Word: bigs
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Heath's big score seems as unlikely as breaking the bank at Monte Carlo, it isn't. Like a gambler hooked on high-stakes roulette, the general-interest segment of the $15 billion book-publishing industry is on a binge. In this go- go market, which represents one-third of an industry that includes books ranging from college texts to Bibles, editors are frantically putting bets on any potential best sellers. In recent months, the spin of the wheel has made not only a construction worker but also a Yale history professor and several fresh college graduates richer than they...
...tectonic shifts, the business has abandoned its pretenses of collegiality and moved closer in structure and style to Hollywood, where an oligarchy of half a dozen companies hustles for hits. Says Michael Korda, editor in chief of Simon & Schuster and a best-selling novelist himself, on the subject of big advances: "It's like stars in the movie business. If you want Cher for your movie, by God, you've got to pay Cher...
...that analyzes rating methods for the networks, is concerned that the sight of a camera on top of their TVs might make people self-conscious, affecting their viewing habits and skewing the results. And some would be sure to see in the new device a computer-age version of Big Brother's telescreen -- the two-way television that monitored the citizenry in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four...
...investments in Texaco and USX. But last week Texaco's largest stockholder sent a quiver through the New York Stock Exchange when he abruptly unloaded his 17.3% stake, or 42 million shares, for $2.07 billion (his profit: $600 million). The sale, which ranked as the largest single trade in Big Board history, was so unwieldy that three investment firms -- Shearson Lehman Hutton, Goldman, Sachs and Salomon Brothers -- teamed up to buy the shares. The bombshell transaction freed Icahn to prowl once more, setting off speculation that he would make another move to take over USX. Icahn owns some 29 million...
...GOOD TIMES by Russell Baker (Morrow; $19.95). What propelled Baker from the childhood he so memorably described in Growing Up (1982) to his present distinction as a columnist for the New York Times? Here is the answer, in a winsome memoir of early newspapering days, including big-league stints in London and Washington...