Book: Martha Inc: The incerdible story of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia by Bhristopher Byron


Repetitive and dull

Christopher Byron
Martha Inc: The Incredible Story of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia
John Wiley & Sons, 2002
ISBN: 0-471-42958-9
$14.95
392 pages (main text)

I don't follow popular culture very carefully: it was a while before I figured out that Jessica Simpson is not a relative of Lisa's. That's not because I'm some sort of snob, it's because I'm some sort of geek. I would almost always rather sit in front of my laptop's screen than my television's. But everyone knows who Martha Stewart is. So when a buddy offered to lend me Martha Inc, I was glad to borrow it. The prospect of learning some dirty secrets behind Ms Stewart's too-perfect public persona sounded like good entertainment.

Unfortunately, Mr Byron's book is very repetitive. I abandoned it on page 164, by which time I had learned that Ms Stewart was born in New Jersey, went to college New York, worked there as a stockbroker, and moved to Connecticut. She married a lawyer who went on to work in publishing and came to treat him and some other people rather badly, perhaps after the fashion of her father. In fact, I learned each of those things several times over. The portion I read could easily have been half as long as it is without losing any significant content. There were only a couple of interesting stories as far as I read and they weren't nearly enough to keep my interest.

Mr Byron, who has lived in New York city and attended Columbia University, should have known better than to put Barnard College on Manhattan's Upper West Side (p. 47); it's in Morningside Heights. He also has "dinner" for "theater" (p. 139).

Posted: Fri - February 6, 2004 at 09:26   Main   Category: 

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