Ms. Endlich's account is crisp and engaging, but her underlying theme--that a broadly shared mood or mania drives the corporation more than individual players--blunts its forse. One wishes, for example, that she spent more time examining the tenure of current Hewlett Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina, who played a major role in Lucent's creation and later in the formation of its sales culture. (Ms. Fiorina left months before Lucent imploded.) But Ms. Edlich skips around the accountability question, explaining that, post-bubble, "it was not within the power of any given CEO or company to control its fate." If so, why do such a fine job of showing that the opposite is true?