War at the Wall Street Journal: Inside the Struggle to Control an American Business Empire » (Unabridged Library Edition, 8 CDs)

SARAH ELLISON led the Wall Street Journal’s coverage of Rupert Murdoch’s bid for Dow Jones. Her stories about the media business have been recognized by the Newswomen’s Club of New York and the New York Press Club.

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 Murdoch's 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 Murdoch's 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 is--maneuvering, 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.

The New York Times - Lloyd Grove

In War at The Wall Street Journal, Sarah Ellison has written a definitive, indeed cinematic, account of the News Corporation's conquest and occupation of this venerable business publication, and of the subterranean battle of motives and moods in the Bancroft family psychodrama…[Ellison] gracefully slips back and forth across enemy lines, gathering intelligence from all sides and…spins an absorbing yarn played out on super-yachts and in corporate jets, populated by an irresistible cast of characters…