iscussions between AT&T and BellSouth report- edly began again in mid-2003 and continued until they eventually cratered in the fall over valuation and "social issues," i.e., Bell- Notes South refused to make a firm commitment that Dorman would succeed Ackerman as CEO. 3. James Collins and Jerry Porras, Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies (New York: Harper Business, 1994). 4. Stephanie Mehta, "WorldCom's Bad Trip," Fortune, February 19, 2002. 5. In mid-2003, AT&T discovered that two low-level managers had manipulated the company's accounting for access charges to cover up earlier errors that they had made. Both managers and their supervisors, who should have noticed the charges, were fired. The impact on the company's financial results was less than a penny a share. 6. Adam Quinton, Merrill Lynch & Co., quoted by Edward Teah in "Deconstructing AT&T," CFO Magazine, July 2002. Chapter 16 I. Seth Schisel, "The AT&T Chief's Report Card," New York Times, December 22, 2001. 2. There is only one book-length biography of Vail. In One Man's Life was written by a contemporary, Albert Bigelow Paine, and offers little insight into Vail's business philosophy. John Brooks's Tele- phone: The First Hundred Years (New York: Harper and Row, 1975) has several very informative chapters on Vail's business philoso- phy. See, for example, pp. I3I-132 and I43-144. 3. J. Edward Hyde, The Phone Book: What the Telephone Company Would Rather You Not Know, (Chicago: Henry Regency, 1976), p. 23. 4. Brooks, Telephone, p. I54. 5. Charles Handy, The Age of Paradox (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Business School Press, 1994), p. 159. 6. Louis Lowenstein, "Corporate Governance and the Voice of the Paparazzi," Working Paper No. I3I, The Center for Law and Eco- nomic Studies, Columbia University, February 22, 1999. 7. Arthur W. Page, The Bell Telephone System (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1941), p. I54. 8. William Blackstone, Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of En- gland (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1765), vol. I, p. 455. Alvin Von A