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Testosterone Inc.
Book

Testosterone Inc.

Tales of CEOs Gone Wild

Wiley, 2004 подробнее...

автоматическое преобразование текста в аудио
автоматическое преобразование текста в аудио

Editorial Rating

7

Qualities

  • Innovative
  • Eye Opening
  • Background

Recommendation

As author Christopher Byron analyzes the ambitions of four celebrity CEOs as manifestations of excess testosterone, he delivers an diverting voyeuristic caper. Byron gossips through the childhood brawls, brutish first marriages, boss-man bullying and late-night womanizing of four famous 1990s-bull market CEOs. He uses pop-psych suppositions to explain GE’s Jack Welch (who gets the most ink), Tyco’s Dennis Kozlowski, Sunbeam’s "Chainsaw" Al Dunlap and Revlon’s Ron Perelman. What drove these headline-hugging CEOs to jeopardize their legacies with lavish lifestyles, high profile adultery, corporate looting and financial chicanery? "The answer lies not in the stars but in their skivvies," says Byron. He insists that insatiable, uncontrollable appetites for power, sex and money drove these men to victory and ruin, fueled by impoverished childhoods, poison parents and thirst for attention. Though Byron cites 90 interviews and some 15,000 documents - divorce filings, police records, court records, financial statements and SEC documents - none of those profiled agreed to an interview. But if his one-sided, unauthorized profiles may lack some essentials, such as fairness, objectivity and, perhaps, even contextual accuracy, they entertain with heavily-footnoted factoids, arrayed with verve, voyeurism and smarmy commentary. getAbstract offers this as nothing more than an entertaining, bitchy romp through the boom-to-bust roller coaster careers of four men who ruled recklessly with flashes of brilliance and then fell from the sky. It’s a swell read, but you may want to wash up afterward.

Take-Aways

  • Often, the Achilles heel of extremely ambitious businessmen is their high level of testosterone - as manifested in their anger or their sex drive, or both.
  • This may explain the disgrace and downfalls of four celebrity CEOs: Jack Welch of GE, Dennis Kozlowski of Tyco, Ron Perelman of Revlon and Al Dunlap of Sunbeam.
  • Their testosterone seems to have wrecked their business judgment in the 1990s.

About the Author

Christopher Byron is a Connecticut-based business and finance writer, whose work has appeared in Esquire, Playboy, Worth and New York magazines, among others. The author of the bestseller, Martha Inc., he writes a weekly business column for the New York Post. He also hosts a syndicated daily radio show, Wall Street Wakeup with Chris Byron.


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