Stewart, James B. 1957(?)–

PERSONAL: Born c. 1957, in Quincy, IL. Education: Graduate of DePauw University; Harvard Law School, LLB.

ADDRESSES: Office—Columbia School of Journalism, Columbia University, 2950 Broadway, New York, NY 10027-6902. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Simon & Schuster, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

CAREER: Writer, journalist, educator, and lawyer. Cravath, Swaine, & Moore (law firm), New York, NY, attorney; Wall Street Journal, senior writer and front page editor, 1983–92; Columbia University, New York, NY, Bloomberg Professor of Business Journalism; SmartMoney and SmartMoney.com, columnist, "Common Sense."

MEMBER: Authors Guild (co-vice president, 2002–).

AWARDS, HONORS: George Polk Award, Long Island University (journalism department), 1987, Gerald Loeb Award, University of California, Los Angeles (John E. Anderson Graduate School of Management), and Pulitzer Prize, Columbia University (graduate school of journalism), all 1988, all with Daniel Hertzberg, all for Wall Street Journal coverage of the October, 1987, stock market crash and Wall Street insider trading.

WRITINGS:

The Partners: Inside America's Most Powerful Law Firms, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1983.

The Prosecutors: Inside the Offices of the Government's Most Powerful Lawyers, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1987.

Den of Thieves, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1991.

The Housing Status of Black Americans, Transaction (New Brunswick, NJ), 1992.

Blacks in Rural America, Transaction (New Brunswick, NJ), 1995.

Blood Sport: The President and His Adversaries, Simon & Schuster, 1996, published with a new afterword by the author, Touchstone (New York, NY), 1997.

(Editor, with others) W.E.B. DuBois on Race and Culture: Philosophy, Politics, and Poetics, Rout-ledge (New York, NY), 1996.

(Editor) African Americans and Post-Industrial Labor Markets, Transaction, 1997.

Follow the Story: How to Write Successful Nonfiction, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1998.

Blind Eye: How the Medical Establishment Let a Doctor Get Away with Murder, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1999.

(Editor, with Mickey R. Dansby and Schuyler C. Webb) Managing Diversity in the Military: Research Perspectives from the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute, Transaction (New Brunswick, NJ), 2001.

Heart of a Soldier: A Story of Love, Heroism, and September 11th, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2002.

DisneyWar: The Battle for the Magic Kingdom, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2005.

Contributor to periodicals, including the New Yorker. Former executive editor of American Lawyer.

ADAPTATIONS: Heart of a Soldier was made into an audiobook, S & S Audio, 2000.

SIDELIGHTS: James B. Stewart, a former attorney and editor for the Wall Street Journal, is the author of three critically acclaimed books on law and financial investment. The first two volumes, The Partners: Inside America's Most Powerful Law Firms, published in 1983, and The Prosecutors: Inside the Offices of the Government's Most Powerful Lawyers, published in 1987, offer insights into some of the most powerful operators in the American legal system. Stewart's third book, 1991's Den of Thieves, probes insider trading as well as other illegal activities that scandalized the investment world in the 1980s.

The Partners profiles eight of the largest and most powerful law firms in the United States, with the focus being a major legal battle each firm has been involved in. The book opens with the story of clandestine negotiations between two large firms—under the direction of their American banking clients—for the release of fifty-two American hostages held in Iran by Islamic extremists. Stewart also tells of the ten-year defense of the IBM Corporation against a barrage of private and governmental anti-trust suits; the restructuring of Chrysler Corporation's enormous debt; and the settling of American millionaire Nelson Rockefeller's large estate following his sudden death. As Stewart relates in The Partners, the attorneys in these firms stopped at nothing in their quest to win, a devotion which prompted them to work seven days a week, employ questionable tactics, and bill exorbitant amounts. One lawyer, who worked an entire day and billed the client for twenty-four hours, was soon topped by a colleague who also worked an entire day, but then took a transcontinental flight which enabled him to bill twenty-seven hours in a one-day period.

The Partners was well received by critics, with many reviewers praising the volume's insights and strong narrative qualities. In the New Republic, James J. Cramer admired Stewart's research and presentation of detail while offering minor criticism regarding the emphasis on attorneys over the clients who employ them. In summation, Cramer proclaimed the book a useful text: "Considering how little the public, including many noncorporate lawyers, knows about the crucial roles these corporate lawyers can play, Stewart's efforts can only be saluted." Calling the book's collection of legal dramas "first rate," Newsweek contributor Aric Press praised Stewart's ability to tell a story, but expressed a desire for more analysis and editorial commentary from the author. In the New York Times Book Review, Neal Johnston commented that the author "has done an effective job of illuminating the realities of those institutions which continue to shape America."

Stewart's follow-up, The Prosecutors, examines several complicated cases brought by federal prosecutors during the 1980s, including the McDonnell Douglas Corporation's bribes to Pakistani officials and charges of impropriety leveled against Reagan administration Attorney General Edwin Meese. Employing a format similar to The Partners, Stewart presents each case as a separate story, relating the key players and events. As Walter Walker wrote in the Washington Post Book World: "Stewart has written a highly entertaining account of several of the more notorious prosecutions conducted in this country over the past ten years." New York Times Book Review contributor Seymour Wishman found the historical content of The Prosecutors important, yet also highly readable: "Each of the stories unfolds with the suspense of a terrific detective novel, but the book is even better than that because the stories are true."

For his next book, Den of Thieves, Stewart shifts focus from the legal community to America's financial system, taking account of the greed and dirty-dealing that marred the stock market landscape during the 1980s. The volume examines numerous scandals which erupted during the decade, with special attention paid to insider trading scams (the practice of using secret information regarding impending business transactions as an advantage in buying and selling). At the height of the decade's avarice, players such as Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken were reaping tremendous profits at the expense of nearly all stock market investors, a majority of whom were unsuspecting middle-and lower-income Americans.

Boesky, who specialized in insider trading, was able to "predict" which mergers, buyouts, and takeovers would actually occur and thus invest and profit from the most lucrative outcome. Working out of the investment firm Drexel Burnham Lambert, Milken came to be Boesky's closest ally in the world of merger-making, earning the moniker of junk bond king (junk bonds are securities that advertise high yield but are better described as high risk; they are often sold as quick financing for takeover maneuvers). In Milken's case, junk bonds rarely rewarded their buyers with anything; they suffered the downside of "high risk" while Milken and Boesky profited from their sale by way of a skilled cycle of duplicity. Artificially reducing the value of certain securities, Milken bought up the holdings of his clients (who had no way of knowing the actual values) and then sold them to Boesky for a small profit. Boesky then sold the securities back to Drexel Burnham Lambert at a higher price and profit. The firm would then resell the same securities to their clients for even higher prices. As Stewart recounts in Den of Thieves, Boesky and Milken's reign ended with a string of indictments that rocked the very foundations of the investment world and resulted in lengthy prison terms for both men—and a large clean-up bill that fell on the shoulders of the American taxpayers.

Reviewers praised Den of Thieves as an historically significant record of Wall Street plundering; the account, some noted, shed new light on the complicity of the financial news media and government regulators in these financial misdealings. A reviewer for the New Yorker termed the book a "fascinating account," while New Republic contributor Cramer stated that Stewart's work "stand[s] as the definitive history of the financial depredations of the decade. Den of Thieves provides details of manipulations that will jolt even the most knowing observers of the period." Investment banker and financial columnist Michael M. Thomas observed in the New York Times Book Review that Den of Thieves "is an absolutely splendid book and a tremendously important book, as good a book on Wall Street as I have ever read." Appraising its informational content, Thomas wrote that "the genius of this book is that it lets the larger questions emerge entirely from the narrative."

Den of Thieves embroiled Stewart in several controversies. In October, 1991, Alan Dershowitz, Michael Milken's defense lawyer, launched a public campaign against Stewart. Both Milken and Boesky were Jews; Stewart's exposure of their illegal business practices was deemed to be anti-Semitic. Following Dershowitz's publication of a full-page advertisement in the New York Times, Stewart and his defenders waged a war of words, exchanging volleys with Milken's sympathizers through articles and letters to the editor in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. In the Nation, Cramer defended Stewart's identification of the religious backgrounds of various players as presentation of fact and specifically termed Dershowitz's charges as "thoroughly shabby allegations." In September, 1992, Michael F. Armstrong, a prominent New York lawyer, sued Stewart for libel, claiming to have been wrongly accused in the book of preparing a false affidavit for a client. Despite these troubles, Den of Thieves earned the respect of numerous critics and financial insiders, and went on to become a bestseller.

The tangled story of Bill and Hillary Clinton's involvement in the Whitewater land investment scandal is the subject of Blood Sport: The President and His Adversaries. Blood Sport illustrates both that the matter was blown out of proportion and that the Clintons indeed demonstrated some serious character flaws, both in their illegal land deals and in their handling of the investigation into their activities. "Only a staff apologist for the Clintons could come away from Stewart's portrayal without feeling a little ashamed of having their ilk in the White House," claimed Jeff A. Taylor in Reason. "The new information Stewart adds to the Whitewater canon will not jump out at most readers. Instead what Stewart has described as the Clintons' 'pattern of deceit' will." New Republic writer Sean Wilentz called Stewart a "painstaking journalist" whose book "winds up confirming that the significance of the Whitewater matter has been exaggerated out of proportion to its actual importance." Several reviewers concurred that the character portrait of the Clintons—particularly Hillary—is the greatest strength of Blood Sport. Thomas Powers concluded in New York Times Book Review: "This is narrative writing of a high order. [The book] is rich with beautifully drawn characters and dramatic incidents."

Stewart reported on the horrific story of Dr. Michael Swango in his 1999 book Blind Eye: How the Medical Establishment Let a Doctor Get Away with Murder. According to the author, Swango is a serial killer responsible for the deaths of at least fifty people. Yet he has only been convicted of lesser charges, partly because of the medical establishment's eagerness to cover up his wrongdoing. During his internship he may have injected a mixture of poisons into five patients, some of whom died; yet nurses who reported his suspicious behavior were discounted by the hospital administration. He was known to have a fascination with car crashes and kept a scrapbook of grisly accident-scene photos. Working as a paramedic, he laced his co-workers' food with ant poison, a crime for which he eventually served two years in prison. Even after this incident, which was publicized on prime-time television, he succeeded in landing further medical positions in other states. In 1994, when the FBI began to close in on him for more poisonings, he fled to Africa, where he again used a falsified resume and a suave demeanor to gain more appointments. When finally apprehended, he was only convicted of falsifying a job application and sentenced to forty-two months in jail. Stewart charges that again and again, hospital administrators chose to simply run the killer out of town rather than bring censure down on their profession by thoroughly investigating his misdeeds.

Blind Eye is "a harrowing and exhaustively researched account of neglect by the medical profession," wrote a Publishers Weekly contributor. A Business Week contributor praised Stewart as "an excellent writer and reporter" who uses "court documents and hundreds of interviews to meticulously document Swango's trail." That commentator does fault Stewart for failing to adequately cover the larger issues raised in the book, saying: "Although he provides a few examples of other docs rum amok, the extent of the problem of dangerous physicians isn't comprehensively considered or analyzed. Still, this is a brave and passionate book. Whether Swango is ever tried for murder, his poisoning conviction—not to mention the disturbing events that dogged his career—should have kept him from attending any more patient bedsides. Physicians may feel embattled on many fronts, but circling the wagons on matters of patient safety is intolerable."

Stewart served as coeditor of Managing Diversity in the Military: Research Perspectives from the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute. The twenty-four essays in this collection are written by authors from a variety of disciplines and focus on the U.S. military in terms of equal opportunity and diversity. Among the topics discussed in the various essays are the military's approach to intercultural training of troops, a look at modern-day racism, and segregation according to occupations within the military. Writing in the History Review of New Books, Lance Janda noted that the book "provides an often insightful examination of the challenges that lie ahead in the collective struggle to make society more equitable and just."

In The Heart of a Soldier: A Story of Love, Heroism, and September 11, Stewart writes about Rick Rescorla, who won a Silver Star during the Vietnam War and worked as head of security for Morgan Stanley. Rescorla lost his life when terrorists flew two planes into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Rescorla saw it as his duty to not only rescue the employees of Morgan Stanley from the south tower but also to help others, an act of heroism that cost him his life. In his recounting of Rescorla's story, the author points out that Rescorla also worked for security when the first World Trade Center bombing occurred in 1993 and that his subsequent attention to evacuation plans and demands for regular evacuation drills probably insured that many of Morgan Stanley's employees survived the attack. A Publishers Weekly contributor noted that the author's "narrative is fast-paced, fluid and impressively detailed."

Stewart delves into the board room of one of America's most well known and beloved entertainment enterprises in DisneyWar: The Battle for the Magic Kingdom. In his tale, the author focuses on one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner and the corporate infighting that led to his taking over the family-run Disney company. Recorder contributor Susan Beck called the book "a frequently compelling read," adding that Stewart "writes with admirable clarity and restraint." Tom Carson, writing in Los Angeles magazine, noted that "the only sensible reaction to the corporate intrigues … is bewilderment," adding that "you end up boggled to realize that you're reading about high-powered executives with tremendous drive, extraordinary gifts—and the people skills of overcaffeinated fifth graders with ADD." Carson called Stewart "scrupulous and reliable" in his reporting of events, concluding that "the larger story of Disney's transformation—from fading family business to pop-culture powerhouse once Eisner took over in 1984—is fascinating."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Atlantic Monthly, October, 1996, Martin Walker, review of Blood Sport: The President and His Adversaries, p. 114.

Booklist, September 1, 1999, William Beatty, review of Blind Eye: How the Medical Establishment Let a Doctor Get Away with Murder, p. 6.

Business Week, April 1, 1996, p. 15; September 6, 1999, review of Blind Eye, p. 17.

Commentary, March, 1992, Paul Craig Roberts, review of Den of Thieves, p. 54.

Economist, September 18, 1999, "Curative Killer," p. 13.

Entertainment Weekly, April 5, 1996, Mark Harris, review of Blood Sport, p. 73.

Fortune, October 21, 1991, Andrew Ferguson, review of Den of Thieves, p. 195.

Gentleman's Quarterly, August, 1992, Michael K. Evansm, review of Den of Thieves, p. 66.

History: Review of New Books, fall, 2001, Lance Janda, review of Managing Diversity in the Military: Research Perspectives from the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute, p. 4.

Industrial and Labor Relations Review, July, 1998, Jessica Gordon Nembhard, review of African Americans and Post-Industrial Labor Markets, p. 714.

Journal of Economic Issues, September, 1998, Robert Cherry, review of African Americans and Post-Industrial Labor Markets, p. 887.

Journal of Regional Science, February, 1998, Thomas J. Cooke, review of African Americans and Post-Industrial Labor Markets, p. 183.

Los Angeles, April, 2005, Tom Carson, review of DisneyWar, p. 116.

Maclean's, March 25, 1996, "New Chapters on Whitewater," p. 33.

Management Today, April, 1992, Robert Dawson, review of Den of Thieves, p. 106.

Nation, April 22, 1996, Doug Ireland, review of Blood Sport, p. 25.

National Review, May 6, 1996, Michael Isikoff, review of Blood Sport, p. 47.

New Republic, March 21, 1983, James J. Cramer, review of The Partners: Inside America's Most Powerful Law Firms, pp. 38-39; December 16, 1991, James J. Cramer, review of Den of Thieves, pp. 50-53; May 20, 1996, Sean Wilentz, review of Blood Sport, p. 35.

Newsweek, February 14, 1983, Aric Press, review of The Partners, p. 77; October 14, 1991, Katrine Ames, review of Den of Thieves, p. 48; March 18, 1996, Michael Isikoff & Mark Hosenball, "Picking up the Scent: A New Book Chases Hillary's Whitewater Money Trail," p. 29.

New Yorker, November 18, 1991, review of Den of Thieves, p. 135.

New York Times, February 3, 1983, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, review of The Partners, p. 19; September 27, 1987, Section 7, p. 20; April 1, 1988, p. B4.

New York Times Book Review, March 6, 1983, Neal Johnston, review of The Partners, pp. 13, 20; September 27, 1987, Seymour Wishman, review of The Prosecutors: Inside the Offices of the Government's Most Powerful Lawyers, p. 20; October 13, 1991, Michael M. Thomas, review of Den of Thieves, pp. 1, 36-37; March 24, 1996, Thomas Powers, "Muddy Water"; August 29, 1999, p. 9.

People, December 16, 1991, Lorenzo Carcaterra, review of Den of Thieves, p. 45; April 15, 1996, Jane Sims Podesta, "Bill and Hillary's Big Flaw?: An 'Obsession with Being Perfect,'" p. 32.

Publishers Weekly, August 9, 1999, review of Blind Eye, p. 332; October 4, 1999, review of audio version of Blind Eye, p. 37; August 19, 2002, review of The Heart of a Soldier, p. 79.

Reason, June, 1996, Jeff A. Taylor, review of Blood Sport, p. 59.

Recorder, June 17, 2005, Susan Beck, review of DisneyWar.

Security Management, December, 2005, review of Heart of a Soldier, p. 133.

Spectator, May 7, 2005, Ian Garrick Maso, review of DisneyWar, p. 55.

Time, March 18, 1996, "Contributors," p. 4, James B. Stewart, "On the Road to Scandal," p. 48; September 13, 1999, R.Z. Sheppard, "Bad Medicine: The Diagnosis Is Murder in a Real-Life Doctor Drama," p. 76.

Wall Street Journal, May 1, 1987, "Journal Reporters Stewart, Hertzberg Win Loeb Award," p. 26; February 29, 1988, "Two of Journal's Reporters Share George Polk Award," p. 26; April 1, 1988, "Journal Reporters Win Two Pulitzers for Articles on Market Crash, Lab Tests," p. 2; May 11, 1988, p. 26; September 13, 1988, "Wall Street Journal Names Stewart Page One Editor," p. 42.

Washington Post Book World, September 20, 1987, Walter Walker, review of The Prosecutors, pp. 5, 9.

ONLINE

Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism Web site, http://www.jrn.columbia.edu/ (April 3, 2006), faculty profile of author.