Morris, Charles R.

CAREER:

Lawyer and banker. Managing partner of a consulting firm specializing in financial serves and investment banking; executive for Chase Manhattan Bank; State of Washington, secretary of Health and Human Services.

WRITINGS:

The Cost of Good Intentions: New York City and the Liberal Experiment, 1960-1975, W.W. Norton (New York, NY), 1980.

A Time of Passion: America, 1960-1980, Harper & Row (New York, NY), 1984.

Iron Destinies, Lost Opportunities: The Arms Race between the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R., 1945-1987, Harper & Row (New York, NY), 1988.

The Coming Global Boom: How to Benefit Now from Tomorrow's Dynamic World Economy, Bantam Books (New York, NY), 1990.

(With Charles H. Ferguson) Computer Wars: How the West Can Win in a Post-IBM World, Times Books (New York, NY), 1993, revised edition published as Computer Wars: The Fall of IBM and the Future of Global Technology, 1994, published as Computer Wars: The Post-IBM World, Beard Books (Washington, DC), 2002.

The AARP: America's Most Powerful Lobby and the Clash of Generations, Times Books (New York, NY), 1996.

American Catholic: The Saints and Sinners Who Built America's Most Powerful Church, Times Books (New York, NY), 1997.

Money, Greed, and Risk: Why Financial Crises and Crashes Happen, Times Business (New York, NY), 1999.

Too Much of a Good Thing? Why Health Care Spending Won't Make Us Sick, Century Foundation Press (New York, NY), 2000.

The Tycoons: How Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and J.P. Morgan Invented the American Supereconomy, Holt (New York, NY), 2005.

Apart at the Seams: The Collapse of Private Pension and Health Care Protections, Century Foundation Press (New York, NY), 2006.

The Surgeons: Life and Death in a Top Heart Center, W.W. Norton (New York, NY), 2007.

The Trillion-Dollar Meltdown: Easy Money, High Rollers, and the Great Credit Crash, PublicAffairs (New York, NY), 2008.

Contributor to periodicals, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Atlantic Monthly, New Republic, and Harvard Business Review.

SIDELIGHTS:

Charles R. Morris is the author of a number of books that look back on the history of American finance, including A Time of Passion: America, 1960-1980, a study of that two-decade period. In several of his books, including The Coming Global Boom: How to Benefit Now from Tomorrow's Dynamic World Economy, he looks forward; and with Computer Wars: How the West Can Win in a Post-IBM World, he does both. In the first half of Computer Wars, Morris and collaborator Charles H. Ferguson focus on the background of International Business Machines and the factors that led to its downfall. In the second half, they draw on this history to explain how high-tech companies can ensure their own success and take advantage of opportunities that will present themselves in the future. Ferguson had previously warned that Japan would dominate the computer industry because of its manufacturing supremacy, but in this book the authors suggest that IBM leaders must take the blame for its decline. IBM's fifty-percent market share rapidly dropped after it gave control of its microprocessors to Intel Corporation and its DOS source code to Microsoft Corporation. As the authors note, however, these actions ensured the growth of the industry, because while IBM had become bureaucratic and unimaginative, the Silicon Valley entrepreneurial spirit resulted in rapid innovation.

The AARP: America's Most Powerful Lobby and the Clash of Generations is a history of the for-profit American Association of Retired Persons that began as a mail-order scam for which Leonard Davis was charged with, but beat, a felony rap, and which continues to sell insurance to seniors through partners like Prudential Insurance. Morris describes the AARP as having two personalities: one that works in the best interests of seniors, and the other that "never saw a government program or a government regulation it didn't like," according to Morris.

Morris's history of the American Catholic Church is divided into sections titled "Rise, Triumph," and "Crisis." He begins in the late-eighteenth century, when the Catholic Church fueled its rapid growth by welcoming the many ethnic groups who immigrated to the United States. Anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant hostility was pervasive at the time, and the new groups found comfort and refuge within the Church. Catholic groups sprang up, providing even further strength to the Catholic community until the culture began to deteriorate in the 1950s. He writes that the American Catholic Church was not rooted in Rome, but in Ireland. Until the years of the Potato Famine, the Irish were not particularly religious, but Irish priests instilled reforms that included anti-Protestantism and sexual discipline in their parishioners who then carried them to their new country. Morris profiles Catholics who include New York's Bishop "Dagger John" Hughes, who laid the cornerstone of St. Patrick's Cathedral in 1858; William O'Connell of Boston, called "an irreligious hypocrite" by Morris; and Cardinal George Mundelein of Chicago, who was actually a German in the Irish-dominated hierarchy.

In reviewing American Catholic: The Saints and Sinners Who Built America's Most Powerful Church, America contributor George W. Hunt reported that Morris "has written an eminently readable popular history of American Catholicism that, with no exaggeration, is a page-turner. All the virtues of fine historical writing are present. The text is always crystal clear and lively, the pace and emphasis unerring and the anecdotes exemplary. The tone and point of view throughout are always thoughtful, judicious and fair."

Money, Greed, and Risk: Why Financial Crises and Crashes Happen is a study of the financial system, which Morris contends suffers when innovation sparks expansion at an unreasonably rapid pace. Morris explains that the main cause of any financial crisis is "dumb lending," a contemporary problem the ramifications of which were just beginning to be felt when this book was published. Washington Monthly reviewer Joseph Nocera remarked that, "with an excessively detailed look at the financial machinations of the Robber Baron Age, it becomes increasingly illuminating after Morris jumps to the modern age of finance and begins tackling such topics as Michael Milken, the S&L crisis, the leveraged buy-out craze of the 1980s, and last year's Asian currency crisis. Gradually, guided by the author's sure hand, one begins to see the pattern, what he calls ‘the recurring cycle of financial innovation.’" Morris's more recent book, The Trillion-Dollar Meltdown: Easy Money, High Rollers, and the Great Credit Crash came out just as the credit crisis began to impact all aspects of the economy.

The Tycoons: How Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and J.P. Morgan Invented the American Supereconomy is a study of four "robber barons" who made fortunes as they expanded the American economy: Carnegie in steel, Rockefeller in oil, Gould in railroads, and Morgan in finance. As the United states moved from an agricultural to a manufacturing environment, these men fostered the inventiveness that enabled the United States to surpass Great Britain as the world's top producer and to become a consumer society.

Morris has written about the health-care system in several books, including Too Much of a Good Thing? Why Health Care Spending Won't Make Us Sick and The Surgeons: Life and Death in a Top Heart Center. In the latter Morris provides an account of both the medical and business sides of the heart surgery industry and interrelated subjects that include doctor pay, the drug industry, medical insurance, and health policy. Morris drew his conclusions after spending time at New York's Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital, where he spoke with staff and patients and observed surgeons as they performed transplants, coronary bypasses, valve replacements, and congenital defect corrections. New York Times Book Review contributor Pauline W. Chen called The Surgeons "an ambitious account of the complicated interplay among health care economics, policy and those individuals whose professional lives drive the medical system. Morris fully im- merses himself, and the reader, in the complexities of health care; what emerges are riveting and clarifying snapshots of the often unfathomable behemoth we call our health care system."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

America, August 2, 1997, George W. Hunt, review of American Catholic: The Saints and Sinners Who Built America's Most Powerful Church, p. 2; November 22, 1997, Gerald P. Fogarty, review of American Catholic, p. 21; January 2, 2006, George W. Hunt, review of The Tycoons: How Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and J.P. Morgan Invented the American Supereconomy, p. 26.

Atlantic, April, 1984, William E. Leuchtenburg, review of A Time of Passion: America, 1960-1980, p. 140.

Barron's, October 3, 2005, Charles Hirshberg, review of The Tycoons, p. 51.

Booklist, January 1, 1993, David Rouse, review of Computer Wars: How the West Can Win in a Post-IBM World, p. 772; June 1, 1997, Mary Carroll, review of American Catholic, p. 1626; August 1, 1999, Mary Whaley, review of Money, Greed, and Risk: Why Financial Crises and Crashes Happen, p. 2002; August 1, 2005, David Siegfried, review of The Tycoons, p. 1975; September 15, 2007, Donna Chavez, review of The Surgeons: Life and Death in a Top Heart Center, p. 12.

Business Week, September 17, 1990, Robert J. Dowling, review of The Coming Global Boom: How to Benefit Now from Tomorrow's Dynamic World Economy, p. 10; February 15, 1993, John Verity, review of Computer Wars, p. 16.

Choice, November, 1997, review of American Catholic, p. 500.

Christianity Today, December 8, 1997, review of American Catholic, pp. 21, 50.

Commonweal, September 12, 1997, John T. McGreevy, review of American Catholic, p. 30; October 21, 2005, John T. McGreevy, review of The Tycoons, p. 29.

First Things, November, 1997, George McKenna, review of American Catholic, p. 59.

Foreign Affairs, summer, 1993, Jeffrey E. Garten, review of Computer Wars, p. 182.

Fortune, April 19, 1993, David Kirkpatrick, review of Computer Wars, p. 153.

Futurist, January 1, 1991, review of The Coming Global Boom, pp. 8, 48.

Harvard Business Review, September 1, 1999, review of Money, Greed, and Risk, p. 166.

Hospital Topics, winter, 2001, Dennis S. Palkon, review of Too Much of a Good Thing? Why Health Care Spending Won't Make Us Sick, p. 37.

Industry Week, August 20, 1990, Sue Gibson, review of The Coming Global Boom, p. 30.

Kirkus Reviews, August 15, 2005, review of The Tycoons, p. 901; August 15, 2007, review of The Surgeons.

Latin Trade, December, 1999, Andres Hernandez Alende, review of Money, Greed, and Risk, p. 76.

Library Journal, May 1, 1990, Richard C. Schiming, review of The Coming Global Boom, p. 97; January 1993, Joe Accardi, review of Computer Wars, p. 134; May 15, 1997, Anna M. Donnelly, review of American Catholic, p. 81; June 15, 1999, Norman B. Hutcherson, review of Money, Greed, and Risk, p. 86; September 1, 2005, Judith Klamm, review of The Tycoons, p. 161; September 15, 2007, Dana Ladd, review of The Surgeons, p. 80.

Nation, March 24, 1984, review of A Time of Passion, p. 355; August 26, 1996, John L. Hess, review of The AARP: America's Most Powerful Lobby and the Clash of Generations, p. 29.

Newsweek, April 2, 1984, Gene Lyons, review of A Time of Passion, p. 79; July 16, 1990, review of The Coming Global Boom, p. 31; December 21, 1992, John Schwartz, review of Computer Wars, p. 52.

New York Review of Books, March 24, 1994, Tim Parks, review of Computer Wars, p. 34.

New York Times Book Review, October 29, 2007, Pauline W. Chen, review of The Surgeons.

PC Magazine, September 14, 1993, Don Willmott, review of Computer Wars, p. 73.

Publishers Weekly, December 14, 1992, review of Computer Wars, p. 47; April 29, 1996, review of The AARP, p. 56; November 3, 1997, review of American Catholic, p. 57; June 14, 1999, review of Money, Greed, and Risk, p. 57; July 30, 2007, review of The Surgeons, p. 69.

Technology Review, August 1, 1993, Lori Valigra, review of Computer Wars, p. 76.

Washington Monthly, September, 1999, Joseph Nocera, review of Money, Greed, and Risk, p. 52.

ONLINE

Atlas Society,http://www.objectivistcenter.org/ (February 11, 2008), Roger Donway, review of The Tycoons.