Hit Men: Power Brokers and Fast Money Inside the Music Business

Copiously researched and documented, Hit Men is the highly controversial portrait of the pop music industry in all its wild, ruthless glory: the insatiable greed and ambition; the enormous egos; the fierce struggles for profits and power; the vendettas, rivalries, shakedowns, and payoffs. Chronicling the evolution of America's largest music labels from the Tin Pan Alley days to the present day, Fredric Dannen examines in depth the often venal, sometimes illegal dealings among the assorted hustlers and kingpins who rule over this multi-billion-dollar business.

Fredric Dannen was a co-recipient of the Overseas Press Club's 1986 Morton Frank Award for business reporting from abroad. His articles have appeared in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, Institutional Investor, Rolling Stone, and Barron's. He received the Ralph J. Gleason Music Book Award for Hit Men.