Overview

FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE SHOCKING NEW BOOK SHAKING US POLITICS: FIRE AND FURY, INSIDE THE TRUMP WHITEHOUSE A riveting, barnstorming, thrilling ride through the loud, lively and all-embracing world of the modern media conglomerates – its key deals, dealmakers, divas and delusions. The global media industry has never been more powerful. And there is no more astute, forthright and entertaining chronicler of this roller-coaster world than award-winning writer Michael Wolff. In ‘Autumn of the Moguls’, a funny, frank, and incendiary account that looks hard at the great characters of this media age – from homes and gardens empress Martha Stewart to Disney czar Michael Eisner – he has written the guide we all need to the media, a world that is often more entertaining than what it produces.

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9780007178834

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Reviews

'Apparently trivial, then segues into saying something original and profound about contemporary American society. He's fearless in a way you don't often find among hacks today, chopping away at the legs of the most powerful men and women of our era like a jungle scout with a machete. He's also very funny. When he's on top form, he's as good as Tom Wolfe.' Toby Young, Books of the Year, Observer 'Michael Wolff has been throwing custard pies at the rich and powerful since he was appointed New York magazine's media columnist in 1998. Autumn of the Moguls is his greatest hits!he's the Alexander Pope of the mogul set. If you had to have dinner with the most powerful journalists and businessmen in America -- and Wolff describes just such a ghastly occasion in Chapter 22 -- he's the man you'd want to sit next to.' Spectator ' Autumn of the Moguls makes the 1 per cent grade of business literature that transcend the dutifully competent or ambitiously inept. A stylish writer of enormous wit, Wolff chooses an epic theme and writes with an incisiveness which not only makes you laugh but also demonstrates truths about business remarkably well.' Observer 'You should read this book. It is funny and extremely clever.' New Statesman 'A slice of heaven!Wolff's talent is for taking a big idea and whacking it at you with added spin. Witty as well as hugely entertaining, provocative, sharp and spitefully funny. It is, most of all, a snapshot of an extraordinary time in the American media.' Guardian 'A hyperbolic and brilliantly truthful description of the creation of the media world!very funny.' Daily Telegraph 'Undeniably good.' Financial Times 'Clever, amusing, entertaining.' Sunday Telegraph

A media pundit delivers the unexciting news that big media is doomed-but does it with good humor. The chattering classes-a swath of Manhattan real estate that starts in Midtown and branches uptown into the Upper East and Upper West Sides-is almost by definition a world of inveterate gossips, snitches, and I-told-you-sos. In this self-important but ultimately silly world, Wolff (Burn Rate, 1998) is the biggest and (and often silliest) gossip of them all. Fortunately, he's an entertaining one. Wolff refreshingly makes no bones about being just as cruel and vindictive as the media in general, and he digs with great relish into the giants who have so thoroughly trashed the mediascape. He structures it all around a 2002 conference in which he was allowed to interview onstage (albeit via satellite) the titan of titans: Rupert Murdoch. But the conference-as well as an ongoing thread about the AOL Time Warner merger, which he calls the worst deal ever made -is really just a clothesline on which he can hang all his portraits of the moguls (or mediaists, as he calls them) he hasn't yet been able to squeeze into his New York magazine column. Mostly it comes down to who's really stupid and who's not. Murdoch and Barry Diller earn a generous amount of respect, but based mostly on the amount of fear they instill in the author. Tina Brown and Martha Stewart get piled on, FCC chair Michael Powell is called not just puffed up-at once both epicene and porcine, and Jean-Marie Messier . . . well, it's not pretty. Again, to be fair, Wolff slaps himself with the same hand that flips the finger at failing mediaists, describing himself as a gnat feeding on the carcass of the media industry. Sometimes petty, often inspired: a gleeful death knell for the media industry as we know it. (Kirkus Reviews)

Michael Wolff can certainly schmooze with the best of them. Throughout this hilarious, merciless dissection of America's media he manages to gain invites to some of Manhattan's most exclusive parties, rubbing shoulders with the rich and powerful. However, this is no sycophantic tribute: Woolf outlines the damaging consequences of corporate control of the media, and the concentration of power in just a few hands. Along the way, there are portraits of key figures such as Rupert Murdoch and Martha Stewart, and while Woolf is ultimately bleak about the future of journalism in such a profit-obsessed climate, his writing is anything but depressing. Indeed, his punchy, irreverent style invites obvious comparisons with Tom Wolfe. This extended paperback edition includes an interview with the author and, somewhat bizarrely, a list of his ten favourite books. (Kirkus UK)

Author Information

Michael Wolff is a US National Magazine Award winner and two-time nominee. He is the author of the US best-seller Burn Rate, amongst other books. His media journalism also appears regularly in the Guardian and New York magazine. He lives in New York City with his wife and three children.

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