Assuming that the late former Enron vice Chairman Cliff Baxter died by his own hand and not the hands of others who feared he might testify against them, you might blame Baxter's suicide on guilt, shame, or fear of financial ruin. Linda Lay, wife of former Enron CEO Kenneth Lay, blames the media: "Cliff was a wonderful man," Mrs. Lay lamented in a nationally televised interview; his apparent suicide "is a perfect example of how the media can play such havoc and destruction in people's lives."

Plagiarism charges against pop historian Stephen Ambrose are mounting; as I write this column, as many as six of his books have been found to include passages lifted from other writers without attribution. Scandals like this erupt periodically: Gail Sheehy ceded 10 percent of her royalties from the 1976 best-seller Passages to UCLA psychiatrist Roger Gould, who sued her for copyright infringement. (She also borrowed liberally from the work of the late Yale psychologist Daniel Levinson.) Joe McGinnis was exposed as a plagiarist when his 1993 biography of Edward Kennedy was found to include passages from books by William Manchester and Doris Kearns Goodwin.