Product Description

In Testosterone Inc.: Tales of CEOs Gone Wild, bestselling author and New York Post columnist Chris Byron chronicles the Gatsby-like saga of the rise and fall of the celebrity CEO. During the height of the 1990s bull market, they were America’s new heroes: the heroes of business. They were our bold new leaders, cutting the fat, pushing for productivity, implementing visionary plans, and making strategic deals.

When the bull market turned to bust and the applause turned to cat-calls, the world was shocked at the truth. Drenched in money and public acclaim, our CEO-heroes—mostly white, mostly male, mostly middle-aged—turned out to be not much different than a group of twenty-something rock stars—drunk on power and driven by sex, greed, and glamour.

Testosterone Inc. goes behind the boardroom doors to show the serial affairs and marriages of these acquisitive corporate titans.  At the center of this story is Jack Welch, the biggest of America’s rock star CEOs and the former head of General Electric Co., surrounded by “mini-me” CEOs Ron Perelman of Revlon, Al Dunlap of Sunbeam, and Dennis Kozlowski of Tyco—all gone wild in public displays of consumption and predatory appetites writ large.

Byron gets inside the bars where Welch liked to hang out and pick up women with his early “business soul mate” buddies. Byron hovers unseen at the elbow of Ron Perelman and his mistress aboard the Concorde for a week in Paris in his mistaken belief that his wife knows nothing about his secret affair. Byron peeks behind the curtains of a U.S. Army officers’ quarters to behold Al Dunlap horrifying his first wife, who claimed in her divorce action that Dunlap would point his knife at her and say, “I often wondered what human flesh tasted like.” Byron becomes a fly on the wall to chronicle the longing for respect and serial womanizing of Dennis Kozlowski.

Frequently hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking, Testosterone Inc. follows the intertwined lives of these four corporate heroes, from childhood to their ultimate moments of glory and the crash-and-burn calamities that followed, as man’s age-old hunger for power, greed, and temptation undid them all.  From suicide to murder, from dysfunctional childhoods to dysfunctional marriages in adulthood, from business chutzpah to financial suicide, here is the ultimate untold business story of our time: what went on at century’s end, when testosterone got the best of businessmen everywhere, and CEOs went wild.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1508995 in Books
• Published on: 2005-03-25
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 1.10 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 402 pages

From Publishers Weekly
A smarmy wallow in the sleaziest escapades of four powerful and highly visible CEOs, Byron’s latest serves up a titillating mix of snark, sanctimony and pop psychology. In his last book, the bestselling Martha, Inc., the veteran business journalist asserted that Stewart was driven by resentment toward her brutish father and her humble roots. In this new book, Byron’s analysis leads him to the loopy conclusion that his four subjects—Jack Welch, Dennis Kozlowski, Ronald Perelman and Al Dunlap—are all victims of excessive testosterone. What, Byron asks, could motivate such accomplished businessmen to jeopardize their legacies by divorcing devoted wives, siphoning corporate funds or engaging in tawdry affairs? "The answer," he eagerly insists, "lies not in their stars but in their skivvies." Though Byron examined some 15,000 documents and interviewed 90 people for this book, none of his four subjects would agree to an interview for this project, so there are no first-hand accounts to corroborate (or refute) his diagnosis. But tracing the fine points of psychology, or delivering a measured analysis of business strategy, isn’t really the point of this book, which aims to entertain with juicy accounts of embarrassing peccadilloes. Readers who get a chuckle out of watching rich and powerful men make fools of themselves will find plenty to like here. As for all that research: this book contains little that is especially new or valuable, unless you really care to know such details as exactly which of Welch’s uncles was a drunk.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From AudioFile
Looking for things to criticize in today's corporate leadership? This audio, much like the movie JACKASS, portrays men doing goofy things, except on a massive financial scale, and with enough immorality not to be funny. The title contains compelling reporting about the excesses of Al Dunlap of Sunbeam, Jack Welch of GE, Dennis Kozlowski of Tyco, and others, all business titans who couldn't limit their appetites for fame, sex, power, and privilege. NEW YORK POSTcolumnist Byron, also author of a Martha Stewart biography, has a gift for narrative flow. His speaking personality enjoys his own material, but not too much. The presentation is so entertaining that one forgets it's a cautionary tale with a trail of financial damage and tainted lives. T.W. © AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

From Booklist
This self-described tale of "CEOs Gone Wild" chronicles four of the best-known businessmen of the 1980s and 1990s, mixing stories of their personal and professional lives with an emphasis on their marital infidelities and career power plays. General Electric CEO Jack Welch takes center stage, his rapid climb up the corporate ladder all the way to the top spot in 1980 leading to a "Corporate Reign of Terror," resulting in the firing of almost one-third of the GE workforce. But it is his propensity for bar hopping and passing around secretaries that led to the nickname "Jack the Zipper," and his trophy wives and expensive divorce proceedings dominate these pages. Also profiled is the much-feared Al "Chainsaw" Dunlap, who single-handedly destroyed Sunbeam Corporation with his take-no-prisoners approach; bond king and egomaniac Ron Perelman (with a Monica Lewinsky tie-in); and Tyco's Dennis Kozlowski, with details on the now-infamous $2 million toga party for his wife's fortieth birthday, expensed to Tyco shareholders. The author postulates that the extreme alpha-male behavior exhibited by these men is purely hormonal, their off-the-chart testosterone levels driving them to act like wild teenage boys well into their fifties and beyond. Readers looking for a titillating peek into the private lives of the power elite will be highly satisfied. David Siegfried
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