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The Deal of the Century: The Breakup of AT&T
When the US Department of Justice brought an antitrust lawsuit against AT&T in 1974, the telecommunications giant held a monopoly on phone service throughout the country. Over the following decade, an army of lawyers, executives, politicians, and judges spent countless hours clashing over what amounted to the biggest corporate breakup in American history. From boardroom to courtroom, Steve Coll untangles the myriad threads of this complex and critical case and gives readers “an excellent behind-the-scenes look” at the human drama involved in the remaking of an entire industry (The Philadelphia Inquirer).
Hailed by the New York Times Book Review as “rich, intricate and convincing,” The Deal of the Century is the definitive narrative of a momentous turning point in the way America does business.
A New York Times–bestselling author’s “superbly reported” account of the dismantling of the world’s largest corporation (The Washington Post).
Written by the two-time Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Ghost Wars and Private Empire, The Deal of the Century chronicles the decade-long war for control of AT&T.
Hailed by the New York Times Book Review as “rich, intricate and convincing,” The Deal of the Century is the definitive narrative of a momentous turning point in the way America does business.
A New York Times–bestselling author’s “superbly reported” account of the dismantling of the world’s largest corporation (The Washington Post).
Written by the two-time Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Ghost Wars and Private Empire, The Deal of the Century chronicles the decade-long war for control of AT&T.
400 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1986
203 people are currently reading
1249 people want to read
About the author
Steve Coll
17 books939 followersSteve Coll is President & CEO of New America Foundation, and a staff writer at The New Yorker magazine. Previously he spent 20 years as a foreign correspondent and senior editor at The Washington Post, serving as the paper's managing editor from 1998 to 2004.
He is author six books, including The Deal of the Century: The Break Up of AT&T (1986); The Taking of Getty Oil (1987); Eagle on the Street, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the SEC's battle with Wall Street (with David A. Vise, 1991); On the Grand Trunk Road: A Journey into South Asia (1994), Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (2004); and The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century (2008).
Mr. Coll's professional awards include two Pulitzer Prizes. He won the first of these, for explanatory journalism, in 1990, for his series, with David A. Vise, about the SEC. His second was awarded in 2005, for his book, Ghost Wars, which also won the Council on Foreign Relations' Arthur Ross award; the Overseas Press Club award and the Lionel Gelber Prize for the best book published on international affairs during 2004. Other awards include the 1992 Livingston Award for outstanding foreign reporting; the 2000 Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Award for his coverage of the civil war in Sierra Leone; and a second Overseas Press Club Award for international magazine writing.
Mr. Coll graduated Phi Beta Kappa, Cum Laude, from Occidental College in 1980 with a degree in English and history. He lives in Washington, D.C.
He is author six books, including The Deal of the Century: The Break Up of AT&T (1986); The Taking of Getty Oil (1987); Eagle on the Street, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the SEC's battle with Wall Street (with David A. Vise, 1991); On the Grand Trunk Road: A Journey into South Asia (1994), Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (2004); and The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century (2008).
Mr. Coll's professional awards include two Pulitzer Prizes. He won the first of these, for explanatory journalism, in 1990, for his series, with David A. Vise, about the SEC. His second was awarded in 2005, for his book, Ghost Wars, which also won the Council on Foreign Relations' Arthur Ross award; the Overseas Press Club award and the Lionel Gelber Prize for the best book published on international affairs during 2004. Other awards include the 1992 Livingston Award for outstanding foreign reporting; the 2000 Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Award for his coverage of the civil war in Sierra Leone; and a second Overseas Press Club Award for international magazine writing.
Mr. Coll graduated Phi Beta Kappa, Cum Laude, from Occidental College in 1980 with a degree in English and history. He lives in Washington, D.C.
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May 25, 2012
A surprisingly entertaining look at the breakup of Ma Bell, and an almost perfect case study of modern deregulation.
Most deregulatory tales are told by political scientists or economists, and they tend to focus on the cost structures of different businesses or capitalization rates, but Steve Coll tells the story as only a dedicated journalist could. With over a hundred interviews with the most important players, he manages to convey the chaos, miscommunication, and legerdemain inherent in the sprawling battles between so many giant enterprises. And the AT&T breakup involved more giant enterprises than most. There was the FCC, the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department, Congress, state regulators, MCI, and early computer companies, for example, besides the numerous divisions of AT&T itself, then the largest corporation on the planet. Many groups and subsets within groups had their own plans, ones that often competed with the larger organizations of which they were putatively a part. Coll shows the ramifications of this internecine political and judicial competition.
Bill McGowan, the gung-ho leader of MCI, provides the spark. His attempt to set up a private-line microwave telephone service for business customers between Chicago and St. Louis provokes AT&T into an apoplectic fit, yet Bernie Strassbourg and some FCC civil servants at the Common Carrier Bureau approve the line in 1969 in the wake of congressional accusations that the FCC had been mollycoddling AT&T. Soon the floodgates open. Strassbourg, incensed at an off-hand comment by AT&T chief John DeButts in response to the Chicago move, sneaks a letter of approval past the FCC commissioners that expands MCI's opportunities, and then McGowan himself sneaks another approval letter past the befuddled commissioners, further expanding their services until they're allowed to offer almost everything that AT&T is. Meanwhile, some young antitrust lawyers under Philip Verveer in the Justice Department, often former campus radicals and Nader acolytes, take advantage of the post-Watergate chaos to start an antitrust suit against the world's biggest company, piggybacking on MCI's simultaneous suit. In the 1980s, these young leftists make a surprising team with a few deregulatory Reaganites, and finally manage to force the company to the table in 1982.
As indicated here, the book is complicated, and far too many characters and stories are explained once only to never be heard from again, but for an inside look at how we got to our modern telecommunications era, this book is a must.
November 3, 2025
History is a series of capricious, opportunistic actions from individuals shaped and limited by institutions. There's no one in control, there's no overriding force shaping it (despite how all conspiracy theories try invent one). Nothing demonstrates that better than this book.
Not for everyone, but a fascinating tour through all the attempts to regulate what was the biggest corporation in the world at the dawn of "the information age." Synthesizes an enormous amount of material into a, to me anyway, entertaining narrative and manages to give this decade-long battle a sense of real drama. Impressive and illuminating.
Not for everyone, but a fascinating tour through all the attempts to regulate what was the biggest corporation in the world at the dawn of "the information age." Synthesizes an enormous amount of material into a, to me anyway, entertaining narrative and manages to give this decade-long battle a sense of real drama. Impressive and illuminating.
November 2, 2021
Imagine the late 70's and the 80's when you couldn't just buy a phone and plug it in to a line (you had to lease it!), or signup for a service easily without having the one phone company (just one) you could subscribe to make an assessment and figure out if they could wire you up. And when the Yellow Pages was a $2 billion $$ a year business. Imagine the power of ATT in its heyday with assets in excess of $100 billion, revenues over $40 billion, profits over $7 billion with over a million employees - Americas largest company spending over $360 million on legal expenses. Along comes interlopers like Bill McGowan (author paints a very interesting picture of) who ran MCI - a minnow of a competitor to ATT which managed to help trigger the breakup of ATT using a variety of political schemes (not that ATT stayed out of politics, McGowan just seems to have been much more skilled based on authors telling) and dishonesty. I found the book to be quite fascinating but it was a tough slog. I found myself getting bored and distracted (but as a completist I had to finish, I am glad I did). If you're really interested in American business history or American antitrust legislation you'll probably find value in reading this book.
"The cross subsidies between AT&T’s highly profitable long-distance service and its costly local service were politically important. Everyone paid for basic phone service, while relatively few phone users—mainly businesses—spent significant amounts of money on long distance." If you find yourself interested in learning more about cross-subsidies here's a nice blog article with some interesting thoughts: https://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/20....
A big issue I had with the book was owing to the the complexity and there being many many different people involved (although Coll's writing is excellent) I found myself forgetting who some people he was referring to were when just referring to them by their names. For example in the below paragraph, if Coll had referred to "Greene" as "Judge Greene" in each instance this would've been a lot easier for me (and I imagine others) to make sense of and follow. In each instance if the the author had added a bit more of a descriptor than just the persons name that'd have allowed readers who're not as smart (like me) to follow along more easily.
"For AT&T, though, there was a chilling aspect of Greene’s brand of judicial activism. It came in the form of a question that lingered on the lips of the company’s attorneys in 1979, as Greene pushed relentlessly to bring U.S. v. AT&T to trial. To make his point, to prove that the federal courts could effectively manage a major antitrust case, wouldn’t Greene be more inclined to rule in the governments favor and break up AT&T? If he pushed the case to trial, and then agreed with the phone company that Justice’s allegations were baseless, wouldn’t his “example” be undermined? Judge Greene had declared that he was staking his reputation on this case. Would he use it to “make” a reputation, too?"
Some other quotes from the book I found to be rather interesting:
"When the deal with Justice was announced, Senator Barry Goldwater, a communications subcommittee chairman and ostensibly a leader on telephone issues, declared that breaking up the phone company was “one of the best decisions ever made.” Some months later, he pronounced, “If there was any way we could legislate to put AT&T back together again, I’d be in favor of that.”"
"In a 1985 interview, Greene insisted that he had not decided during the trial how he would finally rule on U.S. v. AT&T, but he also observed, “I have no doubt about the correctness of deregulation. The basic fact of the phone industry is it grew up when it was a natural monopoly: wooden poles and copper wires. Once it became possible to bypass this network through microwaves, AT&T’s monopoly could not survive. What the Bell System did was illegal. It abused its monopoly in local service to keep out competitors in other areas. Competition will give this country the most advanced, best, cheapest telephone network.”"
"... Greene ordered some changes to the terms of the Modified Final Judgment. He proposed that the operating companies retain possession of the Yellow Pages, which accounted for $2 billion in annual revenues... "
"Ken Robinson, the NTIA lawyer who had developed the “menu” settlement in 1979 and had worked on the ill-fated Baldrige dismissal proposal during the summer of 1981, said in 1984, “The case became a reay ego-builder for Greene. Look at the average menu of district court judges— you’ll get a lot of ambulance chasers and half-wit public defenders. The AT&T case fills up your courtroom with people who make half a million dollars a year and up. You get to hobnob with Charlie Brown, you get lawyers flying down from New York in the corporate jet. Important people are hanging on your every remark. You get invited to all these prestigious antitrust conferences. It’s very ego gratifying. I mean, geez, he gets his picture in Fortune magazine. How many of the other 772 federal district judges get their pictures in Fortune? Only the ones that get locked up.”"
"Also, as in war, the clear losers early on were those in whose name the battle was fought—ordinary American telephone users. In nearly every state between 1982 and 1985, the price of basic residential telephone service increased significantly, while the quality of service declined. The cost of installing and repairing telephone equipment also rose dramatically—as much as tenfold in some areas—and the higher prices were compounded by widespread confusion over which of the newly formed telephone companies was responsible for phone equipment. For a century, consumers had enjoyed the convenience of “one-stop shopping” for nearly all telephone services; suddenly they were confronted by a pluralistic new industry in which even the largest companies seemed confused about which role they were supposed to play. The newly formed “basic operating companies” could “provide” phone equipment, but they did not lease or repair the phones already in consumers’ homes; that was the province of the surviving AT&T, which retained title to the nation’s “embedded” phone equipment base. When a consumer’s phone service broke down his instinct was to call the local operating company for help, as he had always done. But if it turned out that the problem was in the phone equipment, not the local telephone lines, then the operating company would not make repairs, though it would charge a plumber’s ransom for the house call. The consumer would then have either to buy a new phone or take his broken one to AT&T for expensive servicing. There was even more aggravating confusion about telephone bills. In many areas, the new operating companies provided AT&T with a billing service for long-distance calls, but not for phone equipment leasing. Charges for long distance calls made over AT&T lines showed up on the monthly bill from the basic operating company, but fees for phone leasing, which used to appear on the same bill, now arrived separately. So, of course, did bills from alternative long-distance carriers such as MCI and Sprint."
"Consider, for example, the plight of William McGowan in 1985. Fifteen years earlier, the MCI chairman could not have dreamed that his legal and political guerrilla war against the phone company would go so far, would actually lead to the complete breakup of the world’s biggest corporation. If he had dreamed it, he might have awoken in a cold sweat. Before the breakup, MCI was paying $235 per line, per month for access to AT&T’s local exchanges. That was the price negotiated under the so-called ENFIA agreement of 1979. The cost to AT&T for the same access was well over $600; the difference supposedly reflected the superior access enjoyed by AT&T. After the breakup, as the first step of a process that was to lead to fully equal access, and more significantly, equal payments by MCI and AT&T, MCI’s per-line, per-month price rose to $330. When it did, the company’s profits fell precipitously for the first time since McGowan won the right to sell Execunet service. MCI’s stock, which had been selling at well over $20 per share, fell to under $7 per share. From the beginning, MCI’s profits, its discount prices, indeed its very reason for being, derived from its cost advantage over AT&T—an advantage that was marketed to consumers in the form of lower long-distance prices. But McGowan’s cost advantage was not the result of superior technology or innovative processes. It was artificial. It resulted from government regulation, not free market forces."
"“AT&T did not get anything that they bargained for,” says one government lawyer prominently involved in the breakup. “If they thought they were going to get peace in their time, they got a worse war. If they thought they were going to get deregulated, they were stupid and naive. Now they’ve got these operating companies out there draining their capital and they don’t have sufficient money to do all the things they want to do."
"Irving Kristol, the former socialist turned neoconservative editor of The Public Interest, once commented that U.S. v. AT&T was less a conventional antitrust case than a “modern day variant on classical Marxist class warfare theories,” because it was fundamentally a struggle for power between a class of bureaucrats in the government—lawyers and technocrats in the Justice department, the FCC’s common carrier bureau, and in Congress—and the class of bureaucrats who ran the nation’s phone system, the one million employees of AT&T. Certainly it is true that the government lawyers and bureaucrats at Justice and the FCC were not driven to break up the phone company by any clear, coherent vision about how a decentralized telecommunications system would work better than the existing one. The Justice lawyers, for example, never seriously believed that the operating companies would ever be divested, and until it became a necessity as the case was about to go to trial, they spent very little time drawing up plans for how the nation’s phone network would be managed if they won their case. Instead, the government lawyers were driven by the conviction that AT&T was “unregulatable,” as Walter Hinchman, the former common carrier chief, always put it. With McGowan playing every angle, MCI was unleashed, nurtured, protected, and defended by the FCC and Justice because, in the words of Hinchman’s predecessor, Bernie Strassburg, “AT&T was getting so big, so fast.” Competition was a means for the government lawyers and bureaucrats to wrest power away from AT&T, to regain control over the phone company. Judge Greene, a former government lawyer himself, indicated clearly, from his jokes about “the well-oiled machine” to the harsh language of his September 11 opinion, that it was AT&T’s size and power that troubled him above all."
Was the breakup of ATT good for the consumer? I am uncertain. The author makes the case that it left the consumer worse off. I am not entirely convinced of this however.
"The cross subsidies between AT&T’s highly profitable long-distance service and its costly local service were politically important. Everyone paid for basic phone service, while relatively few phone users—mainly businesses—spent significant amounts of money on long distance." If you find yourself interested in learning more about cross-subsidies here's a nice blog article with some interesting thoughts: https://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/20....
A big issue I had with the book was owing to the the complexity and there being many many different people involved (although Coll's writing is excellent) I found myself forgetting who some people he was referring to were when just referring to them by their names. For example in the below paragraph, if Coll had referred to "Greene" as "Judge Greene" in each instance this would've been a lot easier for me (and I imagine others) to make sense of and follow. In each instance if the the author had added a bit more of a descriptor than just the persons name that'd have allowed readers who're not as smart (like me) to follow along more easily.
"For AT&T, though, there was a chilling aspect of Greene’s brand of judicial activism. It came in the form of a question that lingered on the lips of the company’s attorneys in 1979, as Greene pushed relentlessly to bring U.S. v. AT&T to trial. To make his point, to prove that the federal courts could effectively manage a major antitrust case, wouldn’t Greene be more inclined to rule in the governments favor and break up AT&T? If he pushed the case to trial, and then agreed with the phone company that Justice’s allegations were baseless, wouldn’t his “example” be undermined? Judge Greene had declared that he was staking his reputation on this case. Would he use it to “make” a reputation, too?"
Some other quotes from the book I found to be rather interesting:
"When the deal with Justice was announced, Senator Barry Goldwater, a communications subcommittee chairman and ostensibly a leader on telephone issues, declared that breaking up the phone company was “one of the best decisions ever made.” Some months later, he pronounced, “If there was any way we could legislate to put AT&T back together again, I’d be in favor of that.”"
"In a 1985 interview, Greene insisted that he had not decided during the trial how he would finally rule on U.S. v. AT&T, but he also observed, “I have no doubt about the correctness of deregulation. The basic fact of the phone industry is it grew up when it was a natural monopoly: wooden poles and copper wires. Once it became possible to bypass this network through microwaves, AT&T’s monopoly could not survive. What the Bell System did was illegal. It abused its monopoly in local service to keep out competitors in other areas. Competition will give this country the most advanced, best, cheapest telephone network.”"
"... Greene ordered some changes to the terms of the Modified Final Judgment. He proposed that the operating companies retain possession of the Yellow Pages, which accounted for $2 billion in annual revenues... "
"Ken Robinson, the NTIA lawyer who had developed the “menu” settlement in 1979 and had worked on the ill-fated Baldrige dismissal proposal during the summer of 1981, said in 1984, “The case became a reay ego-builder for Greene. Look at the average menu of district court judges— you’ll get a lot of ambulance chasers and half-wit public defenders. The AT&T case fills up your courtroom with people who make half a million dollars a year and up. You get to hobnob with Charlie Brown, you get lawyers flying down from New York in the corporate jet. Important people are hanging on your every remark. You get invited to all these prestigious antitrust conferences. It’s very ego gratifying. I mean, geez, he gets his picture in Fortune magazine. How many of the other 772 federal district judges get their pictures in Fortune? Only the ones that get locked up.”"
"Also, as in war, the clear losers early on were those in whose name the battle was fought—ordinary American telephone users. In nearly every state between 1982 and 1985, the price of basic residential telephone service increased significantly, while the quality of service declined. The cost of installing and repairing telephone equipment also rose dramatically—as much as tenfold in some areas—and the higher prices were compounded by widespread confusion over which of the newly formed telephone companies was responsible for phone equipment. For a century, consumers had enjoyed the convenience of “one-stop shopping” for nearly all telephone services; suddenly they were confronted by a pluralistic new industry in which even the largest companies seemed confused about which role they were supposed to play. The newly formed “basic operating companies” could “provide” phone equipment, but they did not lease or repair the phones already in consumers’ homes; that was the province of the surviving AT&T, which retained title to the nation’s “embedded” phone equipment base. When a consumer’s phone service broke down his instinct was to call the local operating company for help, as he had always done. But if it turned out that the problem was in the phone equipment, not the local telephone lines, then the operating company would not make repairs, though it would charge a plumber’s ransom for the house call. The consumer would then have either to buy a new phone or take his broken one to AT&T for expensive servicing. There was even more aggravating confusion about telephone bills. In many areas, the new operating companies provided AT&T with a billing service for long-distance calls, but not for phone equipment leasing. Charges for long distance calls made over AT&T lines showed up on the monthly bill from the basic operating company, but fees for phone leasing, which used to appear on the same bill, now arrived separately. So, of course, did bills from alternative long-distance carriers such as MCI and Sprint."
"Consider, for example, the plight of William McGowan in 1985. Fifteen years earlier, the MCI chairman could not have dreamed that his legal and political guerrilla war against the phone company would go so far, would actually lead to the complete breakup of the world’s biggest corporation. If he had dreamed it, he might have awoken in a cold sweat. Before the breakup, MCI was paying $235 per line, per month for access to AT&T’s local exchanges. That was the price negotiated under the so-called ENFIA agreement of 1979. The cost to AT&T for the same access was well over $600; the difference supposedly reflected the superior access enjoyed by AT&T. After the breakup, as the first step of a process that was to lead to fully equal access, and more significantly, equal payments by MCI and AT&T, MCI’s per-line, per-month price rose to $330. When it did, the company’s profits fell precipitously for the first time since McGowan won the right to sell Execunet service. MCI’s stock, which had been selling at well over $20 per share, fell to under $7 per share. From the beginning, MCI’s profits, its discount prices, indeed its very reason for being, derived from its cost advantage over AT&T—an advantage that was marketed to consumers in the form of lower long-distance prices. But McGowan’s cost advantage was not the result of superior technology or innovative processes. It was artificial. It resulted from government regulation, not free market forces."
"“AT&T did not get anything that they bargained for,” says one government lawyer prominently involved in the breakup. “If they thought they were going to get peace in their time, they got a worse war. If they thought they were going to get deregulated, they were stupid and naive. Now they’ve got these operating companies out there draining their capital and they don’t have sufficient money to do all the things they want to do."
"Irving Kristol, the former socialist turned neoconservative editor of The Public Interest, once commented that U.S. v. AT&T was less a conventional antitrust case than a “modern day variant on classical Marxist class warfare theories,” because it was fundamentally a struggle for power between a class of bureaucrats in the government—lawyers and technocrats in the Justice department, the FCC’s common carrier bureau, and in Congress—and the class of bureaucrats who ran the nation’s phone system, the one million employees of AT&T. Certainly it is true that the government lawyers and bureaucrats at Justice and the FCC were not driven to break up the phone company by any clear, coherent vision about how a decentralized telecommunications system would work better than the existing one. The Justice lawyers, for example, never seriously believed that the operating companies would ever be divested, and until it became a necessity as the case was about to go to trial, they spent very little time drawing up plans for how the nation’s phone network would be managed if they won their case. Instead, the government lawyers were driven by the conviction that AT&T was “unregulatable,” as Walter Hinchman, the former common carrier chief, always put it. With McGowan playing every angle, MCI was unleashed, nurtured, protected, and defended by the FCC and Justice because, in the words of Hinchman’s predecessor, Bernie Strassburg, “AT&T was getting so big, so fast.” Competition was a means for the government lawyers and bureaucrats to wrest power away from AT&T, to regain control over the phone company. Judge Greene, a former government lawyer himself, indicated clearly, from his jokes about “the well-oiled machine” to the harsh language of his September 11 opinion, that it was AT&T’s size and power that troubled him above all."
Was the breakup of ATT good for the consumer? I am uncertain. The author makes the case that it left the consumer worse off. I am not entirely convinced of this however.
November 18, 2020
A friend of mine has told me I sometimes like to read books that sound "boring" in the sense they are about technical or possibly dull topics. For me, a lot of those kind of books sound fascinating. The Deal of the Century, from the description, sounded like it was in that kind of space, a book about the breakup of AT&T in the mid 1980s. In this case, however, it turned out, for me at least, to truly live up to the "boring" moniker, to the point where I simply can't bring myself to progress through the last 100 or so pages.
The first section of the book started out generally interesting, focusing on what led to the government taking an interest in an anti-trust case against AT&T, but as it progressed it simply became a long, and, again, for me, tediously slow narrative of the ongoing court case, with each chapter ever so infinitesimally moving through the progression of the case and became bogged down in some rather dry recitation of the proceedings of the almost daily activities in the court as each side presented it's case and I found myself continuing due simply to the inertia from the fact that I had started the book and generally don't like quitting books.
One quibble I wanted to mention has to do with the lack of background information about AT&T presented in the book. I have become used to books covering a specific event in a company's history (A great example being Barbarians at the Gate) providing some background of the company and, as necessary, the key players. Here, Coll doesn't really give a lot of detail about AT&T's history or how it came to reach it's dominant position in the US telecommunications infrastructure. I had just so happened to read Tim Wu's The Master Switch last year which did cover some of the history of AT&T in his text, so I was able to use what I learned from that book to inform some of the background here, but had I not read that book recently (or at all) I feel like a good foundation of the narrative would be even more sorely missed.
I have stopped reading books before, but usually because I became distracted by some other aspect of life requiring me to put the book aside with every intention of returning at some point. I have to say, in the case of The Deal of the Century, I don't forsee that ever happening.
The first section of the book started out generally interesting, focusing on what led to the government taking an interest in an anti-trust case against AT&T, but as it progressed it simply became a long, and, again, for me, tediously slow narrative of the ongoing court case, with each chapter ever so infinitesimally moving through the progression of the case and became bogged down in some rather dry recitation of the proceedings of the almost daily activities in the court as each side presented it's case and I found myself continuing due simply to the inertia from the fact that I had started the book and generally don't like quitting books.
One quibble I wanted to mention has to do with the lack of background information about AT&T presented in the book. I have become used to books covering a specific event in a company's history (A great example being Barbarians at the Gate) providing some background of the company and, as necessary, the key players. Here, Coll doesn't really give a lot of detail about AT&T's history or how it came to reach it's dominant position in the US telecommunications infrastructure. I had just so happened to read Tim Wu's The Master Switch last year which did cover some of the history of AT&T in his text, so I was able to use what I learned from that book to inform some of the background here, but had I not read that book recently (or at all) I feel like a good foundation of the narrative would be even more sorely missed.
I have stopped reading books before, but usually because I became distracted by some other aspect of life requiring me to put the book aside with every intention of returning at some point. I have to say, in the case of The Deal of the Century, I don't forsee that ever happening.
December 10, 2024
This book is not for the average reader. It is extremely complex with its political maneuvering and technical jargon. If you are interested in corporate America along with its political intricacies, you would love this one.
Coll has very intelligently woven the plot and did a commendable job given the amount of material and history he had to work with. There is a long drawn legal battle, the largest corporation in the world with its million employees and egos of old white men in the Congress, White House, and the beauracracy. Coll has given it his best shot. However, the book does get too complicated and too detailed. There is a lot of information to process and simplify for the average reader.
I would only recommend it to business nerds and history enthusiasts.
Coll has very intelligently woven the plot and did a commendable job given the amount of material and history he had to work with. There is a long drawn legal battle, the largest corporation in the world with its million employees and egos of old white men in the Congress, White House, and the beauracracy. Coll has given it his best shot. However, the book does get too complicated and too detailed. There is a lot of information to process and simplify for the average reader.
I would only recommend it to business nerds and history enthusiasts.
June 20, 2024
Whew! Reading the epilogue in 2024 is a trip. I read the whole book but that’s what will stay with me. Worth the price just to read that last part!
June 7, 2021
I picked this book up because I hear calls to break up the large, contemporary tech companies (Facebook, Google, Apple). I wanted to understand the motives and means for the successful divestiture of "Ma Bell" and this book retells the story in vivid, personal, and almost tragic detail.
This is Steve Coll's first book, published when he was just 28! Makes me feel like a schlump. He writes with the style and nuance of a seasoned investigative reporter and institutional insider. The entire story is laid out in narrative fashion: introduce the main characters from AT&T, Bill McGowan, "deep state" Justice Anti-Trust lawyers, and the circus of powerless Washington bureaucrats who wanted to make history. Then set the stage for conflict: an upstart company wants to compete in the long-distance phone business, but AT&T doesn't want to lose market share and disrupt the balance of cross-subsidies that enable quality, low-cost local phone service. McGowan, the upstart's bold leader, challenges AT&T in court, and the Justice department pull together this case with others in a sweeping anti-trust suit to break apart the AT&T conglomerate into separate local operating companies and a long-distance provider.
From 1974 to the beginning of 1982, the resulting court fight is an astounding example of our federal government tripping over itself developing public policy. The AT&T Chairman Charlie Brown described it as "no one seemed to be in charge. The government acts like a giant circus." Judicial, Legislative, and Executive government employees simultaneously working against each other providing conflicting policy, yet seemingly determined to break up the largest corporation in the world. The Reagan era, heralded as the age of government deregulation, oversaw the forced divestiture of a corporation whose goal was to provide the public reliable, low-cost phone service.
The end result of all the commotion, as the author prophetically states, is the eventual re-conglomeration of AT&T into a smaller operating company, competitor services going bankrupt, and the loss of reliable, low-cost phone service. Today we're facing a similar situation: large conglomerate companies providing quality, low-cost (free!) services such as internet search, communications platforms, and amazing devices, are now being threatened with divestiture because their size enables anti-competitive behavior. For example the recent case between Apple v. Epic Games over the App Store's pricing terms. Hopefully we can learn from this history to create good public policy, but given the partisan climate of politics in the 2020's, I am hedging my bet that the results will play similar as this wonderful book.
This is Steve Coll's first book, published when he was just 28! Makes me feel like a schlump. He writes with the style and nuance of a seasoned investigative reporter and institutional insider. The entire story is laid out in narrative fashion: introduce the main characters from AT&T, Bill McGowan, "deep state" Justice Anti-Trust lawyers, and the circus of powerless Washington bureaucrats who wanted to make history. Then set the stage for conflict: an upstart company wants to compete in the long-distance phone business, but AT&T doesn't want to lose market share and disrupt the balance of cross-subsidies that enable quality, low-cost local phone service. McGowan, the upstart's bold leader, challenges AT&T in court, and the Justice department pull together this case with others in a sweeping anti-trust suit to break apart the AT&T conglomerate into separate local operating companies and a long-distance provider.
From 1974 to the beginning of 1982, the resulting court fight is an astounding example of our federal government tripping over itself developing public policy. The AT&T Chairman Charlie Brown described it as "no one seemed to be in charge. The government acts like a giant circus." Judicial, Legislative, and Executive government employees simultaneously working against each other providing conflicting policy, yet seemingly determined to break up the largest corporation in the world. The Reagan era, heralded as the age of government deregulation, oversaw the forced divestiture of a corporation whose goal was to provide the public reliable, low-cost phone service.
The end result of all the commotion, as the author prophetically states, is the eventual re-conglomeration of AT&T into a smaller operating company, competitor services going bankrupt, and the loss of reliable, low-cost phone service. Today we're facing a similar situation: large conglomerate companies providing quality, low-cost (free!) services such as internet search, communications platforms, and amazing devices, are now being threatened with divestiture because their size enables anti-competitive behavior. For example the recent case between Apple v. Epic Games over the App Store's pricing terms. Hopefully we can learn from this history to create good public policy, but given the partisan climate of politics in the 2020's, I am hedging my bet that the results will play similar as this wonderful book.
January 4, 2017
I think this was my first Steve Coll book and I'm very impressed with how much I wanted to keep going as quickly as possible - I read it while also reading a Jack Reacher book and there were times when I wasn't sure which I wanted to pick up to see what happened next. As it happens, I am a telecom geek, of course, so your mileage may vary.
Regarding the nature of the book - this isn't just about telephones. It is about politics, scheming, and an interesting case study of one specific important example in a key moment of antimonopoly/antitrust policy. I was far too young to have paid attention to this when it happened but I'm very glad to have gone back and learned more about how it went down. It set the stage for everything that happened after - the rise of the Internet and the dramatic increase in what we all pay for telecommunications... in many senses.
Regarding the nature of the book - this isn't just about telephones. It is about politics, scheming, and an interesting case study of one specific important example in a key moment of antimonopoly/antitrust policy. I was far too young to have paid attention to this when it happened but I'm very glad to have gone back and learned more about how it went down. It set the stage for everything that happened after - the rise of the Internet and the dramatic increase in what we all pay for telecommunications... in many senses.
November 11, 2020
An absolute crackerjack of a book. While I sometimes cringed at the passive voice and an occasional confusing sentence, the narrative force of the personalities and legal/political intrigue really kept me engaged (to the point where I had to stop myself from reading outside sources to not "spoil" the ending). Only law school kept me from finishing it faster.
I consider it both a pro and con that I read the unchanged first edition from the late 80s. I found it interesting to see the perspective and predictions unmuddled by the passage of time. Still, I'd really like the author's and main characters' perspectives on the break-up after thirty years. The main decision to break up appears to have been based on the "oncoming information age." Now that we're in the thick of that information age, I'd love to hear the muddled perspectives.
I consider it both a pro and con that I read the unchanged first edition from the late 80s. I found it interesting to see the perspective and predictions unmuddled by the passage of time. Still, I'd really like the author's and main characters' perspectives on the break-up after thirty years. The main decision to break up appears to have been based on the "oncoming information age." Now that we're in the thick of that information age, I'd love to hear the muddled perspectives.
April 1, 2008
Very readable account of how the world's largest and most powerful corporation was split up (against the will of the populace and the majority of the government, including the president) by a comparatively small group of Justice department lawyers and politically connected competitors. Washington Post reporter Steve Coll's story is naturally strongest when covering the D.C.-based government story and a bit weaker when discussing the Bell System business issues. I found it a fascinating primer on how competition emerged in the telecom industry, but then again I'm a bit of a nerd for that sort of stuff.
August 7, 2014
Steve Coll maintains a zippy journalistic pace, and the story of the break-up of the largest company in the country, over the span of a decade, is an inherently fascinating one. You get lawyers, businessmen, judges, on up through Reagan and his cabinet, all involved.
The limitation is that Coll doesn't know all that much about the law or telecommunications, so at times it becomes a battle of personalities or business strategies, divorced from the fundamentals of what was actually possible for AT&T or MCI or whomever to be doing.
Now I don't have to take antitrust, right?
The limitation is that Coll doesn't know all that much about the law or telecommunications, so at times it becomes a battle of personalities or business strategies, divorced from the fundamentals of what was actually possible for AT&T or MCI or whomever to be doing.
Now I don't have to take antitrust, right?
August 22, 2011
Super good, and there's a guy in it named De Butts. What else can I say?
March 31, 2025
It is interesting to reflect on the changes in the telecommunications industry over the past 40 years or so. For those old enough to remember, back in the day there was only one game in town - a landline on a wired phone leased from Ma Bell. You better pick up the phone when a call came in because there were no answering machines (but, thankfully, there were no spam calls). There was no internet, email, cell phone - a prehistoric time (especially if you are a Gen Z'er)!
I had the good fortune to work on the finance side of the break-up many years ago while working for a major consulting firm. I spent many hours at the NYTel building at 42nd and 6th working on the New York part of the spin-off and the formation of NYNEX. Given this, when I came across the book I felt compelled to buy it and revisit some old times. I was not really familiar with much of the backstory that led up to the court case (I am not from the US). In looking back, it is clear that MCI was just the leading edge of a technological revolution that was in its infancy at the time.
The book is a detailed review of the events leading up to and including the court case overseen by Judge Greene. It was interesting but had more detail than I cared to absorb some 40 years after the fact, but that's my fault.
Steve Coll is an excellent author, however this book was overly detailed for me ... too much arcane detail that now lacks relevance 40 years after the fact. However, that's on me, not the book. All that said, I skipped through much of the second half of the book.
I had the good fortune to work on the finance side of the break-up many years ago while working for a major consulting firm. I spent many hours at the NYTel building at 42nd and 6th working on the New York part of the spin-off and the formation of NYNEX. Given this, when I came across the book I felt compelled to buy it and revisit some old times. I was not really familiar with much of the backstory that led up to the court case (I am not from the US). In looking back, it is clear that MCI was just the leading edge of a technological revolution that was in its infancy at the time.
The book is a detailed review of the events leading up to and including the court case overseen by Judge Greene. It was interesting but had more detail than I cared to absorb some 40 years after the fact, but that's my fault.
Steve Coll is an excellent author, however this book was overly detailed for me ... too much arcane detail that now lacks relevance 40 years after the fact. However, that's on me, not the book. All that said, I skipped through much of the second half of the book.
January 9, 2021
Apostaría a que Jeff Bezos y Mark Zuckerberg han leído este libro, o al menos están muy al tanto del complejísimo proceso que llevó a la ruptura de la "Telefónica" estadounidense: AT&T, la compañía que literalmente inventó el teléfono (Bell Company).
Me atrajo este libro por el tema (siempre había oído sobre la ruptura pero nunca sabía la razón) y por el autor, Steve Coll, del que ya conocía su capacidad para explicar de forma entretenida temas complejos (su libro "Ghost Wars" me parece imprescindible para entender el Afganistán de los 80 y 90). Lo que más me sorprendió de su lectura es que ya en 1982 se veía la capacidad de los medios de comunicación de pasar a una forma electrónica, y de los peligros que eso conllevaría:
"At&T might begin to monopolize the electronic publishing industry and thus restrict the diversity of information available to all Americans". (Alucinante. Y algun@s aún se sorprenden del poder de Twitter, Facebook o Instagram).
No se puede evitar que el libro tenga un fortísimo componente jurídico, y aunque Steve Coll hace lo que puede, hay pasajes que son como leer un libro de Derecho. Si eso no te molesta, adelante. Aprenderás de lo complejísimo del sistema y de cómo, aún a trompicones, funciona.
Lo considero una lectura imprescindible para aquellas personas que estén interesadas por cómo se regulan negocios complejos, y por la actual discusión sobre qué hacer con los gigantes tecnológicos.
Me atrajo este libro por el tema (siempre había oído sobre la ruptura pero nunca sabía la razón) y por el autor, Steve Coll, del que ya conocía su capacidad para explicar de forma entretenida temas complejos (su libro "Ghost Wars" me parece imprescindible para entender el Afganistán de los 80 y 90). Lo que más me sorprendió de su lectura es que ya en 1982 se veía la capacidad de los medios de comunicación de pasar a una forma electrónica, y de los peligros que eso conllevaría:
"At&T might begin to monopolize the electronic publishing industry and thus restrict the diversity of information available to all Americans". (Alucinante. Y algun@s aún se sorprenden del poder de Twitter, Facebook o Instagram).
No se puede evitar que el libro tenga un fortísimo componente jurídico, y aunque Steve Coll hace lo que puede, hay pasajes que son como leer un libro de Derecho. Si eso no te molesta, adelante. Aprenderás de lo complejísimo del sistema y de cómo, aún a trompicones, funciona.
Lo considero una lectura imprescindible para aquellas personas que estén interesadas por cómo se regulan negocios complejos, y por la actual discusión sobre qué hacer con los gigantes tecnológicos.
November 29, 2022
An impressively accessible history with a sharply drawn cast of characters. Now that I've read the book, I see echoes of it EVERYWHERE. Internet companies are trying to do something new? A newspaper article mentions the MCI case -- and its conclusion. Government worrying about monopoly? Boom, I'm back here in this book, deep in the Reagan Administration's dysfunctional antitrust decisionmaking process. Lots of fun stuff, very glad I read.
Reading the final chapter is an interesting experience, because Coll makes some tentative comments and predictions about the future. Some are prophetic, some are dead wrong, some are so bizarrely off course you can't even call them wrong. It's easy to forget how much of the Internet Revolution was contingent on particular policy choices -- and how difficult it was to predict from the outset.
Reading the final chapter is an interesting experience, because Coll makes some tentative comments and predictions about the future. Some are prophetic, some are dead wrong, some are so bizarrely off course you can't even call them wrong. It's easy to forget how much of the Internet Revolution was contingent on particular policy choices -- and how difficult it was to predict from the outset.
February 20, 2018
I enjoyed Steve Coll's book Ghost Wars, so when his new book, Directorate S, was close to release I did a search for other books. I was surprised to find a book covering the circumstances that led to the Bell divestiture of its operating companies. The circumstances of the Bell breakup is often used as a warning to those working in the utility industry, with the basic message: adapt, innovate, compete or suffer the same fate. While utilities do share some similarities with the monolithic Bell company of yore, they are not the same and this bok does a great job providing context of the players that eventually led to the choice to divest. I highly recommend this book to anyone working in the energy sector, or anyone who enjoys Steve Coll books.
February 6, 2019
Reads like a well written mystery-thriller, complete with larger than life characters, plot twists on plot twists, if not a surprise ending. I was a kid and college student when the events chronicled in The Deal of the Century were playing out, so I had only a casual observer's view of one of the most important transformations in our country's history. I would love to see a sequel to this book. Coll could no doubt "close the loop" on this fascinating story, and make if a fun reading of history.
October 8, 2021
I read or skimmed through about the first third of the book. I agree with another Goodreads reviewer that the writing was a bit dry. I normally enjoy books of this type but I could not get into this narrative. Maybe it had something to do that the story is a bit dated and that I was not familiar with many of the principals in it. It read like a textbook, not a story.
Not sure what I missed by not reading the last 2/3 of the book but I could not muster up enough interest or enthusiasm to finish it.
Not sure what I missed by not reading the last 2/3 of the book but I could not muster up enough interest or enthusiasm to finish it.
October 1, 2021
It was a little dry. Lots of lawyers back and forth. AT&T was a huge monopoly that somehow survived destruction until the mid 1970s when MCI moved into its space and cried foul. The government sued to break them up and eventually that happened with unintended consequences is the brief synopsis.
Ironically I’m writing this review on an AT&T network. They are still around. Ma Bell
Ironically I’m writing this review on an AT&T network. They are still around. Ma Bell
November 26, 2022
Brought back a lot of memories as I was in the Tech field the time. The author Steve Coll, couldn't decide whether the breakup of AT&T, was good or bad for the economy when he wrote the book in the late 80's. But, after reading the book I would have to say that it was one of the most important events that helped competition thrive and open the world to the internet and information age.
October 4, 2019
Slow read and gave up toward the end
March 14, 2021
Um pouco cansativo depois da metade, mas detalha muito bem os bastidores do que aconteceu naquele momento.
January 30, 2010
This was surprisingly entertaining. It's the story of how AT&T got broken up -- which is arguably the biggest event in the history of American telecom.
One interesting tidbit is how contingent the breakup was. The suit was filed in 1974 when Nixon DOJ officials were distracted. The Reagan administration wanted to drop it, but top two officials had to recuse themselves. Sort of a miracle it happened. It's also a good inside look at how the lobbying world looks on a microlevel circa late 1970s/early 80s
One interesting tidbit is how contingent the breakup was. The suit was filed in 1974 when Nixon DOJ officials were distracted. The Reagan administration wanted to drop it, but top two officials had to recuse themselves. Sort of a miracle it happened. It's also a good inside look at how the lobbying world looks on a microlevel circa late 1970s/early 80s
October 6, 2014
This is an excellent recapitulation of the unwinding of America's largest monopoly. It is especially interesting to read nearly 30 years after it was written. The benefits of breaking up Ma Bell did not emerge immediately and did not take the form most people expected. In the short term, prices rose, service fell. In the long term, the breakup unleashed the market forces that drive innovation. That latter impact only began to be felt by the public more than a decade after the events described in this book took place.
June 7, 2016
The power of this book to me was discovering details of this historic legal and corporate drama that were still relevant to the study of modern issues in communication like the competition between telecom and cable and the focus on the internet as a solution seemingly to everything.
November 14, 2008
AT&T was an incredible machine and was totally lost when the government forced it to break up. A bit dry in terms of writing, but content was good to know
September 2, 2014
Very interesting, engaging book. Courtroom drama. I felt there were a lot of parts that could've been cut out, though.
May 18, 2014
Excellent book. Coll brings alive a pivotal time in American history. Great book. Great writer.
March 1, 2011
Inside baseball for telecom nerds, but still with it. He makes antitrust accessible.
December 11, 2015
Great read. How this guy kept going is amazing. The author is a gift to history.
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