I took a break from Carnegie (which is amazing, but it’s massive – really two books) to gobble down some mental floss yesterday. Stephen Frey’s new book The Protege is out. Frey is on my regular rotation of mental floss and The Protege is a sequel to The Chairman.
If you are a VC or private equity investor, Frey (and these two books) are mental floss at their best. Christian Gillette, the 37 year old Chairman of Everest Capital, is every private equity investors heroic figure. Gillette is young, fit, rich, busy as hell but able to manage it with grace, and firmly in command of a huge private equity empire (Fund 8 weighs in a $15 billion for a chapter – after which the Wallace Family and it’s gorgeous 30 year old matron Allison contribute another $5 billion (of their $22 billion fortune) as long as Allison is made a managing partner.) Like all great mental floss, the book quickly devolves into a complex plot with lots of misdirection, suspense, confusion, suspicious characters, the mob, private planes, security, an NFL franchise, Las Vegas, a kinky sex murder, yacht “adventures”, the CIA, nanotechnology, mysterious scientist deaths, and the exploits of our fearless hero (including a bunch of deals done in rapid fire fashion) as he saves the world while struggling to decide between two beautiful women.
Ah. I feel better. Back to Andy Carnegie.