Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary

Two post-mortems dissect last year's Bendix takeover fiasco

Was last year's sorry Bendix/Martin Marietta/Allied/United Technologies battle a product of bored, amoral, frustrated, intellectually sterile managers? Will William Agee and Mary Cunningham ever find true happiness? Is the Harvard Business School encouraging its graduates to sacrifice real growth for mere asset management? The answers to the above are yes, perhaps and possibly. At least, so say two new post-mortems on the Bendix saga, Three Plus One Equals Billions, by Allan Sloan (Arbor House; $15.95), and Till Death Do Us Part, by Hope Lampert (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich; $12.95).

By now, all of America knows...