Reel and Rout

I started the book and couldn't put it down!!! I thought to myself, "John O'hara you've been left in the dust!" This was a story that touched me on so many levels, and I was honored to have personally knew the author of such a magnificent piece of literature. All I can say is that I wish I could write like this. Aside from the captivating story, the subtle one liners that reached deep into the heart, the depth, beauty and tenderness with which the characters were presented, the subtle way in which the author's personal message to the business community is conveyed, there was, for me, the ever present, bitter sweet feeling that all of it is only a passing mirage.

"Reel and Rout" is a rollicking good corporate takeover yarn by an author who is both authoritative -- he's been there in real life -- and captivating. The characters are vividly drawn. We understand, sometimes at quite a deep level, why they are driven to do what they do. And while there is sex and money, as you would expect in a book about mergers, acquisitions, and Wall Street bankers, these are realized as integral parts of a rich, fast moving, life-like narrative. Imagine a page-turner about a corporate takeover! This is it.

Part Balzac, part Tom Wolfe, and part tomorrow's headlines about the next Enron, this book is both a delicious skewering of the rich, powerful, and oh-so-deserving and an absorbing, can't-put-it-down story of vital and engaging characters. Well done!

Here is an exciting novel of corporate intrique. Did it happen? Probably. But not all at the same time (like Stephen Wright's restaurant that is "open 24 hours" -- but not all at the same time).I'd love to teach from this book sometime, as it beats even "Barbarians at the Gate" in its detailed discussion of backroom business. Of course, Reel and Route is fiction. Did Barbarians have beautiful women?Reading Bob Monks' background (banker, director, athlete, investment banker, activist, government executive), I am tempted to think that most of the story must have happened sometime, somewhere. Names changed, of course.The bright, beautiful and richly influential Molly Munro is head of an agency inside the U.S. Department of Labor, just as Monks was in an earlier period. From that position, they (Molly and also Monks) can do a little to save the U.S. economic/political system as we know it and to encourage employee ownership of U.S. corporations.

"The truth shall set you free," or is at lease required if we are to BE free. Robert A.G. Monks vividly tells us about our increasingly globalized world, with challenges to our freedoms from people in the highest ranks of business, politics, and society. In the engaging novel which is not constrained by the late '90s in which it is set, Mr. Monks shines a very bright light on exceedingly dark places on Wall Street, the mass media, the best government money can buy, and the real world of extreme wealth. Together, they reward Wall Street for victimizing Main Street. All of this from the pen of an Insider's Insider. A great read coupled with much-needed revelations from a highly credible source, the world's most respected (some say feared) "Shareholder Activist." Applause to Mr. Monks for giving us credible grist for the mill of a society wrestling with itself to remain free.