First-rate reporting on corporate savvy and greed and the ultimate cinematic escape.
An explosive exposé of a disgraced automotive-industry titan.
Wall Street Journal reporters Kostov and McLain meticulously probe the life and career of Carlos Ghosn (b. 1954), who was arrested in Tokyo for financial crimes in the fall of 2018. First, they lucidly depict the magnate’s early life as a scion of a prominent Lebanese Brazilian business family. Focused on academic success, Ghosn was an overachiever in grade school, and he replaced his legally troubled father as the “man of the house” with three sisters and a doting mother. Displaying a “swift problem-solving prowess,” Ghosn was a “social chameleon” who ascended the company ranks for nearly two decades at Michelin, maximizing his time with executives and treating it “like a management school.” In the mid-1990s, he flourished in upper management roles at Renault and Nissan, and an alliance between the two companies solidified his name as a premier global executive. Yet throughout his meteoric rise to prominence, Ghosn continuously felt undercompensated and began devising financial schemes to pay himself what he felt he deserved. Eventually, his crimes caught up to him, and he landed in a Tokyo prison. Kostov and McLain create a riveting narrative based on a trove of documentation and incriminating source material, including previously “untapped” legal documents, email transcripts, and interviews with corporate executives, friends, family, rivals, and Ghosn himself, whom, they note, was forthcoming with information—other than matters related to France, where he still faces criminal investigation. Fearing he was being persecuted without merit, Ghosn employed the assistance of a former Green Beret to mastermind a stealthy flight from custody in a box, making him an internationally wanted “celebrity fugitive” who fled Japan for Lebanon, where he remains today. This exciting, vividly detailed book explores a variety of relevant topics, including globalization, international business ethics, and how excessive wealth and fame have the potential to corrupt even the shrewdest businessperson.
First-rate reporting on corporate savvy and greed and the ultimate cinematic escape.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-063-04103-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Harper Business
Review Posted Online: July 29, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2022
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.
A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.
To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781982181284
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
