"The challenge is, how do we get somebody 126 years old to get it up?" This was Sam Zell's unique way of saying hello to a large gathering at the Los Angeles Times shortly after taking charge of Tribune Company. "I'm your Viagra, OK?"Even for Sam Zell, one of the greatest contrarian investors, buying Tribune Company was a risky and controversial move. Many saw the purchase of the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times by a man who had made his fort...

The dramatic, unlikely story behind the founding of Twitter, by New York Times bestselling author and Vanity Fair special correspondentThe San Francisco-based technology company Twitter has become a powerful force in less than ten years. Today it’s everything from a tool for fighting political oppression in the Middle East to a marketing must-have to the world’s living room during live TV events to President Trump’s preferred method of communicati...

“Must the end of life be the worst part?Can it be made the best?”At 53, Eugene O'Kelly was in the full swing of life. Chairman and CEO of KPMG, one of the largest U.S. accounting firms, he enjoyed a successful career and drew happiness from his wife, children, family, and close friends. He was thinking ahead: the next business trip, the firm's continued success, weekend plans with his wife, his daughter's first day of eighth grade.Then in May 2005, ...

The dramatic inside story of the downfall of Michael Eisner—Disney Chairman and CEO—and the scandals that drove America’s best-known entertainment company to civil war.“When You Wish Upon a Star,” “Whistle While You Work,” “The Happiest Place on Earth”—these are lyrics indelibly linked to Disney, one of the most admired and best-known companies in the world. So when Roy Disney, chairman of Walt Disney Animation and nephew of founder Walt Disney, abruptly resigned i...

"A corporate thriller that does a superb job of bringing to life the dramatic story of Yahoo." — Financial TimesWhen Yahoo hired star Google executive Marissa Mayer to be its CEO in 2012 employees rejoiced. But one year later, Mayer sat in front of those same employees in a huge cafeteria on Yahoo's campus and took the beating of her life. Her hair wet and her tone defensive, Mayer read and answered a series of employee-posed questions cha...

**An NPR Book Concierge Best Book of 2018!A stunning story about how power works in the modern age--the book the New York Times called "one helluva page-turner" and The Sunday Times of London celebrated as "riveting...an astonishing modern media conspiracy that is a fantastic read." Pick up the book everyone is talking about.**In 2007, a short blogpost on Valleywag, the Silicon Valley-vertical of Gawker Media, outed PayPal founder and billionaire investor Peter Thiel as gay...

A "funny, contemplative" memoir of working at Amazon in the early years, when it was a struggling online bookstore ( San Francisco Chronicle).In a book that Ian Frazier has called "a fascinating and sometimes hair-raising morality tale from deep inside the Internet boom," James Marcus, hired by Amazon.com in 1996—when the company was so small his e-mail address could be [email protected]—looks back at the ecstatic rise, dramatic fall, and remarkable comebac...

From Norman Wisdom to Eurovision and everything in between, a lively and entertaining memoir from one of Ireland's best-loved personalities.Throughout the highs and lows of a 30-year career as one of Ireland's best-loved radio and television personalities, Marty Whelan has always remained upbeat, with a determination for survival and an enthusiasm for life.In this warm and witty memoir, Marty takes inspiration from the songs that have had meaning in his life as he explores some big themes ...

This hugely entertaining biography of the founding editor of The New Yorker tells the diverting story of how Ross and the brilliant group of people he gathered around him--including James Thurber, Charles Addams, Dorothy Parker, and John O'Hara--devised the formula that made the magazine such a popular and critical success. Photos & cartoons.

“He is to American broadcasting as Carnegie was to steel, Ford to automobiles, Luce to publishing, and Ruth to baseball,” wrote The New York Times of William S. Paley—the man who built CBS, the “Tiffany Network.” Sally Bedell Smith’s In All His Glory takes a hard look at Paley and the perfect world he created for himself, revealing the extraordinary complexity of the man who let nothing get in the way of his vast ambitions. Tracing his life from Chicago, where Paley was b...

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test for our own age, the story of a dreamer who turned American media upside down—and suffered the consequencesLouis Rossetto had no money, no home, no job. Five years later he owned the hottest magazine in America and was poised to become an international tycoon, with America’s most powerful financiers by his side.Rossetto was the founder and editor of Wired, whose hyperactive Day-Glo pages proclaimed that every American instit...

This is the story of the rise and rise of advertising giant Saatchi & Saatchi as it has never been told before.With over 200 astonishing first-hand accounts from the people who were really there, this is a fascinating insight into a remarkable success story and an unorthodox business.Responsible for generating some of the most memorable and groundbreaking advertising of the last fifty years, Saatchi & Saatchi became infamous in their own right. Made up of m...