The publicly traded company has played a dominant role in the American economy for decades. The Public Company Transformed examines the history of the American public company from the mid-twentieth century through to the present day. The analysis is oriented around constraints that have affected the discretion available to public company executives, such as monitoring by the board of directors, activism by shareholders, complying with regulation, dealings with unions, and pressure from competitors. The chronological departure point is the managerial capitalism era, which prevailed in large American corporations following World War II. Managerial capitalism’s rise, its 1950s and 1960s heyday, and its fall in the 1970s and 1980s are canvassed. Prosperity that American public companies and their executives enjoyed during the 1990s is described, as is a reversal of fortunes in the 2000s precipitated by corporate scandals and the financial crisis of 2008. The Public Company Transformed concludes by offering conjectures on the future of the public corporation, indicating in so doing that predictions the public company will soon be an afterthought are likely to be proved incorrect.