Here are young Ford, renegade Iacocca, visionary Katayama--everyone needed to reveal the crucial nuances behind two nations competing for commercial supremacy. HC: Morrow.

    

    Today he controls 80% of the voting shares of both Viacom and CBS, meaning that on a whim he could replace the entire boards of two public companies with a combined value of $40 billion. He spent decades performing meticulous estate planning so that his control would extend beyond the grave (which he loved telling reporters he would never lie in), constructing trusts designed to make it impossible for his heirs to sell his companies after he died. “Unless they start doing terribly,” he told the Wall Street Journal in 2012, “which they will not.”As readers will discover in The King of Content, Redstone’s confidence at the time was not misplaced. His life up to that point had been a story of exceeding expectations, climbing from the son of a linoleum peddler in the Jewish immigrant tenements of Boston’s West End to Harvard Law School, from the president of his father’s regional drive-in movie chain to the owner of Viacom, from a cerebral lawyer who shopped at Filene’s Basement to the owner of a coveted Hollywood studio, and ultimately, after the Viacom-CBS merger, to the controlling shareholder of the largest merged media entity in U.S. history. The credo that he coined and repeated for decades—“content is king”—turned out to be more true in the digital world than he could have ever guessed.Through exclusive interview and hundreds of pages of legal documents, Keach Hagey reveals the story behind the rise and fall of this remarkable figure, and the details of the family members fighting for control of his vast empire. At the heart of all the dueling lawsuits running through the Redstone family is Sumner Redstone’s tumultuous love life —particularly the fallout from his 2002 divorce from Phyllis, his wife of 52 years. More recently, Redstone’s life has become a tabloid soap opera thanks a lawsuit brought by one of his ex-girlfriends, Manuela Herzer. If the judge finds him incompetent, it will greatly increase the pressure on his trustees to begin the process of placing his controlling stakes in the hands of a seven-person trust who are expected to duke it out over what will become of the companies.Yet the appetite for Redstone’s assets is not what it would have been just a few years ago. While CBS—bolstered by its sports rights and the programming prowess of its former actor CEO, Les Moonves—has experienced modest declines in the age of cord-cutting, Viacom’s fall has been dizzying. Ratings at its biggest cable networks, which include MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, BET, and Vstrong, have been falling double-digit percentages for years. A few small cable companies, annoyed at Viacom’s demands for price hikes for their entire package of dozens of channels when ratings were so weak, dropped them altogether last year—a move widely viewed as a canary in the industry coal mine.There’s a corporate whodunnit here, as well as a series of mysteries that has captivated both the business and tabloid press. The answers lie in family feuds, corporate battles and alliances that go back decades, and will be laid bare in this ambitious book.

    “This is Steve Jobs. I saw your picture in a magazine a few years ago and thought we’d work together someday.” After Steve Jobs was unceremoniously dismissed from Apple, he bought a little-known graphics company called Pixar. One day, out of the blue, Jobs called Lawrence Levy, a Harvard-trained lawyer and executive to whom he had never spoken before, to persuade Levy to help him get Pixar off the ground. What Levy found was a company on the verge of failure. To Pixar and Beyond is the story of what happened next: how, working closely with Jobs, Levy produced and implemented a highly improbable plan that transformed Pixar into one of Hollywood’s greatest success stories. Set in the worlds of Silicon Valley and Hollywood, the book takes readers inside Pixar, Disney, law firms, and investment banks. It provides an up-close, firsthand account of Pixar’s ascent, how it made creative choices, Levy’s enduring collaboration and friendship with Jobs, and how Levy came to see in Pixar deeper lessons that can apply to many aspects of our lives.

    Their story and that of their firm--the biggest, most successful, and most controversial participant in the age of leverage--illuminates an entire era of financial maneuvering and speculative mania. Kravis and Roberts wrote their way into the history books by concocting one giant takeover after another. Their technique: the leveraged buyout, an audacious way to acquire a company with borrowed money, borrowed management--and a lot of nerve. Their firm, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., dominated the Wall Street scene in the late 1980s, acquiring one Fortune 500 company after another, including Safeway, Duracell, Motel 6, and RJR Nabisco. Merchants of Debt draws on more than 200 interviews, including recurring access to the central figures and their KKR associates, as well as court documents and private correspondence to couch giant financial issues in human terms. The story of KKR shows how pride, jealousy, fear, and ambition fueled Wall Street's debt mania--with consequences that affected hundreds of thousands of people. Anders addresses three questions: Why did American business become so enchanted by debt in the 1980s? How exactly did Kravis and Roberts rise to the top of the heap? What have buyouts, especially KKR's deals, done to America's economic strength? Here is a gripping saga that takes readers behind closed boardroom doors to show how star-struck young bankers, ruthless deal-makers, and nervous CEOs changed one another's lives--and the whole American economy--over a fifteen-year span.

    Churchill, 1948: World War II was the defining event of our age—the climactic clash between liberty and tyranny. It led to revolutions, the demise of empires, a protracted Cold War, and religious strife still not ended. Yet Churchill maintained that it was all avoidable. Here is a transformative view of Churchill’s theories, prescriptions, actions, and the degree to which he pursued them in the decade before the war. It shows that he was both right and wrong: right that Hitler could have been stopped; wrong that he did all he could to stop him. It is based on what really happened—evidence that has been “hiding in public” for many years, thoroughly referenced in Churchill’s words and those of his contemporaries. Richard M. Langworth began his Churchill work in 1968 when he organized the Churchill Study Unit, which later became the Churchill Centre. He served as its president and board chairman and was editor of its journal Finest Hour from 1982 to 2014. In November 2014, he was appointed senior fellow for Hillsdale College’s Churchill Project. Mr. Langworth published the first American edition of Churchill’s India, is the author of A Connoisseur’s Guide to the Books of Sir Winston Churchill, and is the editor of Churchill by Himself, The Definitive Wit of Winston Churchill, The Patriot’s Churchill, All Will Be Well: Good Advice from Winston Churchill, and Churchill in His Own Words. His next book is Winston Churchill, Urban Myths and Reality. In 1998, Richard Langworth was appointed a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire by HM The Queen “for services to Anglo-American understanding and the memory of Sir Winston Churchill.”

    From this front row seat, you'll see one of the greatest wealth-building records in history unfold, year by year.If you're looking for dusty old investment theory, there are hundreds of other books waiting to cure you of insomnia. However, if you're looking for an investing book that's as personal as it is revelatory, look no further.Packed with Buffett and Munger's timeless, generous, and often hilarious wisdom, University of Berkshire Hathaway will keep serious investors turning pages late into the night:• Get unique insight into the thinking, strategies, and decisions--both good and bad--that made Buffett and Munger two of the world's greatest investors. • Understand the critical reasoning that leads Buffett and Munger to purchase a particular company, including their methods for assigning value.• Learn the central tenets of Buffett's value-investing philosophy "straight from the horse's mouth."• Enjoy Munger's biting wit as he goes after any topic that offends him.• Discover Buffett's distaste for "commonly accepted strategies" like modern portfolio theory.• See why these annual meetings are often called "an MBA in a weekend."

    By 2000, NPR’s Car Talk declared it “the worst car of the millennium.” And for most Americans that’s where the story begins and ends. Hardly. The short, unhappy life of the car, the men who built it, the men who imported it, and the decade that embraced and discarded it is rollicking and astounding, and one of the greatest untold business-cum-morality tales of the 1980s. Mix one rabid entrepreneur, several thousand “good” communists, a willing U.S. State Department, the shortsighted Detroit auto industry, and improvident bankers, shake vigorously, and you’ve got The Yugo: The Rise and Fall of the Worst Car in History.  Brilliantly re-creating the amazing confluence of events that produced the Yugo, Yugoslav expert Jason Vuic uproariously tells the story of the car that became an international joke: The American CEO who happens upon a Yugo right when his company needs to find a new import or go under. A State Department eager to aid Yugoslavia’s nonaligned communist government. Zastava Automobiles, which overhauls its factory to produce an American-ready Yugo in six months. And a hole left by Detroit in the cheap subcompact market that creates a race to the bottom that leaves the Yugo . . . at the bottom.

    He was also an extremely able politician who won the esteem of many statesmen-including Winston Churchill and influential persons in the United States. This biography describes Mussolini's childhood; his education (including his suspension from school for attacking other boys with knives); his World War I experiences and severe wounding; his involvement in, and eventual expulsion from the revolutionary Italian Socialist Party; his numerous love affairs, his early career as a journalist and his rise to power and brutal rule.

    

    Why (and when) did he turn his legitimate business into a massive fraud? How did he fool so many smart investors for so long? Who among his family and employees knew the truth? The best person to answer these questions—and tell the full story of Madoff’s rise and fall—is Erin Arvedlund. In early 2001, she was suspicious of the amazing returns of Madoff’s hedge fund, which no one could explain. Her article in Barron’s, based on more than one hundred interviews, could have prevented a lot of misery, had the SEC followed up. But almost no one was willing to believe anything bad about “Uncle Bernie”—so nice, so humble, so generous to charities. As Arvedlund shows, Madoff was no ordinary liar, but a master of the type of lies people really wanted to believe. He kept his clients at a distance and allowed handsomely paid friends to solicit new ones for him; playing hard to get created an irresistible mystique. Now, Arvedlund tackles the tough questions that are still unanswered in the wake of Madoff’s collapse: Did he start off as a legitimate money manager or was he a fraud from the beginning? Were there indications of larceny at the very start of his career? Why did Madoff’s biggest supporters within the industry, such as Walter Noel of Fairfield Greenwich and Ezra Merkin of Gabriel Capital, ignore the warning signs that were so apparent? Did they choose to remain ignorant as long as their commissions rolled in? Why did SEC investigations fail to catch Madoff’s Ponzi scheme even though several people had voiced concerns about his operation? Who else helped Madoff carry out his scam? His family and close associates have denied any involvement, but was it possible for one man to engineer a heist of such scope? With her keen investigative eye, Arvedlund presents a sweeping narrative of Madoff’s career—from his youth in Queens, New York, to his early days working for his father-in-law, to his time as chairman of the NASDAQ exchange, and finally to infamy as the world’s most notorious swindler. She offers a riveting glimpse of Madoff the man—an indifferent student with little ambition who transformed himself into a star with a talent for trading, a reputation for innovation, and an unmistakably erratic nature. Readers will be fascinated by Arvedlund’s portrayal of Madoff, his empire, and all those who never considered that he might be too good to be true.

    Conceived, written, and directed by a little-known filmmaker named George Lucas, the movie originally called The Star Wars quickly drew blocks-long lines, bursting box-office records and ushering in a new way for movies to be made, marketed, and merchandised. It is now one of the most adored-and successful-movie franchises of all time.Now, the author of the bestselling biography Jim Henson delivers a long-awaited, revelatory look into the life and times of the man who created Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and Indiana Jones.If Star Wars wasn't game-changing enough, Lucas went on to create another blockbuster series with Indiana Jones, and he completely transformed the world of special effects and the way movies sound. His innovation and ambition forged Pixar and Lucasfilm, Industrial Light & Magic, and THX sound.Lucas's colleagues and competitors offer tantalizing glimpses into his life. His entire career has been stimulated by innovators including Steven Spielberg and Francis Ford Coppola, actors such as Harrison Ford, and the very technologies that enabled the creation of his films-and allowed him to keep tinkering with them long after their original releases. Like his unforgettable characters and stories, his influence is unmatched.

    He had gambled and won, but his volatility and reluctance to pay his debts were making him enemies. He lived the high life as only a young man would, buying luxury homes, private jets, sports cars and football teams, and splurging massively to build a horseracing empire.But Tinkler’s dreams had extended beyond even his resources, and his business model worked only in a rising market. When coal prices slumped in 2012, Tinkler had no cash flow to service his massive borrowings and no allies to help him recover. Within months he was trying desperately to stave off his creditors, large and small, and fighting to save his businesses and his fortune.In this impressive biography, leading business writer Paddy Manning tells the story of Tinkler’s meteoric rise to wealth, and captures the drama of his equally rapid downfall.‘Some might see it as a handbook on how to go from broke to billionaire in a matter of years … Others might see it as a morality tale about the canker at the heart of the consumerist, aspirational politics peddled by our leaders for the past few decades.’ —Sydney Morning Herald‘Paddy Manning’s Boganaire: The Rise and Fall of Nathan Tinkler is a rollicking tale, which works on our sense of schadenfreude.’ —Chloe Hooper, the Monthly‘Boganaire is much more than a book for readers of business literature. It provides an insight into a bigger and more important subject than Nathan Tinkler: it shows how the easy prosperity from resource riches might be changing our culture and values for the worse.’ — the Australian‘The richly detailed book lays Tinkler’s life bare, from his early days working in Newcastle’s coal mines through to his triumphant deals with Macarthur Coal and Whitehaven, and his spectacular fall from grace.’ —BRWPaddy Manning is one of Australia’s most respected journalists, with fifteen years’ experience including a decade on the business desks of the Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian Financial Review and the Australian – a period in which he was highly commended in the business category of the Walkley Awards and was a three-time category winner in the prestigious Citigroup Journalism Awards for Excellence. His first book, What the Frack: everything you need to know about coal seam gas, was published in 2012.

    The airlines were international superstars; even among those long-gone carriers, their still-remembered names can conjure deep feelings of nostalgia, romance, and adventure: Braniff, Continental, BOAC, Swissair, TWA, Pan Am.This was the fifties and sixties. The world was on the move, and it was the new jet planes that were getting people there. But competition for the travel dollar was fierce, and Madison Avenue decided the face (and heart) of every airline would be the flight attendant, the stewardess. So it was that the “stew” became synonymous with the airline’s brand. She—and at that time they were exclusively female—was the airline.The stewardess became the fantasy every woman: glamorous professional, high-end server, customer service expert, nurse, therapist, and in no small measure: sex symbol.And to that end, these women were carefully selected for their looks and brains, then rigorously trained for weeks, and finally dressed as high-flying, high-heeled models in uniforms often created by top fashion designers. Heddy Frosell da Ponte was one of those chosen women. She was the ideal candidate to be employed by Pan Am in the 1960s: a pretty female with a terrific figure, under thirty-two years old, unmarried, and a speaker of multiple languages.The Glamour Years of Flying as a Stewardess is Heddy’s fascinating, often times hilarious collection of exploits as she traveled the world as a stewardess during the golden age of international air travel.This remarkable book is also a rare look back at the people, places, cultures, and lifestyles gone forever, but now brought back to vivid life by a stewardess-turned-author who knows how to tell a fast-moving tale. So buckle up; this will be one flight you’ll never forget. About the Author Heddy Frosell da Ponte was a flight attendant for forty five years. Now retired, she lives in Georgia. She is the author of The Glamour Years of Flying as a Stewardess.

    Producer Michael Deeley, an urbane Englishman in Hollywood, had to fight wars to get these movies made, from defending the legendary sex scene of Don't Look Now from a disapproving Warren Beatty to seizing control of Convoy from a cocaine-ridden Sam Peckinpah. This is a no-holds-barred look at the true stories behind some of the greatest cult movies ever made.