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Master of the Game: Steve Ross and the Creation of Time Warner
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.
395 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1994
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
November 12, 2017
I really enjoyed learning the back story on Warner Brothers in my lifetime. My friend Doris M. Ligon would have loved this one as well; it has combined the parking lot industry, the funereal business, the movie business, the music industry, and the mob into a modern business history. Steve Ross was the man. behind the creative minds of the music and movies.
August 2, 2022
A useful media company history book. Slightly dense to read.
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March 19, 2012Connie Bruck writes [about Steve Ross]:
Because he was a scholarship student, Ross was given the job of taking the younger children to Central Park each day; and the school's coach, noting his way with the children, asked him to be a counselor-in-training at a summer camp in Maine, Camp Kohut. Ross was given a bunk of five-year-olds. For Ross's young charges, he made all of life a game: they didn't walk to the mess hall, they go there by playing. In order to come out of their bunk, they had to guess in which hand Ross was holding a coin (he was already practices at sleight-of-hand); whoever guessed right was allowed to descend one step, and whoever got to the bottom of the steps first won.
One of Ross's campers, a difficult little boy who cried a great deal, was named Henry Jaglom. His parents seemed always to be traveling and missed the visiting days. That summer and the next (Ross again was Henry's counselor), when visiting days arrived, Henry would always guess the right hand and make it first to the bottom - and then, when his bunkmates were with their parents, he would set out for extended nature walks with Ross.
About thirty years later, introduced to Ross in a restaurant, Jaglom thought they were meeting for the first time. But Ross, upon hearing Jaglom's name, declared with a broad grim, "You were the one who gave me this grey hair." - and then recounted to Jaglom how his lucky streak had been arranged. Jaglom later said that he "felt something welling up in me as he told me what he had done. It was so extraordinarily kind. I remembered the feeling of soaring down those steps. I'm sure that that was the first taste of winning I ever had."
And:
Ross defies facile, conclusive analysis. For example, to say that he was incessantly manipulating to project a certain image is not to suggest that his generosity was all a sham. The limitless giving that became his hallmark in later years had started early, and in instances where it certainly had no public purpose. His daughter Toni recalled that when she was a little girl, Ross seemed "obsessed" with Christmas. "There were so many gifts, and you'd be opening and opening and opening presents, and you had to get them all opened before breakfast. And there were rules; certain ones had to be opened first, and then there were others, behind the tree, and you had to get to those last - it was exhausting!"
As she got older, Ross gave her "thousands and thousand and thousands of gifts." Finally, she had said, "No more." "He was a giving tree," she continued, "People needed things from him: that was his mind-set. He was stuck in that. That was the tragedy."
However murky the sources of some of Ross's behavior, this much is clear: he recreated himself in mythic proportions that were, by and large, untrue. The myth portrayed him as a man who was infinitely generous, loyal to the death, and who valued the well-being of his friends above his own - sacrificing himself for the good of others. But the truth was that his extraordinary generosity was funded to a great degree by the company; his loyalty, in many cases, endured as long as people were useful to him; and - driven by a compulsion to win - he tended to put his own interest ahead of others, in situations large and small.
Not only did Ross not sacrifice himself for the good of others, as did his putative soul mate, George Bailey, but the precise converse was true - even when it came to his best friend. He had, after all, sacrificed Jay Emmett to save himself.
Because he was a scholarship student, Ross was given the job of taking the younger children to Central Park each day; and the school's coach, noting his way with the children, asked him to be a counselor-in-training at a summer camp in Maine, Camp Kohut. Ross was given a bunk of five-year-olds. For Ross's young charges, he made all of life a game: they didn't walk to the mess hall, they go there by playing. In order to come out of their bunk, they had to guess in which hand Ross was holding a coin (he was already practices at sleight-of-hand); whoever guessed right was allowed to descend one step, and whoever got to the bottom of the steps first won.
One of Ross's campers, a difficult little boy who cried a great deal, was named Henry Jaglom. His parents seemed always to be traveling and missed the visiting days. That summer and the next (Ross again was Henry's counselor), when visiting days arrived, Henry would always guess the right hand and make it first to the bottom - and then, when his bunkmates were with their parents, he would set out for extended nature walks with Ross.
About thirty years later, introduced to Ross in a restaurant, Jaglom thought they were meeting for the first time. But Ross, upon hearing Jaglom's name, declared with a broad grim, "You were the one who gave me this grey hair." - and then recounted to Jaglom how his lucky streak had been arranged. Jaglom later said that he "felt something welling up in me as he told me what he had done. It was so extraordinarily kind. I remembered the feeling of soaring down those steps. I'm sure that that was the first taste of winning I ever had."
And:
Ross defies facile, conclusive analysis. For example, to say that he was incessantly manipulating to project a certain image is not to suggest that his generosity was all a sham. The limitless giving that became his hallmark in later years had started early, and in instances where it certainly had no public purpose. His daughter Toni recalled that when she was a little girl, Ross seemed "obsessed" with Christmas. "There were so many gifts, and you'd be opening and opening and opening presents, and you had to get them all opened before breakfast. And there were rules; certain ones had to be opened first, and then there were others, behind the tree, and you had to get to those last - it was exhausting!"
As she got older, Ross gave her "thousands and thousand and thousands of gifts." Finally, she had said, "No more." "He was a giving tree," she continued, "People needed things from him: that was his mind-set. He was stuck in that. That was the tragedy."
However murky the sources of some of Ross's behavior, this much is clear: he recreated himself in mythic proportions that were, by and large, untrue. The myth portrayed him as a man who was infinitely generous, loyal to the death, and who valued the well-being of his friends above his own - sacrificing himself for the good of others. But the truth was that his extraordinary generosity was funded to a great degree by the company; his loyalty, in many cases, endured as long as people were useful to him; and - driven by a compulsion to win - he tended to put his own interest ahead of others, in situations large and small.
Not only did Ross not sacrifice himself for the good of others, as did his putative soul mate, George Bailey, but the precise converse was true - even when it came to his best friend. He had, after all, sacrificed Jay Emmett to save himself.
January 6, 2012
I got this as an attempt to understand the transformation of Kinney Service Corp to Warner Communication. It has some data on that, but not that much. However, what I read was good enough, as it's more about Steven Ross and his art of the deal. Charisma and moxie are what kept him in the same job for over 30 years. The free-spending Ross would probably frighten most corporations these days (not to mention some of his less savory associates). Book seems fairly accurate.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 5, 2011
OK book on Steve Ross, his rise and creation of Time Warner. A few tidbits to learn on the relationships between content, distribution and platform businesses. Giving it 3 stars because I bought the book to learn about Steve's business career, however the book spends a lot of time on the lawsuits and investigations around him and Time Warner.
October 31, 2014
Connie Bruck does a good job on the research about one of America's famous CEOs. I think at times the research gets too dense, but does present a fascinating portrait of Steve Ross and his creation of Time Warner. Good insight into the financial genius and charisma of Ross.
May 10, 2015
I was unable to finish this book. Extremely boring, almost nothing about business or the way he built the company, but a lot of details about lawsuits the company went through.
March 13, 2017
This book explains how the big media companies were put together. Not pretty.
February 3, 2009
Excellent as these kind of books go. Lets outrageous facts speak for themselves.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews