IF you're suffering from Post Economic Stress Disorder and stuck in a McJob, then The Making of a Blockbuster by Gail DeGeorge (John Wiley and Sons, £17.99) is ideal fantasy fodder. You too can become a Millionaire, just like this guy did.
It concerns the rise, slight hiccup and rise of entrepreneur Wayne Huizenga in true good old fashioned American rags (literally) to riches style.
Huizenga, of Dutch extraction, bought a battered garbage truck in 1962 and started a small round. By the early 1980s he had parlayed this into the billion dollar Waste Management company.
Eased out of his baby after being on the losing side in a clash with his partner Dean Buntrock, he retired. But the lure of the deal prove irresistible after a few months. He went into the video renting industry, took a small chain Blockbuster and turned it into the international company it is today.
By the time he finished there, during the Viacom/Paramount merger in 1994 which took in the Blockbuster group, the company was generating $4 billion (£2.5 billion) in annual revenues. Ms DeGeorge is a journalist with Business week and thus the writing style is pleasingly taut. However, the book is inundated with the minutiae beloved of the American school of biography and the detail can lose the uninitiated. Let's face it, who wants to know the ins and outs of the garbage, video and sports franchise industries in the US?
Waste Management was involved in the toxic waste industry. This, in the 1970s, was the bete noire of an emerging environmental lobby flexing its muscles. Also there was the persistent link between the Mafia and the garbage industry in general.
Graft and corruption also reared their heads when it came to landfill sites and politics. In 1976, following a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into political slush funds at which Huizenga took the fifth amendment, he signed a consent decree which bound him not to violate securities law in the future.
This neither admitted nor denied fault but was to haunt him for many years.
Like most driven entrepreneurs, family life suffered. His first marriage collapsed under the strain of building an empire and he didn't see enough of his kids. This he confesses, like all such men, was a mistake.
On the plus side Huizenga is a deal making genius. Time and time again in the book, heavyweights bear witness to his consummate skill. He knew what he wanted, got it and then made it grow at a tremendous pace.
His ability to spot talent and nurture it was also an asset which he applied astutely. The teams he assembled for his various endeavours were formidable and delivered the goods nine times out of 10.
Huizenga is now owner of Florida Marlins baseball team, the Florida Panthers ice hockey team and the famous Miami Dolphins American football team. It should be enough for any man but Huizenga's thirst for the deal has not been quenched. Using his new baby, Republic Industries, he has bought ADT, valued at $4.4 billion, and another embryonic mega-corporation is born. Once a deal junkie, always a deal junkie.
