John Oller,
White Shoe: How a New Breed of Wall Street Lawyers Changed Big Business and the American Century (Dutton, 2019).
The legal profession once operated on a smaller scale -- folksy lawyers arguing for fairness and justice before a judge and jury. But by year 1900, a new type of lawyer had been born, one who understood business as well as the law. Working hand in glove with their clients, over the next two decades these New York City "white shoe" lawyers devised and implemented legal strategies that would drive the business world throughout the twentieth century. These lawyers were the architects of the new monopolistic corporations so despised by many, and they acted as guardians who helped the kings of industry fend off government overreaching. Yet they also quietly steered their robber baron clients away from a "public be damned" attitude toward more enlightened corporate behavior during a period of progressive, turbulent change in America.
Author John Oller, himself a former Wall Street lawyer, gives us a richly written glimpse of turn-of-the-century New York, from the grandeur of private mansions and elegant hotels to the city's early skyscrapers and transportation systems and the depths of its deplorable tenement housing conditions. Some of the biggest names of the era are featured, including business titans J. P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller; lawyer statesmen Elihu Root and Charles Evans Hughes; and presidents Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Woodrow Wilson.
-Publisher's Description
