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 Yorkerstaff 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
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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