I listened to this book on cassette tape, which is an abridged version of the book. It's very interesting, well presented, and professionally recorded, spoken by Steve Tom, who has a pleasantly authoritative voice. It comes on four tapes, recorded front and back. Total playing time is about 6 hours. There's no accompanying music, as is the case with many fictional books on tape, except for the transitions that ends one side and begins another.

The book tells the story of how Adolph Ochs, shortly after the Civil War, started both a newspaper and a family dynasty that became the New York Times. Their family tree, their Jewish culture, and their approach to the paper, which has been described by many others, is told here with names, anecdotes, and quotes.

The abridged version of the story (I haven't read the book) spends more time with the concern of which member of the each successive generation would assume control, and less with editorial decisions than you might think. The earliest stories of Adolph Ochs are an insight into the financials decisions that helped him achieve the coup of siezing control of the paper, and his marriage to the daughter of the rabbi who was leading the Jewish Reformation movement in America in the late 19th century lends insight into the family culture.

The cassette box indicated that this story explores such significant events as the Holocaust, the Pentagon Papers, and Watergate. Each is mentioned on the tape, but I found that only the Pentagon Papers story had any significant treatment. As to the others, if you weren't paying attention, you'd miss any mention of them at all. Perhaps the books has more.

A big warning regarding foul language: the first three cassettes had none that I recall, but the fourth cassette, which begins to deal with the 1980's up to the time the book was written, suddenly assaults the listener with a several occurrences of foul language. It's one thing to see these words in printed form, quite another to have the narrator speak them out loud on the tape. The "f" word and "s" word are not only used in direct quotes from the family's exclamations, but are also used to graphically describe homosexual behavior in one passage that is quite graphic. The fourth cassette should be rated "R" as a minimum, if not worse. Consider yourself warned. Don't just pop these cassettes into the car tape deck during the family vacation.

The bottom line: if you're a NYT subscriber, the story told here is probably of great interest to you. If you follow news at all, you probably know of the control that the New York Times exerts in American media, and would benefit from knowing more about the source of much of America's news.

I think The Trust is absolutely riveting. It's worth reading for the chapter on the Pentagon Papers alone--a drama that has you on the edge of your seat, even though you know what happened! But The Trust is a lot more than that. The decisions behind what runs, and what does not run, in The New York Times are complex and difficult. For the first time--as far as I can tell--the authors, with the skill and caring of fine novelists, show us who these people are and why they do (and did) the things they do. If you want to know how The New York Times came to be what it is, read this book. It's a story of human courage, frailty, jealousy, ambition, loss and success. In short--the story of a family. It's right out of Balzac. I really loved it.

This exhaustively researched and really gripping book tells the story of Sulzberger/Ochs family and their relationship to the New York Times. As the family behind the Times, they were players on the stage of American history for most of the twentieth century. The family itself and the characters in it are fascinating-- the subjects range from Iphegene Ochs frustration that she as a woman would never be considered the heir to the throne, to the way that Adolph Ochs wheeled and dealed his way into building the NYT, to the hard family choices behind the publication of the Pentagon papers, to modern attempts from within the company to break the family power. It's a wonderful glimpse at one of the most powerful families of our time. It's worth noting that this book is not a business case history and that the reader will not find an explicit overview of any of the strategies that made the Times what it is.