Amazon.com: Newhouse: All the Glitter, Power, & Glory of America's Richest Media Empire & the Secretive Man Behind It (9781555661915): Thomas Maier: Books
With a supporting cast of well-known literary names around him, Newhouse is the king of New York’s cultural world today—as owner of Random House, the nation’s largest book publishing empire; publisher of such influential magazines as "The New Yorker," "Vanity Fair," "Vogue," and "Wired;" and by controlling dozens of other newspapers, magazines, and cable television franchises in the United States and around the world.
Author Thomas Maier examines the rags-to-riches saga of the Newhouse family and how they built a privately-held empire estimated at $13 billion. He tells the personal story of how "Si" Newhouse emerged from the shadow of his demanding father to expand the family fortune further than anyone ever imagined, with his mercurial "off-with-their-heads" management style.
This unauthorized investigative biography explores Newhouse’s reliance on his long-time friend Roy Cohn, a lawyer for the Mafia and a confidant to top politicians, and how the family managed to beat the IRS in a $1 billion tax battle. Like a message in a time bottle, "Newhouse" describes our celebrity-driven media age, a real-life allegory for the 1990s when communications giants like Newhouse’s Advance Publications, Inc., gobbled up everything in sight. This book raises strong warnings about a media monopoly in America, controlled by a handful of powerful men like Si Newhouse, and underlines the serious ways in which journalism has been transformed.
Samuel I. Newhouse Jr., generally known as Si, is not only one of the richest men in the U.S., he also heads its most powerful media company, Advance Publications, which owns a chain of high-visibility magazines, the Random House companies, newspapers and cable-TV interests. He is also, by his own choice, little known to the public, so a book about him, his personality, interests and remarkable influence is very much in order. Maier, a New York Newsday reporter, labored mightily to penetrate the veil Newhouse has established between himself and the world, and has come up with as thorough an account as an outsider probably could write of the Newhouse career: his early uncertainties in the shadow of a dynamic and demanding father, his growing skills in managing the magazine empire that never much interested Sam senior, his eventual triumphs in acquiring the kinds of properties-Random House, the New Yorker-his father would have delighted in. It is all here-the victorious struggles with the IRS over taxes, the ups and downs at Vogue, the relaunch of Vanity Fair, the New Yorker troubles and eventual triumph, the reshaping of Random from a largely literary house to a mega-publisher. The writing is patchy, too often shoving the reader in the required direction; there are too many repetitions and longueurs (Tina Brown, clearly the most quotable of his interviewees, takes over whole chapters). But the book is conscientious, accurate and fair-minded, and gives the reader much to ponder about the virtually unquestioned power that belongs to the Newhouse family. Photos not seen by PW. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
Although it revolves around S.I. ('Si') Newhouse Jr., this is in fact a fast-moving, deftly written family saga. Advance Publications, Inc., the business that made the Newhouses multibillionaires, includes Random House books, Conde Nast magazines, and various newspapers and cable television properties. Maier, a reporter for New York Newsday, highlights themes of power and change, focusing on Si Newhouse as he emerges from the shadow of his father, Sam, the family patriarch, and on the companies Si takes over. It is instructive to compare the Random House described here with the company in Bennett Cerf's At Random (1977). Maier's tone is one of grudging admiration for Newhouse, though often critical of his editorial judgment. Particularly enlightening are examinations of Tina Brown's editorships at Vanity Fair and The New Yorker and how the Newhouses outmaneuvered the U.S. government in a billion-dollar tax case. For all media collections. Bruce Rosenstein, "USA Today" Lib., Arlington, Va. Economics Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
America in our times is the backdrop for my four biographies, all of which have been singled out by critics for their best-of-the-year honors. Now out in paperback and Kindle, my most recent biography about Masters and Johnson ("Masters of Sex", Basic Books, 2009) was called "eye-opening" and "a bombshell" by the Sunday New York Times Book Review, "well written with good humor" by the NY Times daily reviewer Dwight Garner, and "an intelligent and well-conceived biography" by the Washington Post, along with a starred review by Booklist. The Chicago Tribune listed it among the paper's favorite non-fiction books of 2009. [Oprah's "O" magazine even cited it among its top 10 "smart, engaging, occasionally uproarious" books dealing with sex]. My investigative findings -- revealing that Masters and Johnson fabricated "gay conversion" case studies in their landmark homosexuality book -- prompted headlines in The New York Times, Scientific American and speaking engagements at Harvard Medical School and the National Academy of Sciences in California. This first-time biography of Masters and Johnson also received "blurb" endorsements from Gay Talese, Nelson DeMille and biographer Debby Applegate, winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. Sony Pictures Television recently bought the rights to this book and has hired Michelle Ashford (a writer of the Emmy-winner HBO's "John Adams" and Emmy-nominated for the Spielberg-Hanks miniseries "The Pacific") to develop the script. Many wondered what I could say that was new in "The Kennedys: America's Emerald Kings" (Basic Books, 2003) but, as many critics noted, this 700-page history achieved that goal and was featured on ABC's "20/20" program, the CBS Evening News, NBC's "Today" show and in publications around the world. "The Kennedys" was praised as one of the top 10 all-time JFK books by the American Booksellers Association's "Book Sense" program. It was featured prominently as annual holiday choice by USA Today's literary critics. It was also a selection of the Book of the Month Club, the History Book Club, excerpted in Redbook and received "blurb" endorsements from historians James MacGregor Burns, Ronald Steel and Newsweek's Evan Thomas. The unabridged audiotape version of "The Kennedys" also won the Earphone Award from Audiofile magazine. Warners Bros. Home Video produced a DVD documentary from my book with the same name that was sold in 2008 along with Oliver Stone's classic movie feature "JFK". "Dr. Spock An American Life" (Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1998), was selected as one of the top ten non-fiction books of 1998 by The Boston Globe and as a "Notable Book of the Year" by The New York Times. Excerpts appeared in Newsweek, U.S News and World Report and it was condensed as a Readers' Digest book. I also appeared on NBC's "Today" show, C-Span's "BookTV," and served as consultant and on-air commentator for a documentary about Dr. Spock's life, jointly produced by the BBC and A&E's "Biography." A paperback version was published in spring 2003 by Basic Books to mark Dr. Spock's 100th birthday. Filmmaker Susanna Styron, daughter of novelist William Styron and a teacher at Columbia's film school, bought the rights to this book with her production company. "Newhouse: All the Glitter, Power and Glory of America's Richest Media Empire and the Secretive Man Behind It," (St. Martin's Press, 1994) won the Frank Luther Mott Award by the National Honor Society in Journalism and Mass Communication as best media book of the year. Excerpts appeared in the Columbia Journalism Review, Worth, and The London Telegraph magazine. An updated trade paperback of "Newhouse," published by Johnson Books, was picked by Entertainment Weekly as one of the top ten "must reads" for the 1997 summer season. Since 1984, I've been a writer for Newsday in New York, previously working at the Chicago Sun-Times. In 2002, I won the world's top $20,000 investigative prize from the International Consortium of Investigative Reporting, now called the "Daniel Pearl Award", for a series about the deadly exploitation of immigrant workers, besting other finalists from The New Yorker, the BBC, and Sunday Times of London. Others investigative series of mine have won the national Sigma Delta Chi Distinguished Service Award, the national Worth Bingham Award, National Headliners Award, New York Deadline Club, Society of Silurians and many others. Based on a Newsday investigation, I worked as paid consultant to CBS News' "48 Hours" show for a segment on international child abduction. In 2010, my print series and accompanying video documentary about Brookhaven National Lab's treatment of nuclear bomb victims in the Pacific won Newsday's first Emmy Award nomination as well as the National Headliners Award. I earned a master's degree in 1982 from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where I won the television documentary prize at graduation. and was later awarded a McCloy fellowship to Europe.
5.0 out of 5 starsAn Important but Neglected Book, June 23, 2000
By A Customer
This review is from: Newhouse: All the Glitter, Power, & Glory of America's Richest Media Empire & the Secretive Man Behind It (Paperback)
The book shows how American media are controlled by a single family company. It owns many of the famous and influential publishing companies, magazines, and newspapers. It is a very dangerous situation that American media are under control by the handful people. As a matter of fact, the author mentioned in the paperback edition that the Newhouse company banned any mention of this book in their publications. The book, which won the 1995 "best media book" prize, seems to be neglected, but this is a very important book that more people should read. A sole purpose of media isn't a simple means of entertainment for people, and isn't mere profit organizations for the owner either. Media have the responsibility to execute the social role, and its fair execution is questionable under such a monopoly situation. The author proposes not-for-profit newspapers, and I believe it is time to consider to go back to such a fundamental point. Through various incidents the Newhouse company have initiated, the book leads us to consider what media mean to us. It is a very good book to think what true journalism means to us.
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This review is from: Newhouse: All the Glitter, Power, & Glory of America's Richest Media Empire & the Secretive Man Behind It (Paperback)
This is a biography as much of a media empire as it is of a man. While Maier spends as much time as he can on the private side of S.I. Newhouse Jr., he in the end focus on what is most seen of this most private of media moguls-- his media properties.
Maier uses the device of choosing figures and brands important to Newhouse history (Roy Cohn, Random House, Tina Brown, the New Yorker) and spending a chapter on each one, tracing their history in relation to both Newhouse and Advance Publications. While a good device for giving a thorough overview, be warned that it does make for a slightly disconnected read. I found that I had to flip back through the chapters to remember how events relating to particular chapters related to each other in time.
Nonetheless, one of the more complete media biographies you are likely to encounter and a must read if interested in magazine history.
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