In the Eye of the Storm: My Time as Chairman of Bank of America During the Country's Worst Financial Crisis

Walter E. Massey

Beckham Publications Company, 2020 - Biography & Autobiography - 264 pages

Chosen chairman of Bank of America in 2009, Walter Massey is the first banking insider to reveal the inner workings behind the country's colossal financial crisis in 2008. But his intimate memoir is more than a revelation about those perilous years of the American economy.

Comprehensive, intimate, and revealing, his is an eloquent testimony to the importance of determination and hard work, and the supremacy of American promise. Coincidence and happenstance play their roles too. Beginning with a flashback to those wobbly years as Bank of America Chairman, Massey draws a map of the thrills, challengesƒƒ‚‚ƒ‚‚"ƒƒ‚‚ƒ‚‚€ƒƒ‚‚ƒ‚‚"and failures tooƒƒ‚‚ƒ‚‚"ƒƒ‚‚ƒ‚‚€ƒƒ‚‚ƒ‚‚"of his ascendancyƒƒ‚‚ƒ‚‚"ƒƒ‚‚ƒ‚‚€ƒƒ‚‚ƒ‚‚"a rise that he terms triumphs. A psychologically devastating divorce, parental alcoholism, and racist threats against his life may have fractured, but not broken his tenacity.

In tender and sober terms, he portrays people who, on the one hand, instilled in him enduring life lessons, and on the other hand, enriched him with sincere friendship.

About the author

Walter E. Massey was born on April 5, 1938 in then racially segregated Hattiesburg, Mississippi. While in 10th grade, Massey passed an early entry examination for Morehouse College and began his college education at the age of 16 with a Ford Foundation fellowship. He obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in 1958 and a doctorate in physics from Washington University, St. Louis in 1966. He pursued post-doctoral training in theoretical physics from 1966 to 1968 at the University of Chicago-affiliated Argonne National Laboratories.In 2010, Massey entered a new phase of his career, accepting the role of interim president, and later as full president, of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, a leading school of art and design. He also served a term as chair of the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design. In 2016, Massey transitioned to his new role as chancellor of SAIC. Later that year, he also accepted the appointment to chair the board of the organization building the Giant Magellan Telescope in Chile. In 2017, Massey was named to chair the board of trustees of the City Colleges of Chicago. Ruth J. Simmons is president of Prairie View A&M University. She previously served as the 18th president of Brown University, where she was the first African-American president of an Ivy League institution.

Bibliographic information

• Title: In the Eye of the Storm: My Time as Chairman of Bank of America During the Country's Worst Financial Crisis
• Author: Walter E. Massey
• Contributor: Ruth Simmons
• Publisher: Beckham Publications Company, 2020
• ISBN: 0931761999, 9780931761997
• Length: 264 pages
• Subjects: Biography & Autobiography / Business; Biography & Autobiography / General; History / United States / General