By Steve Rhodes

I made the mistake of thinking Money Talks, Bullsh*t Walks: Inside The Contrarian Mind Of Billionaire Mogul Sam Zell this was a real book, instead of quickie hagiography. Nonetheless, let’s take a look at some of the interesting and relevant items and passages. See if you can spot the bullshit walking.
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“Once in the States, [Zell’s father] settled into the wholesale jewelry business, moving the family to Albany Park, Illinois, a community dominated by immigrant Jews just northwest of Chicago.”

Evil Twins Black Talks, Zell Walks.

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“Even at the tender age of twelve, it was no stretch of the imagination to see that Sam Zell had ‘entrepreneur’ written all over his psyche. During his daily train rides to Chicago [from Highland Park, for Hebrew school], Zell’s inquisitive mind often worked in overdrive. One day in 1953, he was scanning the magazines on sale at the train station. There he found the first issue of a brand-new Chicago publication unlike any he had seen, or should have seen at his tender age. The magazine was aptly titled Playboy and founded by a little-known Chicago entrepreneur named Hugh Marston Hefner. At the time, Playboy was not the mainstream media product that it would become years later. In fact, it was considered so nefarious that its circulation was limited only to certain sections of the inner city.
“Zell acted on his impulse, sensing an untapped commercial aspect to this exotic commodity. He bought Playboys for fifty cents a copy and sold them to his suburban chums later in the day for three dollars.”
At age 12 he was a smut peddler! And that markup – what a prick.
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“The caption under his 1959 Highland Park High School yearbook photo says much about those formative years: ‘I’m not asking you, I’m telling you.'”
Like I said, Prick City.
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While in law school, Zell became a landlord to college students.
“With only $1,500 in savings, Zell parlayed the meager sum to purchase a land contract on a small apartment property. After a fresh coat of paint and some new furniture, he doubled rents and went in search of more buildings to buy.”

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Posted on February 11, 2010

By David Rutter

Of all the topics that gush garbage, the post-apocalyptic assessment of failed newspaper vultures in Chicago is among the most resiliently productive.
The desire to snuggle up to Sam Zell about his misunderstood grandeur never ceases to amaze. The latest in this category is Ben Johnson’s new business biography, Money Talks, Bullshit Walks: Inside the Contrarian Mind of Billionaire Sam Zell, which offers a favorable and totally erroneous view of Zell’s quirks.
There were those who insisted then and still do that Conrad Black was a charming, rogue genius, rather than a callous pillager of the Chicago Sun-Times Empire. Those of us close enough to Black’s various thug hirelings surely could catch the scent of mendacity on the air when they ran the Sun-Times. The interim ownership of the Sun-Times, manifested by affable but totally baffled CEO Cyrus Friedheim, was less evil than merely inept.
Sam Zell is no less a barbarian than Black. And history now suggests a willfully, doggedly, ignorant barbarian whose only skill was possession of money. And because I know a little first-hand about both situations, I can tell you what the two enterprises had in common and why they both ultimately failed.

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Posted on February 11, 2010