During the 1980s, Michael Milken at Drexel Burnham Lambert was the Billionaire Junk Bond King. He invented such things as “the highly confident letter” (I’m highly confident that I can raise the money you need to buy company X) and “the blind pool” (Here’s a billion dollars: let us help you buy a company), and he financed the biggest corporate raiders—men like Carl Icahn and Ronald Perelman. And then, on September 7, 1988, things changed. The Securities and Exchange Commission charged Milken and Drexel Burnham Lambert with insider trading and stock fraud. Waiting in the wings was the US District Attorney, who wanted to file criminal and racketeering charges. What motivated Milken in his drive for power and money? Did Drexel Burnham Lambert condone the breaking of laws? The Predators’ Ball dramatically captures American business history in the making, uncovering the philosophy of greed that has dominated Wall Street in the 1980s.

The Predators' Ball: The Inside Story of Drexel Burnham and the Rise of the JunkBond Raiders

Biographies & Memoirs

Bruck, Connie

Professionals & Academics

Penguin??Books

In a career that began in Brooklyn and spanned Wall Street, Hollywood, and the Mafia, Ross built his father-in-law's funeral business and a parking lot company into Time Warner, the largest media and entertainment company in the world. Hard-hitting and compulsive reading, this book takes you into the heart of what made this arrogant yet irresistible man tick.

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

When Hollywood Had a King: The Reign of Lew Wasserman, Who Leveraged Talent into Power and Influence

In When Hollywood Had a King, the distinguished journalist Connie Bruck tells the sweeping story of MCA and its brilliant leader, a man who transformed the entertainment industry— businessman, politician, tactician, and visionary Lew Wasserman. The Music Corporation of America was founded in Chicago in 1924 by Dr. Jules Stein, an ophthalmologist with a gift for booking bands. Twelve years later, Stein moved his operations west to Beverly Hills and hired Lew Wasserman. From his meager beginnings as a movie-theater usher in Cleveland, Wasserman ultimately ascended to the post of president of MCA, and the company became the most powerful force in Hollywood, regarded with a mixture of fear and awe. In his signature black suit and black knit tie, Was-serman took Hollywood by storm. He shifted the balance of power from the studios—which had seven-year contractual strangleholds on the stars—to the talent, who became profit partners. When an antitrust suit forced MCA’s evolution from talent agency to film- and television-production company, it was Wasserman who parlayed the control of a wide variety of entertainment and media products into a new type of Hollywood power base. There was only Washington left to conquer, and conquer it Wasserman did, quietly brokering alliances with Democratic and Republican administrations alike. That Wasserman’s reach extended from the underworld to the White House only added to his mystique. Among his friends were Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa, mob lawyer Sidney Korshak, and gangster Moe Dalitz—along with Presidents Johnson, Clinton, and especially Reagan, who enjoyed a particularly close and mutually beneficial relationship with Wasserman. He was equally intimate with Hollywood royalty, from Bette Davis and Jimmy Stewart to Steven Spielberg, who began his career at MCA and once described Wasserman’s eyeglasses as looking like two giant movie screens. The history of MCA is really the history of a revolution. Lew Wasserman ushered in the Hollywood we know today. He is the link between the old-school moguls with their ironclad studio contracts and the new industry defined by multimedia conglomerates, power agents, multimillionaire actors, and profit sharing. In the hands of Connie Bruck, the story of Lew Wasserman’s rise to power takes on an almost Shakespearean scope. When Hollywood Had a King reveals the industry’s greatest untold story: how a stealthy, enterprising power broker became, for a time, Tinseltown’s absolute monarch.

Random House]

The biography of American businessman Steve Ross, who declares to have learned his greatest business lessons while working in a funeral home. Ross later engineered the merger of Warner Communications and Time Inc. into the largest media and entertainment conglomerate in the world. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

Master of the Game

Simon&Schuster

Arts & Literature

Random House Publishing Group

When Hollywood Had a King: The Reign of Lew Wasserman, Who Leveraged Talent into Power And Influence

A history of the Music Corporation of America traces the entertainment giant from its founding in 1924, through its rise to become the most powerful force in the film world under the visionary leadership of Lew Wasserman.

History

New Millenium Audio

A history of the Music Corporation of America traces the entertainment giant from its founding in 1924, through its rise to become the most powerful force in the film world under the visionary leadership of Lew Wasserman.

Literature & Fiction

New Millennium Audio

“Connie Bruck traces the rise of this empire with vivid metaphors and with a smooth command of high finance’s terminology.” —The New York Times\n“The Predators’ Ball is dirty dancing downtown.” —New York Newsday\nFrom bestselling author Connie Bruck,The Predators’ Ball dramatically captures American business history in the making, uncovering the philosophy of greed that dominated Wall Street in the 1980s.\nDuring the 1980s, Michael Milken at Drexel Burnham Lambert was the Billionaire Junk Bond King. He invented such things as “the highly confident letter” (“I’m highly confident that I can raise the money you need to buy company X”) and the “blind pool” (“Here’s a billion dollars: let us help you buy a company”), and he financed the biggest corporate raiders—men like Carl Icahn and Ronald Perelman. And then, on September 7, 1988, things changed...\nThe Securities and Exchange Commission charged Milken and Drexel Burnham Lambert with insider trading and stock fraud. Waiting in the wings was the US District Attorney, who wanted to file criminal and racketeering charges.\nWhat motivated Milken in his drive for power and money? Did Drexel Burnham Lambert condone the breaking of laws?

The Predators' Ball: The Inside Story of Drexel Burnham and the Rise of the Junk Bond Raiders

Business & Money

Biography & History

From the bestselling author of The Predators’ Ball comes the story of the most flamboyant businessman and dealmaker of his generation, Steve Ross.\nWhen Steven Spielberg first heard Steve Ross tell his life story, it was such a dramatic rags-to-riches narrative that he thought it was a movie. In a career that started in Brooklyn and spanned Wall Street, Hollywood, and the Mafia, Steve Ross took his father-in-law’s funeral business and a parking lot company and grew them into the largest media and entertainment company in the world, Time Warner.\nIn the upper strata of American business that Ross reached before his death, he was an anomaly. Outrageous, glamorous, charismatic, he presided over an enterprise that was more medieval fiefdom than corporate bureaucracy. He negotiated his enormous and complicated deals, from movies and records to cable and publishing, with shrewdness and brilliance. He rewarded his favorite aides and sidekicks extravagantly; he courted Hollywood stars like Barbra Streisand and Steven Spielberg with luxurious gifts; he charmed and out-smarted his rivals. Ross used whatever—or whomever—it took to romance someone into making a deal. He saved himself and let his best friend, Jay Emmett, take the fall in the government’s Westchester Premier Theatre investigation. White Atari was hemorrhaging money in the early ‘80s, Ross announced a stock buy-in to boost the price, and then sold off his own stock for a gross of more than $20 million before announcing the company’s failure.\nThe principles upon which Ross built his domain would not be taught in any business school, and many of his peers were convinced that Ross’s ways would lead to his, and his company’s, undoing. But it was those very attributes—combined with mathematical wizardry and vision (or what one friend called “the ability to see around corners”)—that enabled Ross to best most adversaries, outnegotiate every dealmaker, confound his critics, and ultimately create the Time Warner empire.

Master of the Game: How Steve Ross Rode the Light Fantastic from Undertaker to Creator of the Largest Media Conglomerate in the World

Humor & Entertainment

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Bruck, Connie. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Bruck, Connie

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Bruck, Connie. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Predators' Ball: The Inside Story of Drexel Burnham and the Rise of the JunkBond Raiders

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

When Hollywood Had a King: The Reign of Lew Wasserman, Who Leveraged Talent into Power and Influence

Master of the Game

When Hollywood Had a King: The Reign of Lew Wasserman, Who Leveraged Talent into Power and Influence

When Hollywood Had a King: The Reign of Lew Wasserman, Who Leveraged Talent into Power and Influence

When Hollywood Had a King: The Reign of Lew Wasserman, Who Leveraged Talent into Power And Influence

The Predators' Ball: The Inside Story of Drexel Burnham and the Rise of the Junk Bond Raiders

Master of the Game: How Steve Ross Rode the Light Fantastic from Undertaker to Creator of the Largest Media Conglomerate in the World