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Type of bind: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 384.0973
EAN num: 9780743250252
ISBN number: 0743250257
Label: Free Press
Manufacturer: Free Press
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 320
Printing Date: August 02, 2005
Publishing house: Free Press
Sale Popularity Level: 114132
Studio: Free Press
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Rated by buyers 
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For such a serious subject with grave impact on many shareholders, the author is far too flippant and cavalier. Having read the earlier Brooks book, this carry forward is nowhere near the same quality of verse.
Some factual innaccuracies that could have easily been corroborated however also some interesting material on the very brief Walters reign.
Rated by buyers -
Not of the same caliber as Ms. Cauley's "Optical Illusions", but a good read nonetheless. If you're not part of the the turbulent telecom industry, this is not your cup of tea. A few innaccuracies here and there, but over all it's got the story correct.
Rated by buyers 
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How did the Big Bell collapse? This book gives you the answer. From the government break up of the monopoly to the sheer ineptitude of its managers this book shows what happened to AT&T. With a solid business model and great strategic options this company was destroyed through egos and debt. It is very well written and gives an excellent glimpse at where telecom and multimedia are heading. Everyday reaffirms the truth that these two will have to merge. This book shows why that is and even though AT&T was unable to pull that off the sense of the company was dead on. Read on if you want to learn not how to run your corporation.
Rated by buyers -
Well written, easy to read. Fascinating look at the executive culture of AT&T and its peers.
Rated by buyers 
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David Isenberg wrote a paper called "Rise of the Stupid Network" that describes an obvious future in early 1990 communications. Any book on AT&T of that period must discuss these Bell Labs predictions.
Relevant terms including Packet Switching verses Circuit Switching, the Death of Distance, and the Last Mile were the future for communications and for AT&T. Packet switching would obsolete those multi-million AT&T switches. Death of Distance meant a long distance call from New York to Washington costs no more than a call from New York to Australia. - a stunning relevation of that time with serious consequences for AT&T's entire future. The Last Mile was a bottleneck that would restrict acess to maybe 97% of the installed fiber optic backbone, restrict computer use, and result in a Federal 1996 Communications law to break the stifling of technology (including a stifled 1981 technology called ADSL).
"The Rise and Fall of AT&T" must discuss this. Instead it discusses personalities, pettiness, and speculations of corporate executives who (if the book was insightful) had little grasp - no idea - of basic industry technologies. Decisions such as buying two cable companies without learning that the infrastructure was defective should have at least been discussed. Who did not have a clue? Gross technical mismanagement by AT&T corporate executives was that flagrant and is not discussed by Cauley. Instead Cauley's book discusses how they felt.
Somehow the AT&T story is only about infighting among personalities as if that was important. The book ignores gross technical ignorance by AT&T management who had little if any technology grasp. Some of that ignorance is mentioned as if a peripheral story rather than a story about why AT&T created so little innovation.
I would have expected a fiasco involving the famous AT&T Unix to have at least been mentioned as a perfect example of stifled innovation; an example of why AT&T was repeatedly foundering. Or AT&T's complete failure in PCs. Almost no internet products. Critical facts that demonstrated why AT&T was failing were repeatedly avoided - often never even once mentioned. Even a massive and wrongheaded engineering effort to create "TrueVoice Plus" was ignored.
Why would a company spend $billions for cable companies only to discover much later that those cables - the hardware - would not support a technology? Why does Leslie Cauley not discuss this obvious technical stupidity at highest levels in AT&T management? A book that discusses AT&T top management completely ignores technology ignorance that beset most if not every AT&T top executive? Appreciate technical frustration that confronted David Isenberg, demonstrated in his famous paper, and ignored in Cauley's book.
I found Cauley's book deceptive if not naive because it does not address fundamental reasons for AT&T's repeated fiascos and resulting demise. AT&T quashed or fumbled innovation after innovation. This book hardly mentions any of this. Would you buy a cable company for billions of dollars when the entire cable network must be replaced? We should expect Cauley to identify who in AT&T had no idea and yet spent that money anyway. Instead, the book discusses who did not like whom, who was angry, and when they finally realized that they were going bankrupt. I was completely disappointed by no useful facts from Leslie Cauley.
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