The Red­stones are some­times described as the ​“Jew­ish Kennedys” — a fam­i­ly dynasty that rose from the under­world of Boston to the pin­na­cle of Amer­i­can busi­ness with unspeak­able heart­break along the way. In this multi­gen­er­a­tional inves­tiga­tive biog­ra­phy, Wall Street Jour­nal reporter Keach Hagey uncov­ers the true past of media mogul Sum­n­er Red­stone, the con­trol­ling share­hold­er of Via­com and CBS, and the roots of his fraught rela­tion­ship with this daugh­ter and suc­ces­sor, Shari Red­stone. The sto­ry begins in the Ukraine in the late 19th cen­tu­ry and runs through Boston’s West End, where Sumner’s father, Mick­ey, forged parter­ships with a host of book­ies and boot­leg­gers that set him on a high­ly risky path to busi­ness suc­cess. Mick­ey was rel­e­gat­ed to the under­world, in part because of anti-Semi­tism. But his bril­liant son, Sum­n­er, forged in the mer­i­to­crat­ic cru­cibles of Boston Latin School and Har­vard, was deter­mined to be dif­fer­ent. He became one of the rich­est men in Amer­i­ca. But his belief in him­self above all oth­er things would ulti­mate­ly threat­en all that he had built.