Bookshelf · AntiheroesPreview

Logan Roy.

Succession · 2018–2023

A media empire built on biography, biography, biography. Logan’s shelves are Churchill, Murdoch, and the histories his children will never finish.

"You are not serious people." Read serious books.

3 booksCurated · cited · cross-referenced

The shelf, decoded

Why this list.

Logan Roy reads great-man biography. That is the entire shape of his shelf. The list below is the canon of media-tycoon historiography — exactly the books a man like Logan would have on his Hamptons coffee table.

The reading list

3 books for Logan.

No. 01Character fit
The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill
William Manchester
The Churchill brick on the corner of every billionaire’s desk.
CitationCharacter-fit
No. 02Character fit
Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.
Ron Chernow
The Rockefeller comparison Logan makes about himself in private.
CitationCharacter-fit
No. 03Character fit
The Prince
Niccolò Machiavelli
Owned but not re-read. Quoted by Roman to nobody’s benefit.
CitationCharacter-fit

Closing note

You are not serious people. The list is.

Don Draper

Cover of Meditations in an Emergency by Frank O’Hara

Mid-century Madison Avenue’s most reluctant reader. The books we see in Don’s hands — Marcus Aurelius, Frank O’Hara — are the only place he is honest.

Read the list

American PsychoSoon

Patrick Bateman

Cover of The Art of the Deal by Donald J. Trump

Cover of Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis

Wall Street’s most-quoted aesthete reviews Genesis, Whitney Houston, and (somewhere on the shelf) Donald Trump’s Art of the Deal. Read alongside the satire, not against.

Preview the list

Fight ClubSoon