A model of how gracefully to tell the most grotesque of stories ... The writing is elegant and the story so weird and compelling — I lost some sleep unable to put this book down — that the reader may be the only witness to this spectacle who never feels manipulated ... Stewart and Abrams set the emotional stage with this seamy domestic drama before turning to one of the most spectacular business debacles of our age: the yearslong collapse of Viacom and the misrule at CBS ... Unscripted need not be thought of as a moral fable with larger import. For those predisposed to curiosity about the machinations of wealth and power, it will be a delicious treat. But I also found it a crucial cautionary tale at a time when too many people equate wealth with some sort of generalized mastery.
I know more than I care to admit about this troubling and sorry saga. And yet, I can’t help but be utterly impressed by Unscripted: The Epic Battle for a Media Empire and the Redstone Family Legacy, a bodice-ripping romp through even more of the gory details of the whole sordid affair, expertly reported and written by the very talented journalists James B. Stewart and Rachel Abrams ... Their reporting chops are very much on display on nearly every page ... The depth of the multiple perversions, as revealed by the authors, is really quite astounding ... A breezy, gossipy, fast-paced read—a rocket ship from the get-go.
May...test the prurience of an unsuspecting readership ... Brings remarkable detail and fresh insight to a C-suite fight ... Using tons of never-revealed legal investigation files and their own reporting for the New York Times, Stewart and Abrams drop detail after detail ... Media insiders and those who followed the Redstone saga will eat this reporting — and some of the other, more comical twists that populate the book — up. The authors aren’t just flies on the wall; they’re in Moonves’s phone calls and drunk, late-night text messages.
A guilty-pleasure exposé ... Entertaining on a gut level, it is populated by those we love to hate ... The book features a cast of dozens, adroitly differentiated by the authors, making internecine corporate warfare digestible without dumbing down for the uninitiated.
Imagine a mash-up of King Lear and Weekend at Bernie’s, the 1989 movie comedy about two scamps who prop up a cadaver so they can enjoy a weekend at his beach house, with Redstone starring in both title roles ... The first half of Unscripted documents the bizarre hi- and low-jinks chez Sumner as the old man dodders toward senility ... Redstone’s soap opera drags on.
A racy slice of schadenfreude about people with more money than taste, whose talents are limited to boardroom shenanigans or greenlighting 'content' that has been conceived, written and directed by the true creatives further down the pecking order.
