Unscripted

Reviews / Votes

Sex and power were the abiding obsessions of the colourful media mogul Sumner Redstone, whose life and career only became more bizarre as he aged and family and friends sought to get their hands on his empire. The saga helped inspire the HBO series Succession; this deeply reported account shows the truth was, if anything, stranger. * Financial Times, Best Books of 2023 * A real-life Succession . . . A deeply reported account of one of the trashiest episodes in recent business history . . . Masterful. * Financial Times * Has a business book ever made you blush? . . . With soap-operatic twists and turns, Unscripted makes the amped-up historical fiction of Babylon feel downright chaste by comparison * Washington Post * The sordid family saga that makes Succession look tame * Esquire * Addicted to Succession? Well, here's the real thing. * Hollywood Reporter * The riveting, Succession-esque tale of the fight for control of Paramount Global * Vanity Fair * Imagine a mash-up of King Lear and Weekend at Bernie's the 1989 movie comedy about two scamps who prop up a cadaver so they can enjoy a weekend at his beach house, with Redstone starring in both title roles. * Wall Street Journal * An explosive new page-turner . . . The sordid family saga that makes Succession look tame. * Esquire * A succession battle more lurid than the one on HBO's fictional Succession. * Bloomberg Businessweek * A delicious treat . . . So weird and compelling - I lost some sleep unable to put this book down - that the reader may be the only witness to this spectacle who never feels manipulated. * New York Times * A page-turner - an over-the-top tale of money, power, sex, and relentless scheming to wrest billions away from an old man who in his final years seems to have lost the capacity for just about anything except sex. * Fortune * A must-read . . . A bombshell new book from two Pulitzer winners reveals some truly shocking storylines within the real-life Succession drama that is the Paramount media empire . . . A jaw-dropping yarn. * Daily Beast * Ranks with Den of Thieves and Disney War as one of Stewart's finest books . . . To say that this story is rife with feuding, outrageous behavior, and litigation would be a gross understatement. * Barron's * While we're waiting for Succession to come back to the small screen, this new biography of the Redstone family should scratch any lingering itch to learn more about the inner workings of a rich, powerful, and very complicated family. * Town & Country * Lays bare just how knotty and Succession-y the Redstone tale became towards the bitter end . . . the parallels are everywhere * Daily Telegraph * A guilty-pleasure expose on boardroom and bedroom maneuvering . . . A gripping and illuminating account of C-suite shenanigans and intrafamily strife. Entertaining on a gut level, it is populated by those we love to hate - horrible rich people, sleazy, greedy and driven by lust. * Los Angeles Times * A tale of sex, lies, family drama and boardroom backstabbing . . . Part salacious soap opera, part business book/legal chronicle, it charts the downward spiral of Sumner as well as the downfall of Les Moonves, the media titan whose allies and enablers propped him up until the last minute.. * Deadline * 'The media mogul Sumner Redstone was a womaniser, a bully, a terrible father - and exceptionally good copy. Unscripted, written by two New York Times journalists, is a pacy account of his final years . . . This is Succession, but with a much trashier cast.' -- Books of the Year * The Times * A deeply reported account of Redstone's final years, delving in sometimes excruciating detail into his extraordinary antics in both the boardroom and the bedroom . . . Like a lot of reality TV, Unscripted is riveting because its cast is so awful. * Economist * Sex and power were the abiding obsessions of the colourful media mogul Sumner Redstone, whose life and career only became more bizarre as he aged . . . The saga helped inspire the HBO series Succession; this deeply reported account shows the truth was, if anything, stranger. -- Books of the Year * Financial Times *