In March 2005, a group of eight retired executives ignited a history-making coup d’etat at Morgan Stanley, Wall Street’s most presitigious investment bank. The “Eight Grumpy Old Men”—a coterie that included a former chairman and a former president of the firm—called for the removal of CEO Philip Purcell. Their revolt signaled a battle for the soul of America’s preeminent financial institution, a company guided by the motto “A First-Class Business in a First-Class Way.”

Opening the long-closed doors of a bastion of Wall Street, Blue Blood and Mutiny weaves the history of Morgan Stanley with the inside story of the fight for dominance between two competing business cultures—one, the collegial meritocracy handed down from the days of J. P. Morgan, and the other, a cold, contemporary corporate model.