Every era has its merger; every era has its story. For the New Media age it was an even bigger disaster: the AOL–Time Warner deal.

At the time AOL and Time Warner were considered a matchless combination of old media content and new media distribution. But very soon after the deal was announced things started to go bad – and then from bad to worse. Less than four years after the deal was announced, every significant figure in the deal –save the politically astute Richard Parsons – has left the company, along with scores of others. Nearly a $100 billion was written off and a stock that once traded at $100 now trades near $10.

What happened? Where did it all go wrong? In this deeply sourced and deftly written book, Nina Munk gives us a window into the minds of two of the oddest men to ever run billion–dollar empires. Steve Case, the boy wonder who built AOL one free floppy disk at a time, was searching for a way out of the New Economy. Meanwhile Jerry Levin, who'd made his reputation as a visionary when he put HBO on satellite distribution, was searching for a monumental deal. These two men, more interested in their place in history than their personal fortunes, each thought they were out–smarting the other.