Unscripted by James Stewart & Rachel Abrams

The subtitle is: The Epic Battle For A Hollywood Media Empire but it is way grosser than that. This is reasonably written, and while it is hard to picture how the authors had access to a lot of conversations that they recount in the book, the story is well told and pretty easy to follow. It is just so gross that it is hard to read. One review had the headline "A business book that makes Hollywood tales of debauchery look tame" and that kind of sums it up. Ostensibly, it is the fly-on-the-wall account of the extraordinary boardroom machinations that led Shari Redstone, the often-estranged daughter of geriatric mogul Sumner Redstone, to wrest control of both CBS and Viacom from the executives, girlfriends and others who’d circled him in his final years. In that way, it’s not unlike countless chronicles of corporate intrigue or succession drama--or the HBO Max series "Succession". It is just hard to feel bad for anyone in this mess. The elder Redstone, is acid-tongued, obsessed with sex and, in general, a pretty awful person--to name a few, he once called President Barack Obama the n-word at a Beverly Hills restaurant and attempted to steal a date from his young grandson at an MTV event, the book asserts--and the list goes on. He gets seriously taken advantage of by multiple women after money and power, but it is hard to find someone to root for. Also, because it is about a media company that includes TV and movie studios, there is also Hollywood tales of sexual harassment and manipulation, and the whole thing leaves you feeling bad about men in general and men in positions of power in particular. There is very little in the way of remorse in this tale, and it is a relief to finish it.