At the height of the great telecom bubble, Lisa Endlich reminds us, Lucent Technologies' stock was "as good as currency." Arguably, it was better than that: Lucent stock could buy whatever the company wanted. Its executives pretended that the business was growing in predictable quarterly intervals -- and its investors bought the lie. So universal was the acclaim, Endlich observes in Optical Illusions: Lucent and the Crash of Telecom, that "the chorus of those singing Lucent's praises had almost no dissenters."

This is accurate: "almost." Indulge a brief personal memory. It is April 14, 2000, just a month after what turned out to be the peak period for the Nasdaq stock market. Sequoia Fund, a mutual fund with a conservative investment approach and on whose board I sit, is holding its annual meeting. The shareholders partake of the traditional breakfast and then retire to a banquet room overlooking Central Park to question the fund's managers.