Book Review: Alan Murray's Revolt in the Boardroom

If you want to understand corporate governance, there are three books you absolutely must read: A Weekend with Warren Buffett and Other Shareholder Meeting Adventures takes an amusing look at the author's journey to dozens of annual meetings, which leads him to the conclusion that shareholder democracy is basically a myth. The second is John Bogle's The Battle For the Soul of Capitalism.

Then there is Allan Murray's Revolt in the Boardroom. This book looks at the changing face of corporate governance: the era of the imperial CEO is essentially over, boards have greater responsibilities and, at last, America's largest public companies are being forced to pay attention to their owners.

Murray has composed an exciting narrative, drawing on several of the better-known boardroom brawls that have occurred in the past few years: corporate espionage at Hewlett-Packard, Spitzer's investigation of AIG that led to the ousting of the company's long-time CEO, and the relatively minor extramarital affair at Boeing that somehow led to the firing of that company's CEO.

But Murray manages to avoid getting too bogged down with anecdotes. Interviews with the vice president of Institutional Shareholder Services and others who are shaping the new corporate establishment shed light on how much corporate America really is changing.

Get is used on Amazon for less than $10.