In new book, James Stewart details dysfunction in the Redstone family

SHARON — Journalist James B. Stewart will be signing books on Friday, Aug. 4 at the Hotchkiss Library of Sharon for its 25th annual book signing with his latest book, a detailed look into the private and corporate life of billionaire businessman Sumner Redstone.

Stewart and Rachel Adams, both New York Times  writers, are the authors of “Unscripted, The Epic Battle for a Media Empire and the Redstone Family Legacy,” published by Penguin Press in February.

Sumner Redstone was an  American media executive whose company, National Amusements, Inc., acquired film, television, and entertainment properties, including Viacom and CBS.  He died in 2020. The book explores his relationship with his daughter, Shari, who took over her father’s business but faced hostility from not only management and board members but also from her own father.

“I got so many responses from readers who said it resonated with them as daughters of fathers. As a dynamic, there’s not a lot out there. There’s tons about fathers and sons. There’s a lot about mothers and daughters. But there’s not that much about fathers and daughters,” Stewart said.

“Sumner Redstone, who is this titanic figure. He’s proud of his daughter, he boasts about her accomplishments, but then he holds her to an absolutely impossible standard.”

“It’s cruel. He bestows the praise, then he takes it away.”

“At the end of the book, she’s still seeking his love and approval,” Stewart said.

Stewart and Adams run down many rumors in the book, including many involving Shari Redstone who seemed to be resented solely on the basis of the position she occupies by birth.

“The level of conjecture, and wanting to believe the worst in her is not like anything I have encountered with male shareholders or chief executives.

“I do think think there was a distinct level of sexism in all of that,” he said.

Stewart is a prolific author with 11 book titles who also has received many awards for his work, including sharing the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Journalism for articles about the stock market upheaval and insider trading in the 1987 crash.

A Harvard Law School graduate and member of the Bar of New York, Stewart also taught business and economic journalism at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism for 20 years.

Discussing the dysfunctional Redstone familiy, Stewart recalled the old saying — money doesn’t buy happiness. He also noted that money didn’t serve Sumner Redstone well.

“When you’re that rich, even the lawyers who were reportedly working for him, whose interests were they really serving?”

“The money seems to have helped him come untethered from the kind of restraints that normally keep peoples’ behavior within reasonable bounds. He’s handing millions out to these young women who are willing to do just about anything,” he said.

Stewart thinks there’s at least one more book to come from him, but he didn’t want to be pinned down.