I googled Herbert Axelrod like you said and I'm still confused. I get who he is (and remember reading something about it in 2005 or so) and I know that, you, Stan, work in the tropical fish world.
But whuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut?
Maybe I'm just a bog dummy.
Sorry to get off topic everybody, I'll try to be brief.
For starters, this is a page of links to numerous articles about his tax evasion and fucking over the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra:
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/a/herbert_r_axelrod/index.htmlBut what bothers me the most is what he's done to the aquarium publishing world. In the 1950s he plagiarized the work of William Innes and effectively put him out of business. You can read all about that, here:
http://www.fritz-reuter.com/articles/starledger/alifeofmoneyandmyths.htmBeyond that, Axelrod's company TFH bought Tetra Press Publications in the 1990s and decided to take the majority of their titles off the market, probably because they were better books. The remaining inventory of these books were in large shipping container that he had hauled out to a parking lot where they were hosed down with water before being returned to a warehouse. Herb then filed an insurance claim that stated they were destroyed in a fire sprinkler malfunction. When asked why he didn't just sell the books, he said "Why would I sell books that compete with my own?". This was from personal communication with a former TFH employee (the guy who asked the previous question). Congratulations everybody, you just learned a dirty little industry secret about Herb getting away with insurance fraud.
The guy really is an egomaniac and a douchebag of the old school.