Murdoch: Revised and Updated

Admire or fear him, you can't ignore Rupert Murdoch. Chances are, no matter where you are, he influences your life through his newspapers, magazines or TV network. He is perhaps the world's most successful businessman, a baron of the global village - and his power is growing every day. The story of his success, as told by William Shawcross in this already controversial biography, is the business story of the decade. In a brief time, Murdoch has transformed himself from the owner of a single newspaper in an Australian backwater to the titan of News, one of the world's largest, most sophisticated communications empires. Of the six international media giants (Time Warner, Sony, Bertelsmann, Berlusconi, Disney and News), only News is owned and controlled by one man. Only News stretches completely around the earth. And only News has Murdoch, the tycoon whose life has been, in the words of Shawcross, "an unending assault upon the world...a series of interlocking wars." Shawcross shows how Murdoch, perhaps more than any of the other media czars, recognized the enormous possibilities of the new age of communications and put the vision into bold action. For the first time, it is clear how Murdoch advanced up the ladder of influence, acquiring newspapers (including the Times of London, the New York Post and the Chicago Sun-Times), always buying and trading for more power. We follow Murdoch from his beginnings in print journalism to space (as he moves to surpass Ted Turner's position in satellite news) and back down to earth, where he has consolidated his reputation for toughness by playing hardball with the London unions and beating Manhattan's magazine magnates at their own game of buy and sell. Shawcross shows how Murdoch - pragmatic and merciless, though perhaps no more so than his adversaries - managed without fail to extend his reach, finally landing in Hollywood, capital of world entertainment. There, despite the predictions of skeptics and experts, he presided ove

Publishers Weekly

For this unauthorized biography of media baron Rupert Murdoch, a ``uniquely important'' information broker whose life has been ``an unending assault upon the world,'' Shawcross ( Sideshow ) had privileged access to Murdoch, to his colleagues and family. The result is a mostly nonjudgmental, flat profile of a driven, often ruthless, lonely man of ``invincible energy and ambition'' who put together a communications empire stretching from Australia to London to New York, Chicago and Hollywood. Shawcross perceives ``a certain dour puritanism'' in the king of sensationalist tabloid journalism. Murdoch's life was a series of takeovers, wins and losses that included the acquisitions of the New York Post, the London Times , Fox film and television, and HarperCollins publishers. Murdoch, an ardent supporter of Reaganism and Thatcherism, viewed himself as ``totally internationalist'' and saw his media empire as instrumental in promoting the Americanization of the world, but Shawcross fails to explore the implications of that prospect. Photos. Author tour. (Feb.)