In the Wall Street Journal‘s best-selling business book list last weekend (8/21-8/22), a new 
blockbuster by James Andrew Miller debuted at # 2. Miller, who you remember wrote Those Guys Have All The Fun, about ESPN, and Live From New York, about Saturday Night Live, this time tackles the Creative Artists Agency (CAA).
The book is called Powerhouse: The Untold Story of Hollywood’s Creative Artists Agency (Custom House, 2017). As of today, it is # 1 in three of the book categories on Amazon.com.
Here is a brief summary of the book from Amazon.com:
“The movies you watch, the TV shows you adore, the concerts and sporting events you attend—behind the curtain of nearly all of these is an immensely powerful and secretive corporation known as Creative Artists Agency. Started in 1975, when five bright and brash employees of a creaky William Morris office left to open their own, strikingly innovative talent agency, CAA would come to revolutionize the entertainment industry, and over the next several decades its tentacles would spread aggressively throughout the worlds of movies, television, music, advertising, and investment banking.
“Powerhouse is the fascinating, no-holds-barred saga of that ascent. Drawing on unprecedented and exclusive access to the men and women who built and battled with CAA, as well as financial information never before made public, author James Andrew Miller spins a tale of boundless ambition, ruthless egomania, ceaseless empire building, greed, and personal betrayal. It is also a story of prophetic brilliance, magnificent artistry, singular genius, entrepreneurial courage, strategic daring, foxhole brotherhood, and how one firm utterly transformed the entertainment business.”
This certainly qualifies as a business book for our First Friday Book Synopsis, and we presented Miller’s ESPN book a few years ago. Whether it holds up as a best-seller on the list is the only reservation.
First Friday Book Synopsis 