The Man Who Owns the News: Inside the Secret World of Rupert Murdoch [Hardcover]

The definitive, exclusive-access account of the life and career of Rupert Murdoch - one of the most powerful, unusual, controversial, menacing, and captivating figures of our age.

In a career spanning four decades Rupert Murdoch has built News International into a $70 billion corporation. Through a series of breathtaking gambles he expanded from his base in the Australian newspaper business to achieve a preeminent position in the UK's media, and to control a huge slice of Hollywood. Increasingly his company has built a presence in online and digital media, most recently through its acquisition of MySpace, and he is steadily expanding into Southeast Asia. But Murdoch is more than a predatory and merciless deal-maker. His company does not only generate dizzying profits and growth rates. His company generates the information that forms our understanding of the world. He presides over what we read, what we watch, what we come to believe about ourselves, to an extent that is without serious parallel anywhere on earth. In the words of Michael Wolff, Murdoch 'held more power over more time than any other contemporary figure'. Working with unrivalled access to Murdoch himself, his family, and his inner circle of advisors, Wolff shows how Murdoch came to wield this power and the uses he has made of it. Murdoch has become almost invisible behind the strong emotions he provokes. Now Wolff's account reveals the qualities that took Murdoch to the top of the world and have kept him there. In doing so he tells a business story that is also the story of a man’s life, and the story of our times.

Michael Wolff is a contributing editor and columnist for Vanity Fair, and a National Magazine Award winner and two-time nominee. His weekly column in New York Magazine, 'This Media Life', was one of the most influential commentaries about the media industry. He is the author of the best-selling Burn Rate, and of the books White Kids, Where We Stand - which became a multipart PBS series - and most recently, Autumn of the Moguls. He is a frequent guest commentator on a range of national news shows, and his journalism appears regularly in the Guardian.