Trust and Honesty: America's Business Culture at a Crossroad.

Trust and Honesty: America's Business Culture at a Crossroad. By Tamar Frankel. Oxford University Press, 253 pages. $35.

In how many ways have America's corporate leaders deviated from the right path in recent years? Author Tamar Frankel, a law professor at Boston University and the author of books on securities and regulation, spends many pages enumerating those and putting them into context. Then she offers recommendations about what the same (and other) leaders should do to put things right.

First and foremost, she talks about redirecting the culture and aiming it toward some simple truths: truth and honesty. Corporate leaders, she writes, must change their own culture before they change that of their companies, and it all starts with a reaffirmation to integrity. While total honesty is unreachable, she writes, it's a worthy ambition.

The message of Trust and Honesty is similar to that of a number of recent books bemoaning the apparent slide of corporate ethics that triggered scandals like Enron and WorldCom. It doesn't just chide or serve up philosophy, however; Frankel underpins her ideas with a host of good examples. She will come across to some as an overzealous do-gooder, but she argues persuasively that companies, and society, can do better.