| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 110.2

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 110.2 | The History Cooperative

Patricia Beard. After the Ball: Gilded Age Secrets, Boardroom Betrayals, and the Party that Ignited the Great Wall Street Scandal of 1905. New York: HarperCollins. 2004. Pp. xiv, 402. $25.95.
This engaging book tells the stories of James Henry Hyde (1876–1959) and the near collapse of the massive Equitable Life Assurance Society in 1905. The Equitable, a billion-dollar company when a billion dollars was real money, nearly went bust thanks to insiders' attempts to oust Hyde, a twenty-eight-year-old vice president. Young Hyde would scarcely have been worth the trouble had he not also been the Equitable's principal shareholder, son of the firm's recently deceased founder, and heir apparent to the company's presidency.	1
Hyde was an odd mix of naïve idealist and bon vivant. Mainly interested in French literature and New York high society, he was ill prepared for the business career he inherited. Mistaking routine corporate flatulence for high ideals, he accepted at face value the claim of one Equitable insider that the company's "officers and directors ... have no aims ... other than to subserve the interests of the policyholders" (p. 52). Hyde, the poor lamb, enthused that "corporations have a soul" and embody a "beautiful vision which will lead us onward and upward and forward to the great and golden future, not for a day, but for all time" (p. 54).	. . .

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