This book had its origins in conversations with my late dissertation advisor, Nobel Prize winner in Economics Robert W. Fogel. For years after I graduated from the University of Chicago, Bob (as he insisted his graduated students call him) would graciously take time from a busy schedule to discuss my latest work. He encouraged me to investigate topics in business ethics, and I attended his class on the subject at the Graduate School of Business at Chicago. He emphasized the historical phenomenon of changing views of what was ethical in business.
I later taught courses in business ethics at Loyola University of Chicago
and the Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago. Many of the
ideas for this book emanated from these courses.
As with most authors, many people helped me along the way. The following paragraphs are among the most pleasurable ones for me to write.
I thank graduate assistants Caroline Mutonyi, Madiha Ahsan, and Shanaya Alvares at the University of Northern Iowa, for processing thousands of the note cards and looking up articles and books. Undergraduate Kobe Diers provided help with a particularly tedious task (deleting 2102 superscripts representing endnotes). Matt Goodwin helped compile the citations and the bibliography.