When corporate cheerleader Marty Lipton and corporate critic James McRitchie both heap praise on a new book (Lipton blurbed it), it's probably worth a look. And when Joe Nocera at the NY Times, Jesse Eisinger at muckraker ProPublica, and the managing editor of industry paper The Deal all highlight it, investors might want to know what's going on. 

Law professor Lynn Stout published The Shareholder Value Myth earlier this year. It prompted all manner of thinking about the relationship between public companies and their shareholders. (We weighted in on this earlier, too.) 

Granted, the title isn't promising. Yet, we hoped it offered a clear path for investors, between those who would leave corporations alone to spend or squander assets as directors and executives see fit, and those who would have shareholders waste time voting on everything, including the color of the CEO's carpet. 

Alas, it would be merely a hot mess if it wasn't actually somewhat dangerous: our current blog post shows how it has fired a public debate that essentially proposed we abandon "shareholder value" as the singular goal of a public company.