BORN TO BE WIRED

Tales from the C-suite.

In this sometimes surprising self-portrait, Malone, a famously hard-driving corporate leader, recalls his decades atop major media companies, reflecting on some of his “hundreds of deals” and pausing for a relatable personal disclosure. Malone’s narrative focuses on building and running Tele-Communications Inc., or TCI, once America’s biggest cable TV provider, and Liberty Media, which with affiliated companies is heavily involved in broadcasting, satellite radio, pro sports, concert-ticket sales, and high-speed internet service. His opening pages recount education and jobs at elite establishments—Yale, Bell Labs, McKinsey—and, touchingly, learning to repair TVs by shadowing his father, an inveterate tinkerer. Subsequent chapters detail mergers, acquisitions, and other transactions that have yielded big returns for investors and stockholders. This is catnip for the business-minded—and potentially useful information for opponents of Malone’s beloved libertarianism. Readers interested in corporate taxation will want to eyeball his paean to so-called tracking stocks, complex financial instruments that offer “tax advantages” to moneyed interests. Alongside such financial particulars, Malone writes crisp, if very flattering, portraits of fellow moguls. Ted Turner is seen crawling around a corporate meeting space, pleading for support for his cable “superstation.” Malone, 84, reveals a somewhat recent realization—he is “a high-functioning autistic” and believes his father was too. North America’s second-largest individual landowner, he plans to ensure that “a vast portion” of more than 2 million acres remains “undeveloped forever.” Is this a calculated effort to soften his image? Maybe, but that doesn’t diminish its potential importance. Malone argues that tech’s biggest companies are so powerful that “we need a new regime of government regulations” to watch the industry. He might not be the best spokesman on this issue, having often chafed at government oversight of his own businesses.

With surprising vulnerability, a formidable mogul’s boardroom recollections offer something to acolytes and detractors alike.