I just picked up
Flying Blind - Peter Robison. The book portrays the McDonnell takeover as "hunter killer assassins" rolling over the engineer "boy scouts".
Boeing got subjugated to shareholder value metrics. IBM, GE and Xerox (a previous employer) also fell under the thrall of shareholder value metrics. They are all slowly sinking into the sunset.
With the current Boeing, any new design will be done on the cheap, but this time around the FAA will be closely supervising.
Robison is a Bloomberg reporter who covers the Boeing beat. So far in my reading of the book, he is more knowledgeable in corporate affairs than piloting and engineering and would have benefited from some technical help.