Reading Transaction Man: The Rise of the Deal and the Decline of the American Dream, by Nicholas Lemann (Farrar, Straus), I experienced a mounting sense that something in the argument was hidden from me, and perhaps from the author himself. I understood well enough that Lemann chose his title in contradistinction to The Organization Man, William Whyte’s 1956 book that inveighed against the hierarchic ethos that seemed to dominate America in the 1950s: well-roundedness, belongingness, togetherness, and specialization. Whyte was against gray flannel suits, ticky-tacky houses, business schools and giant corporations; against conformity in general. He was in favor of…