Reading List Entry #1 - Wreck of the Penn Central

One of my new lists is my running list of books I've read (starting now). The first one on the list - that is, the last one I've finished - is The Wreck of the Penn Central by Joseph Daughan and Peter Binzen. I picked this book up at an estate sale for 25 cents a few weeks ago, and discovered it to be fascinating. The book is a non-fictional account, written by two newspaper journalists, of the disastrous 1968 merger of the Pennsylvania and New York Central Railroads, and the ensuing failure of the combined Penn Central slightly over two years later. At the time, this was the biggest business failure and bankruptcy in American history, caused largely by horrible decisions and personality conflicts between senior executives, corporate greed, bad planning, destructive U.S. government policies, petty politicians, and lousy economic times. Change the name of the company to AIG, Countrywide, or IndyMac, and you have a book written in 1971 that could just have easily have been written in real time in 2008. Alas, the more things change, the more they remain the same.