What do you think?
Rate this book
Fools Rush In: Steve Case, Jerry Levin, and the Unmaking of AOL Time Warner
On Monday, January 10, 2000, America Online announced that it was buying Time Warner for $163 billion. The news was crazy, incredible. The biggest merger ever, it was, according to the media, an "awesome megadeal" and "a fusion of guts and glory." It was "the deal of the century" and "a mega-marriage of earth and cyberspace." An Internet upstart, AOL was buying the world's most powerful media and entertainment company. "A company that isn't old enough to buy beer," marveled the Wall Street Journal, "has essentially swallowed an ancien régime media conglomerate that took most of a century to construct."
Two years later, after the smoke had cleared, $200 billion of shareholder value had vanished into cyberspace. On the trail of possible fraud, the SEC and the Justice Department started investigating AOL Time Warner's accounting practices. Meanwhile, a civil war had broken out inside the company, complete with backstabbing and personal betrayals. Before long, almost every major player was out of the company, discredited, and humiliated. Jerry Levin, Time Warner's "resident genius," lost his job, lost his reputation, and, in the view of some people, simply "lost it." Steve Case, the visionary leader of AOL, was forced out of the company he had created. Gone too was the telegenic wonder-boy Bob Pittman, and his gang of fast-talking salesmen. As for Ted Turner, he resigned from his post as vice-chairman of AOL Time Warner in early 2003, bitter, wiser, and $8.5 billion poorer.
Fools Rush In is the definitive account of one of the greatest fiascos in the history of corporate America. In a narrative fraught with drama, Nina Munk reveals the overweening ambition and moral posturing that brought down the Deal of the Century. With painstaking reporting and the remarkable eye for detail she's known for, Munk lays out, step by step, the anatomy of a debacle. Irreverent, witty, and iconoclastic, she sees through it all brilliantly.
"As in all great Greek tragedies, you knew the plot before it played out," one perceptive insider told Munk on the subject of the AOL Time Warner deal; "you knew who'd be sacrificed at the altar." Here's what we discover in Fools Rush In: In their single-minded quest for power, Steve Case and Jerry Levin were at each other's throats even before the deal was announced. Bob Pittman was regarded as a "windup CEO" by Case, and viewed as a hustler by just about everyone at Time Warner. Ted Turner underestimated Jerry Levin's ruthlessness badly. And Levin himself, convinced he was creating a great legacy comparable to that of Time Inc.'s founder, Henry Luce, refused to acknowledge the obvious: that, with a remarkable sense of timing, Steve Case had used grossly inflated Internet paper to buy Time Warner.
Two years later, after the smoke had cleared, $200 billion of shareholder value had vanished into cyberspace. On the trail of possible fraud, the SEC and the Justice Department started investigating AOL Time Warner's accounting practices. Meanwhile, a civil war had broken out inside the company, complete with backstabbing and personal betrayals. Before long, almost every major player was out of the company, discredited, and humiliated. Jerry Levin, Time Warner's "resident genius," lost his job, lost his reputation, and, in the view of some people, simply "lost it." Steve Case, the visionary leader of AOL, was forced out of the company he had created. Gone too was the telegenic wonder-boy Bob Pittman, and his gang of fast-talking salesmen. As for Ted Turner, he resigned from his post as vice-chairman of AOL Time Warner in early 2003, bitter, wiser, and $8.5 billion poorer.
Fools Rush In is the definitive account of one of the greatest fiascos in the history of corporate America. In a narrative fraught with drama, Nina Munk reveals the overweening ambition and moral posturing that brought down the Deal of the Century. With painstaking reporting and the remarkable eye for detail she's known for, Munk lays out, step by step, the anatomy of a debacle. Irreverent, witty, and iconoclastic, she sees through it all brilliantly.
"As in all great Greek tragedies, you knew the plot before it played out," one perceptive insider told Munk on the subject of the AOL Time Warner deal; "you knew who'd be sacrificed at the altar." Here's what we discover in Fools Rush In: In their single-minded quest for power, Steve Case and Jerry Levin were at each other's throats even before the deal was announced. Bob Pittman was regarded as a "windup CEO" by Case, and viewed as a hustler by just about everyone at Time Warner. Ted Turner underestimated Jerry Levin's ruthlessness badly. And Levin himself, convinced he was creating a great legacy comparable to that of Time Inc.'s founder, Henry Luce, refused to acknowledge the obvious: that, with a remarkable sense of timing, Steve Case had used grossly inflated Internet paper to buy Time Warner.
340 pages, Hardcover
First published January 6, 2004
18 people are currently reading
238 people want to read
About the author
Nina Munk
9 books27 followersNina Munk is a journalist and author whose articles have appeared in The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Fortune, The New York Times, and other publications. She is the author or co-author of four books, include
The Idealist Jeffrey Sachs and the Quest to End Poverty
and
Fools Rush In: Steve Case Jerry Levin and the Unmaking of AOL Time Warner
. She is also the editor of
How it Happened: Documenting the Tragedy of Hungarian Jewry
. Nina is working on a new book to be published by Alfred A. Knopf, a work of narrative nonfiction about her family during the Holocaust in Hungary.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
November 25, 2013
Really enjoyed learning a lot about AOL's impact on the DC/Northern Virginia area. Particularly of interest is the year (1999?) when all the AOL employees went from driving Toyota clunkers to being 1100 millionaires in Dulles, VA.
I realized only by reading this book that all the dot-com "funny money" ended up at AOL as real, booked money. Startups turned their IPO money into "exclusive" advertising deals to be the sole XXXX in AOL's walled garden. This was made easier by AOL's cavalier commitment to said "exclusivity." AOL's valuation made sense at least to the extent that the millions of dollars it was making was real money...it just all disappeared once the IPO faucet shut off in 2000...leading to AOL's funny practices of trying to show the music was still playing when it was doomed. That part is not so good.
One has to admire the foresight of Steve Case to realize the risk (certainty?) that AOL shares were wildly overvalued--and to turn them into stuff of real value by turning them into shares of Time Warner.
I realized only by reading this book that all the dot-com "funny money" ended up at AOL as real, booked money. Startups turned their IPO money into "exclusive" advertising deals to be the sole XXXX in AOL's walled garden. This was made easier by AOL's cavalier commitment to said "exclusivity." AOL's valuation made sense at least to the extent that the millions of dollars it was making was real money...it just all disappeared once the IPO faucet shut off in 2000...leading to AOL's funny practices of trying to show the music was still playing when it was doomed. That part is not so good.
One has to admire the foresight of Steve Case to realize the risk (certainty?) that AOL shares were wildly overvalued--and to turn them into stuff of real value by turning them into shares of Time Warner.
April 17, 2013
This book illustrates essentially the play-by-play lesson of how NOT to conduct a merger. Zero due diligence, a complete absence of transparency to even senior executives, no collar on the deal...the list goes on. I read this for pleasure during my Mergers and Acquisitons class for my MBA and all the things we talked about in class were summarily skipped during this deal. Mergers orders of magnitude smaller than this take MONTHS to sort out. Steve Case (AOL) and Jerry Levin (Time Warner) ordered it done in a weekend. This thing was doomed from the start.
As for the storytelling, Nina Munk does an EXCELLENT job of describing the events in a narrative type fashion. I didn't find this book dry in the least, a "feature" endemic in many of the business books I've read. She adequately describes the details without getting bogged down in the minutiae of the facts. Well worth the read.
As for the storytelling, Nina Munk does an EXCELLENT job of describing the events in a narrative type fashion. I didn't find this book dry in the least, a "feature" endemic in many of the business books I've read. She adequately describes the details without getting bogged down in the minutiae of the facts. Well worth the read.
August 21, 2009
If you remember the advent of the internet and the internet stock bubble and enjoy business histories, this book should be of interest to you. I enjoyed learning about the histories of Time Warner and AOL and their business strategies as the internet became a dominant force. After the histories and culture of both companies are explored, the story behind the merger is recounted. You can almost predict what happens when a high flying new internet company is merged with a staid entertainment conglomerate with both companies run by men with big egos. The culture clash is made even worse when the stock of the acquiring company crashes as the internet bubble bursts. During this time, many companies struggled to adapt to the rise of the internet and made very bad decisions based upon inflated stock prices and Wall Street earnings expectations.
August 4, 2011
This book brought an interesting perspective for me, having been an AOL employee during the AOL-Time Warner merger. At Netscape, and later at iPlanet, I was mostly insulated from all the politics of the merger. It was crazy for me reading this book and learning just how badly the company was falling apart during 2001, shortly before I was laid off. Reading about all the top level managers who sold hundreds of millions of dollars in AOL stock just before the company tanked was disheartening, to say the least. The book was occasionally entertaining, but mostly it's just a sad tale of a bunch of misguided idiots who briefly ruled the world... just long enough to make it a far worse place.
March 30, 2013
A should-read company profile for knowledge workers, managers, directors, C-levels, and entrepreneurs.
August 20, 2019
How to turn $200-billion into a "mess of porridge"
This is an infectious read. The book itself is beautifully presented and Nina Munk writes like an angel. Well, if you're not Jerry Levin, et al., she does. She has a knack for making the words flow and the personalities as vivid as the sights of childhood. Her hard-edged but clean and crisp style will be widely imitated I predict. Her ability to research and to sift through the results of that research and to lay it all out in such an intriguing way is something close to amazing. I really don't give two hoots about Steve Case, Jerry Levin, the old Luce culture ("I am biased in favor of God, Eisenhower and the stockholders," p. 7), the Warner Bros. legacy (sleazy ethics and "foul tongues" and rumored "Mafia connections," p. 35), the dot com upstarts ("You people really need to start moving at Internet speed," p. 231), etc., but Munk makes it fascinating, like egomaniacs twisting in the wind, so to speak.
But this story isn't just about AOL Time Warner but about corporate America in general, about how merger mania and golden parachuted moguls can play fast and loose with our money, our livelihood, our country, and our future. It's about the collateral damage, the megalomania, the broken hearts and the evaporated portfolios. It's about the mentality of corporate CEOs like Levin who as he turned sixty wanted to be remembered for something other than the bottom line, "for integrity...high moral principles; and wisdom." (p. 133) Ah, yes, a lifetime of chasing money and power and now True Religion. One is reminded of Bill Gates with the very demanding problem of how to distribute all that money wisely before he dies.
Munk knows these people. How she got them to be so carelessly candid at times amazes me, especially her work with Levin. She understands their psychology and to some significant extent, their business. She had to, to write this book and make it work. She packs the text with spiffy and sometimes all too revealing quotes. She has the heart of a baggy-eyed scholar and the soul of a muckraker. The almost surrealistic give and take between Case and Levin as they cooked The Deal reads like something out of a Hollywood movie. Whose ego, whose sense of personal power, and imagined historical accomplishment and brilliance needed massaging the most by whom? And who would steal more from the other? And the ease with which Salomon Smith Barney and Morgan Stanley each got $60-million for their part in the deal reads like tales of manna falling from heaven.
There are some black and white photos in the middle of the book. The test is exquisitely edited and proofed, and the book handsomely designed. Munk ends this "morality play," as she calls it, with a curtain call of the cast of characters in an epilogue and brings us up to date on what has happened to them and what they're doing now.
Incidentally, my subject-line quote about a "mess of porridge" is from Robert Murdoch, no doubt licking his chops. (p. 280)
Bottom line: you will be kept up at night reading this page turner. Better yet take it on that trip to Singapore. It's a jet-lag killer.
--Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is”
This is an infectious read. The book itself is beautifully presented and Nina Munk writes like an angel. Well, if you're not Jerry Levin, et al., she does. She has a knack for making the words flow and the personalities as vivid as the sights of childhood. Her hard-edged but clean and crisp style will be widely imitated I predict. Her ability to research and to sift through the results of that research and to lay it all out in such an intriguing way is something close to amazing. I really don't give two hoots about Steve Case, Jerry Levin, the old Luce culture ("I am biased in favor of God, Eisenhower and the stockholders," p. 7), the Warner Bros. legacy (sleazy ethics and "foul tongues" and rumored "Mafia connections," p. 35), the dot com upstarts ("You people really need to start moving at Internet speed," p. 231), etc., but Munk makes it fascinating, like egomaniacs twisting in the wind, so to speak.
But this story isn't just about AOL Time Warner but about corporate America in general, about how merger mania and golden parachuted moguls can play fast and loose with our money, our livelihood, our country, and our future. It's about the collateral damage, the megalomania, the broken hearts and the evaporated portfolios. It's about the mentality of corporate CEOs like Levin who as he turned sixty wanted to be remembered for something other than the bottom line, "for integrity...high moral principles; and wisdom." (p. 133) Ah, yes, a lifetime of chasing money and power and now True Religion. One is reminded of Bill Gates with the very demanding problem of how to distribute all that money wisely before he dies.
Munk knows these people. How she got them to be so carelessly candid at times amazes me, especially her work with Levin. She understands their psychology and to some significant extent, their business. She had to, to write this book and make it work. She packs the text with spiffy and sometimes all too revealing quotes. She has the heart of a baggy-eyed scholar and the soul of a muckraker. The almost surrealistic give and take between Case and Levin as they cooked The Deal reads like something out of a Hollywood movie. Whose ego, whose sense of personal power, and imagined historical accomplishment and brilliance needed massaging the most by whom? And who would steal more from the other? And the ease with which Salomon Smith Barney and Morgan Stanley each got $60-million for their part in the deal reads like tales of manna falling from heaven.
There are some black and white photos in the middle of the book. The test is exquisitely edited and proofed, and the book handsomely designed. Munk ends this "morality play," as she calls it, with a curtain call of the cast of characters in an epilogue and brings us up to date on what has happened to them and what they're doing now.
Incidentally, my subject-line quote about a "mess of porridge" is from Robert Murdoch, no doubt licking his chops. (p. 280)
Bottom line: you will be kept up at night reading this page turner. Better yet take it on that trip to Singapore. It's a jet-lag killer.
--Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is”
December 26, 2025
A great and deeply detailed account of the rise—and transformation—of AOL Time Warner.
The book traces the origins of Time, the formation of Time Warner, and the turbulent AOL Time Warner era. It offers rich insight into the people, politics, and insider dynamics behind one of the world’s most powerful media empires—from Jerry Levin, Steve Case, and Ted Turner to the evolution of Time, HBO, CNN, Warner, and America Online. I learned an immense amount about how ambition, culture clashes, and corporate power shaped this historic merger.
The book traces the origins of Time, the formation of Time Warner, and the turbulent AOL Time Warner era. It offers rich insight into the people, politics, and insider dynamics behind one of the world’s most powerful media empires—from Jerry Levin, Steve Case, and Ted Turner to the evolution of Time, HBO, CNN, Warner, and America Online. I learned an immense amount about how ambition, culture clashes, and corporate power shaped this historic merger.
March 17, 2025
“…Ross seduced everyone he met. ‘I learned about people in the funeral business,’ he told Connie Bruck, whose 1994 book, Master of the Game, recounts Ross’s ascent from Flatbush to the top of the entertainment world. ‘It’s a service business. You service people in an emotional time—you learn about their needs, their feelings.’”
November 15, 2025
Such a well researched book - interesting topic but beyond that, the author really knew the players in the story and had researched them incredibly well. This tells more than the AOL story - it reminds us of the wild, wild internet west and some of the characters who made it what it is today. "You've got mail" will forever be in my head as a Generation Xer. This book was a blast from the past.
December 11, 2022
Interesting tale of the first tech bubble when AOL used its inflated share price to buy into more-grounded “old media” assets. There was certainly some shady accounting going on within AOL but no one forced Time Warner to take the deal.
October 25, 2020
It was an interesting read.
January 26, 2021
Good book about the AOL/Time Warner deal, and all of the idiocy involved. But somehow, they went 300 pages and never mentioned that it led to the demise of WCW Monday Nitro? Huge oversight.
January 20, 2025
Really good read. Very well reported and an interesting business story.
December 19, 2025
Amazing!
January 10, 2011
An excellent book that goes through, systemically, the major players and the general forces at work that caused the collapse of the world's largest media company.
It gives a compelling version of events and several theories and factors that resulted in the disaster that became AOL Time Warner and its imploding stock price. Also, as a narrative encompassing the boom and bust of the technology bubble, as well as Wall Street culture and problems in the late 90s and early 2000's, the book not only succeeds, but comes across even-handed and avoiding histrionics.
A well-written, easy to read, enjoyable work about people, companies and the fate of a disastrous merger.
It gives a compelling version of events and several theories and factors that resulted in the disaster that became AOL Time Warner and its imploding stock price. Also, as a narrative encompassing the boom and bust of the technology bubble, as well as Wall Street culture and problems in the late 90s and early 2000's, the book not only succeeds, but comes across even-handed and avoiding histrionics.
A well-written, easy to read, enjoyable work about people, companies and the fate of a disastrous merger.
August 16, 2007
Of particular interest to me because of my time at AOL and AT&T. Total corporate soap-opera, probably pretty boring for non-telecom people...
October 3, 2007
Great book about the AOL/Time Warner merger.
July 24, 2009
The book is written by a journalist and the book has very much a journalistic feel to it. The book reads like a newspaper article that just happens to be 200 pages long.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews