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

**Award-winning journalist Connie Bruck’s biography of media mogul Steve Ross captures the highs and lows of Ross’s career in a narrative “as fast-paced as the life it depicts” (__Publishers Weekly__).** Born to Jewish immigrant parents in 1920s Brooklyn, Steven Jay Rechnitz would become an unstoppable force in the world of business, a figure both revered and reviled by those who knew him. His early ventures—a limousine rental service operated under the auspices of his father-in-law’s Manhattan funeral home and a parking lot company whose co-owners harbored dubious connections to the criminal underworld—inspired a taste for substantial risk that was outpaced only by Ross’s success in turning that risk into profit. In a career that spanned both Wall Street and Hollywood, Ross’s mastery of obfuscation, deflection, denial, and his imaginative approach to the law finally culminated in the empire he had long craved: Time Warner, the largest media and entertainment company in the world. Extraordinary in its depth of coverage, startling in its frankness, __Master of the Game__ is a riveting journey through the mind and career of a man who was by turns flamboyant, charismatic, and completely outrageous—an unstoppable force in the pursuit of an outsized dream. From the best-selling author of The Predators' Ball comes the story of the most flamboyant businessman and dealmaker of his generation, Steve Ross. When 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. In 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 outsmarted his rivals. Ross used whateveror 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. While 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. The 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. Connie Bruck. Includes Bibliographical References (p. [367]-369) And Index. New York Times Book Review Notable Books Of The Year Business Week Best Business Books