Customer Reviews

Master of the Game: Steve Ross and the Creation of Time Warner

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book gives a good understanding of the history of Warner from Kinney to the creation of Time Warner. This is an excellent book to give an understanding of how a media empire is built.

Anyone in media or entertainment has to read this book. It was, by far, the strangest story I read during two years of business school and it will help Time Warner employees understand how the company & culture was created. M&A people should also check this out since the merger of Time & Warner is the most interesting part of the book. Time was supposedly buying Warner Bros yet the Warner top brass ended up in charge.

Interesting book about a very interesting man. How may I serve you was Steve Ross's greeting to the family of the departed when he was a funeral director. He used that keen awareness and ability for empathy expand his funeral company into NYC parking garages, rental cars, music business, movies, cable and finally into the largest media company in the world - Time Warner. The book was a biography and well written by Connie Bruck. My 3 stars are mainly because I was more interested in the business side rather than Ross's personal life. The latter part on the Time Warner merger provided a lot of details from her original New Yorker articles and new intererviews for the book. At times she was very enamored of Ross but that was his strength. However this was balanced in the end where Ross's light seemed to have diminished.

Although I'm a Connie Bruck fan, I came away from Master of the Game disappointed. Perhaps my expectations were too great from having wanted to read the book for a long time. It's a good book and has interesting points, but you walk away without a real feeling of who Steve Ross was and what made him tick.

Connie Bruck, along with Joe Nocera is probably American's best living business writer and this is another great work from her.

A good story about a man who starts off running his father in law's funeral palor and winds up the head of one the world's biggest companies.

Bruck spends a lot of time discussing the charm and the personality of Ross and admits that Ross is someone that she really likes. The book does not have the balance of her previous book, The Predators Ball, but does not Michael Milken as subject matter like that book did too.

I would definitely recommend owning a copy of this book.

Don McNay...

This is a so-so book about the life of one businessman. It kept me interested but it was no "Father, Son & Company". It was great how it followed through from the funeral home days up to the biggest events in Mr Ross' life.