Citizen Newhouse: Portrait Of A Media Merchant by Carol Felsenthal is a hard-hitting expose of the inner workings of a media empire, from its early days at the Staten Island Advance to the latest shake-up at the New Yorker. This unauthorized investigative biography paints an intriguing portrait of Si Newhouse and his family dynasty by revealing the machinations of these atypically elusive media moguls within the high-stakes world of today's entertainment conglomerates.

The book opens in the manner of a classic American family saga, with Si's father, Sam Newhouse, who quit school after the eighth grade, as paterfamilias. Having concocted a formula for creating newspaper monopolies in small metropolitan markets, be built the huge family fortune. Si took over the magazine portion of the vast empire, while his brother, Donald, managed the family's newspaper and cable television holdings.

Citizen Newhouse spotlights the life and career of Si Newhouse - one of America's most powerful yet unexamined figures. Felsenthal shows how his quirky behavior as a shy and awkward outsider has had a farreaching impact on the properties he owns, affecting - and in the opinion of some, compromising - the quality of the Newhouse "product."