Shades of Black: Conrad Black - His Rise and Fall - Hardcover

Siklos, Richard

3.68

25 ratings by Goodreads

9780771080715: Shades of Black: Conrad Black - His Rise and Fall

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0771080719 ISBN 13: 9780771080715

Publisher: McClelland & Stewart, 2004

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At the turn of the new millennium, Conrad Black was living the dream he had imagined for his entire life: he was married to a beautiful, intelligent woman who shared his political outlook and love of a lavish lifestyle; a Gulfstream jet ferried the couple among palatial homes in London, Toronto, Palm Beach, and New York; and he owned, among many other newspapers, the Daily Telegraph in London, England, the Jerusalem Post, and the Chicago Sun-Times. He would soon be granted a peerage and a seat in Britain’s House of Lords, his parties and company boards were packed with luminaries, and he was planning to write a biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt that would build his stature and presence in the United States, the country he worshipped.

What a difference four years make. Today, Conrad Black’s career and reputation are in free fall. He has been kicked out of Hollinger International, his main U.S. company, by its board of directors, and his prize possession, the Daily Telegraph, has been sold out from under him. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the FBI are investigating, and lawsuits are flying in every direction. In this definitive biography of the most famous Canadian businessperson of this generation, Richard Siklos delivers a riveting account of Black’s life and, for the first time, the inside story of his humiliating downfall, drawing on scores of new interviews conducted in four countries and on newly disclosed materials.

It is the story Siklos started to write in the 1995 edition of his bestselling biography of Conrad Black, Shades of Black, and now tells in full, gripping detail in this completely revised, updated, and vastly expanded edition, now subtitled Conrad Black – His Rise and Fall.

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From the Inside Flap:

At the turn of the new millennium, it seemed that Conrad Black had everything he'd ever dreamed of: he'd married a beautiful, intelligent woman who shared his political outlook and love of a lavish lifestyle; he had palatial homes in London, Toronto, Palm Beach, and New York; and he owned, among many other newspapers, two prestigious broadsheets, the Telegraph in London, England, and the Jerusalem Post, papers which he could and did use to try to shape public policy. He had even been granted a lifetime peerage in Britain's House of Lords, albeit at the cost of giving up his Canadian citizenship, and he had divested his holding company, Hollinger Inc., of the money-losing National Post.

What a difference four years make. Today, Conrad Black's career – and likely his mood – is in freefall. He has been kicked out of Hollinger International, the subsidiary of Hollinger Inc. that owns the newspapers. He's been accused of helping himself to hundreds of millions of Hollinger's dollars. He's being hounded by shareholders and financial regulators. He was even brought before the Delaware judge Leo Strine, who in his 133-page scathing assessment of Black's business practices – and personality – called Black "evasive and unreliable" and ruled that he had "persistently and seriously" violated corporate and contractual obligations owed to Hollinger International. It's possible that criminal charges will be laid against him.

In a reversal of the archetypical rags-to-riches story, Siklos writes of a man's plunge from riches to figurative rags. It is the story he started to write in the 1995 edition of his bestselling biography of Conrad Black and now tells in full, gripping detail in this completely revised, updated, and expanded edition.

About the Author:

Richard Siklos gained acclaim as Conrad Black’s biographer in 1995. Since then he has been a frequent interviewee on radio and TV as the authority on Conrad Black. A Canadian, he now lives in New York and works for London’s Sunday Telegraph, besides being a columnist for the Globe and Mail’s Report on Business.

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