Top ten books about tycoons

Peter Stothard is an author, journalist, and critic. He is a former editor of The Times of London and of the Times Literary Supplement.

He is the author of The Last Assassin: The Hunt for the Killers of Julius Caesar and most recently, Crassus: The First Tycoon.

“Peter Stothard is a master of modern writing about ancient Rome," says Mary Beard. "In Crassus] he cleverly explores the life of one of the most puzzling and elusive ‘big men’ in the history of Rome, and why it matters.”

At the Guardian Stothard tagged ten "books, each one based in different ways on power seekers who want it all," including:

The Last Tycoon by F Scott Fitzgerald

This unfinished classic novel, published posthumously in 1941, shows a movie man’s deep personal impetus for seeing, concentrating and expanding power, the rare mark of the tycoon. “These lights, this brightness, these clusters of human hope, of wild desire – I shall take these lights in my fingers. I shall make them bright, and whether they shine or not, it is in these fingers that they shall succeed or fail.”

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue