A Billionaire and His Mess: On Gabriel Sherman’s “Bonfire of the Murdochs”

On a frigid, gray January day in Midtown Manhattan, shuffling down Sixth Avenue, I pass one of the many stone slabs that comprise Rockefeller Center. A news ticker, hued hyperlink blue, advertises news out of the World Economic Forum at Davos. An American flag waves. But the lettered signage above the glass doors has been stripped, leaving just a shadow of a name: “News Corporat”—the “ion” is hacked off completely. 

Did such a shabby display for the parent company of Fox, The Wall Street Journal, HarperCollins, and the New York Post, among others, point to turmoil at the conservative media conglomerate? Had Rupert Murdoch’s children stormed the place with pitchforks and I’d somehow missed the coup? It turned out to be a straightforward remodeling. But you couldn’t blame me for wondering: Murdoch’s empire has been shrouded in drama since its inception. 

A new book by Gabriel Sherman, Bonfire of the Murdochs: How the Epic Fight to Control the Last Great Media Dynasty Broke a Family—and the World, picks apart the life of the billionaire and the mess he made with those who share his name.

Sherman, who has been reporting on the Murdochs since 2004, decided to write the book after he published a cover story for Vanity Fair on the family’s succession drama in April 2023. In the magazine, he exposed the famous patriarch’s vulnerability, detailing previously unreported facts about Rupert’s declining health, explaining the mechanics of the family trust setup (so that those of us without inheritances might have a shred of a chance at understanding), and filling in the gaps about the relationship dynamics with insider quotes. Now, in Bonfire of the Murdochs, Sherman expands on the family’s inner workings. His latest contribution to the arsenal of content about the Murdochs charts the rise of News Corp and unspools the bitter rivalries among Rupert’s four oldest children: Lachlan, James, Elisabeth, and Prudence. The book culminates in a breathless final chapter recounting a dramatic trial during which Rupert sought, unsuccessfully, to consolidate his media empire under Lachlan’s control over his other children’s objections. A year later, Rupert got what he wanted. Lachlan bought his siblings out of the shares the courts had determined were rightfully theirs, at roughly $1.1 billion each.

Here is the real-life version of the story that inspired HBO’s award-winning show, Succession. The five marriages, the blatant favoritism, the calls to the White House all delight, almost standing in for the rush we got on Sunday nights from 2018 to 2023. In 2024, the sterile Nevada courtroom of the book’s opening and closing serves as the site of legally binding heartbreak. It could be straight to TV. A grown man breaks down crying, describing his mistreatment by his father and brother. In response, his dad’s lawyer calls him and his sisters “white, privileged, multi-billionaire trust-fund babies.”