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WAR AT THE WALL STREET JOURNAL By: Sarah Ellison
Inside the Struggle To Control an American Business Empire
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
June 2010
On Sale: June 7, 2010
304 pages ISBN: 0547152434 EAN: 9780547152431 Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
This is a tale about big business, an imploding dynasty, a mogul at war, and a deal that sums up an era of change. The main character, rocked by feuding factions and those who would remake it, is the Wall Street Journal, which affects the thoughts, votes, and stocks of two million readers daily. Sarah Ellison, while at the Journal, won praise for covering the $5 billion acquisition that transformed the pride of Dow Jones and the estimable but eccentric Bancroft family into the jewel of Rupert Murdochβs kingdom. Here she expands her work, using her knowledge of the paper and its people to go deep inside the landmark transaction, as no outsider has or can, and also far beyond it, into the rocky transition when Murdochβs crew tussled with old Journal hands and geared up for battle with the New York Times. With access to all the players, Ellison moves from newsrooms (where editors duel) to estates (where the Bancrofts go at it like the Ewings). She shows Murdoch, finally, for who he isβmaneuvering, firing, undoing all that the Bancrofts had protected. Here is a superlative account of a deal with reverberations beyond the news, told with the storytelling savvy that transforms big stories into timeless chronicles of American life and power.
 Media BuzzOn Point - July 19, 2011
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