With a supporting cast of well-known literary names around him, Newhouse is the king of New York’s cultural world today—as owner of Random House, the nation’s largest book publishing empire; publisher of such influential magazines as "The New Yorker," "Vanity Fair," "Vogue," and "Wired;" and by controlling dozens of other newspapers, magazines, and cable television franchises in the United States and around the world. Author Thomas Maier examines the rags-to-riches saga of the Newhouse family and how they built a privately-held empire estimated at $13 billion. He tells the personal story of how "Si" Newhouse emerged from the shadow of his demanding father to expand the family fortune further than anyone ever imagined, with his mercurial "off-with-their-heads" management style. This unauthorized investigative biography explores Newhouse’s reliance on his long-time friend Roy Cohn, a lawyer for the Mafia and a confidant to top politicians, and how the family managed to beat the IRS in a $1 billion tax battle. Like a message in a time bottle, "Newhouse" describes our celebrity-driven media age, a real-life allegory for the 1990s when communications giants like Newhouse’s Advance Publications, Inc., gobbled up everything in sight. This book raises strong warnings about a media monopoly in America, controlled by a handful of powerful men like Si Newhouse, and underlines the serious ways in which journalism has been transformed.