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Autumn of the Moguls
My Misadventures with the Titans, Poseurs, and Money Guys Who Mastered and Messed Up Big Media
Michael Wolff
HARPER PERENNIAL
for Alison
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Prologue
Book ONE: Spring and Summer 2002
1 THE COMEDY
2 MY TABLE
3 LUNCH
4 THE POWERS THAT BE
5 THE PARTNER
6 MY THEORY
7 THE BALLAD OF JEAN-MARIE
8 IN THE SAME BOAT
9 BOB PITTMAN—A DIGRESSION
10 NOT GETTING IT
11 BARRY BUFFETT
12 AND THEN THERE WAS MURDOCH
Book TWO: Autumn
1 THE LIFE OF THE PARTY
2 AILES AND TRUMAN
3 MY DINNER WITH RUPERT
4 THE REHEARSAL
5 THE OTHER PANEL
6 THE FIRST DAY
7 THE MISSING (MEL AND SUMNER)
8 CHARLIE AND MICHAEL
9 MORE MICHAELS
10 KEN AND STEVE
11 MORE MICHAELS AND MORE DINNER
12 KURT AND HARVEY
13 TERRY, PETER, AND JEFF
14 THE MAN UP THERE
15 UNREAL PROPERTY
16 THE BIG EVENING
17 THE GUEST LIST
18 Martha
19 TINA
20 AND STILL MORE COCKTAILS
21 PINCH
22 THE FINAL DINNER
23 BARRY TRIUMPHANT—SORT OF
24 WALTER
EPILOGUE: WINTER AND SPRING
INDEX
Notes And Acknowledgments
About the Author
By the same author
P. S. Ideas interviews & features …
Copyright
About the Publisher
PROLOGUE
A flashback, already
On the tenth day of the new millennium, Bruce Judson, a former Time Inc.-er, left a long message on my machine. Judson, who had formerly been an assistant to various high-ranking Time Inc. ministers, was making a joke, which I only half listened to, about some meeting we had been at together.
Judson and I—with Time managing editor and future CNN chairman Walter Isaacson—had sat on a committee at Time Warner that had decided to recommend that the company not buy AOL in 1994. But why
