The Man Who Owns the News: Inside the Secret World of Rupert Murdoch
By Michael Wolff
Why the world's most voracious media tycoon chose to reveal himself to the world's most abrasive media journalist isn't satisfyingly answered here, but that's not because nobody asks it. In interviews with everyone from News Corporation lieutenants to Murdoch's children, Wolff confronts bafflement at why this most self-effacing of moguls suddenly wants us all to get to know him. But get to know him we do, and while tales of his deal-crafting and political kingmaking reinforce the usual view of him as the Darth Vader of all media, it's hard not to be impressed by how he's beaten the odds not only by keeping a dynastic family business vital, but also by building it into an empire.
The Great Depression Ahead: How to Prosper in the Crash Following the Greatest Boom in History
By Harry S. Dent Jr.
Money manager Dent has made bold predictions in earlier books, earning him detractors who ridicule as simplistic his insistence that demographics drive economic cycles. But while his predilection for setting specific dates (his previous titles refer to bubble-driven booms ending in 2010) shows a tendency to shoot himself in the foot, he did predict the booms of the 1990s and the 2000s when others didn't. This time, Dent paints a gloomy like-Japan-in-the-1990s deflationary picture for the world, but offers survival strategies that the lean and liquid can use to stay afloat.
The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World
By Niall Ferguson
With previous books about great empires and wars, Harvard historian and Financial Times columnist Ferguson has marked himself as a man in love with big subjects. This tracing of the financial forces that have shaped everything from the Renaissance to the flooding of New Orleans after Katrina is both suitably big and more fun to read than it might've been in other hands. Given that he finished writing it in May, it also lacks the whiff of apocalypse that now hangs in the air. As such it's a worthwhile reminder that in the long term the trend has always been upward.