感，让不同背景的读者都能从中找到自己的投射点。文风时而如冰冷的纪录片般客观，时而又瞬间转为充满激情的独白，这种强烈的反差感，使得阅读体验极为丰富和动态。那些被刻意留白的段落，更是引人入胜，逼迫着读者动用自己的想象力去填补那份空白，从而真正地参与到故事的构建之中。
