Book reviews
Book Review: Rewired
I think a big part of compliance is education. It is great to get compliance imposed through internal systems, but you generally need to get the message out to your company about the policies, why they exist, and what they need to do. There is lots of talk about the generation and age group starting… » Read More
The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World
Niall Ferguson had the unfortunate luck of writing The Ascent of Money just before the unveiling of the 2008′s Great Panic. At the time he finished writing the book in May 2008, only $318 billion of write-downs had been acknowledged. I was interested in the book because of its focus on the development of our… » Read More
The Tree of Contracts
An image from A Treatise on Commercial Law: With Forms of Ordinary Legal and Business Documents, and Copious Questions with References, by A. Norton Fitch. This 1889 image is part of the Yale Law Library collection and published in their Flickr… » Read More
Check out The Checklist Manifesto
As a former transactional attorney, I was trained to use checklists. The transactions were too complicated to keep track of everything in my head. I also needed to communicate with the rest of the transaction team. In The Checklist Manifesto, Atul Gawande approaches checklists from the perspective of a surgeon. I had put off reading… » Read More
Weekend Book Review: Money for Nothing
The subtitle of Money for Nothing lets you know what’s coming: How the Failure of Corporate Boards Is Ruining American Business and Costing Us Trillions. If you’ve had your pitchfork and torch at the ready for a march on corporate malfeasance, then this is the book for you. John Gillespie and David Zweig spend the… » Read More
Weekend Book Review: The Big Short
Michael Lewis has put together a great book on subprime loans, home mortgage bonds and how their crash led to the Great Panic. The Big Short starts with this quote: The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest… » Read More
Weekend Book Review: The Informant
I’ve had Kurt Eichenwald’s The Informant on my reading list for a long time. It dropped farther down the list after seeing the previews for the Steven Soderbergh movie. Why read the book when you can watch the movie? What raised my interest was hearing a great radio segment from This American Life that tells… » Read More
Weekend Book Review: Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde
Books about compliance, business ethics, law and financial markets can be well written, interesting and thought-provoking. But they’re not fun. So I decided I needed change and found a whimsically absurd novel that touches upon compliance: Shades of Grey, by Jasper Fforde. Chromatacia is a world where people have limited ability to see color and… » Read More
Weekend Book Review: In Fed We Trust
It is only fitting that I am writing this book review on a Sunday. In Fed We Trust: Ben Bernanke’s War on the Great Panic starts off by telling about the importance of a few Sundays in 2008. In March, there was the Sunday when the Federal Reserve announced an unprecedented action to lend $30… » Read More
Weekend Book Review: Sonic Boom by Gregg Easterbrook
You may know Gregg Easterbrook from his previous book The Progress Paradox (one of his six books) or his articles in The Atlantic. I know him mostly from his hobby: writing the Tuesday Morning Quarterback column on ESPN.com. Sonic Boom tries to look beyond the current recession. Easterbrook looks ahead to what to expect after… » Read More
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Compliance Building is published by Doug Cornelius, focusing on compliance and ethical issues for private equity real estate companies. Read more in About.
