The King of Cash: The Inside Story of Laurence Tisch (1995)

The King of Cash: The Inside Story of Laurence Tisch is not an authorized biography, but it may as well be, with its uncritical portrait of the billionaire businessman who took over CBS and cut it down to size. Written with all the flair of a bank statement, this ''inside story'' fails to penetrate the character of the gnomish mogul whose greatest passion is trimming costs and increasing shareholders' returns. Author Christopher Winans, a former editor at The Wall Street Journal, provides numbing dollar-signed details of Tisch's rise from resort-hotel operator to Loews kingpin to media czar. Though Winans judges Tisch's reign a success, the book stops short of CBS' recent ratings tailspin and glosses over the botched deals and executive defections that have left the onetime Tiffany network badly tarnished. The ''King of Cash'' legacy awaits a more exacting audit. C+