Barry Diller likes his tea prepared with exactly five dunks of the tea bag. That is perhaps the most intimate detail you'll find in this run-of-the-mill bio of Hollywood's ''Killer Diller,'' late of QVC, whose illustrious earlier career included cofounding the Fox network and heading up Paramount Pictures. Because Diller is famously unwilling to talk about his inner life, George Mair is forced to elaborate on small revelations gleaned from previously published interviews, and to pad the book out with historical digressions about the television and movie industries. In The Barry Diller Story: The Life and Times of America's Greatest Entertainment Mogul, Simpsons creator Matt Groening credits Diller with bluntness and focus; would that this telling of his life story had a bit more of both. C-
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