Ah, the workplace – that reliable cauldron of petty resentments and micro-indignities. Maybe yours is overlorded by fusspots and fail-ups. Or perhaps you toil with vipers and snakes, like those who populate John Koblin and Felix Gillette’s meticulously researched new book about the never staid history of HBO.
Former “work husbands” from their days at the New York Observer, the media reporters (Koblin is on the television industry beat for the New York Times, and Gillette is an enterprise editor at Bloomberg Businessweek) were both working on book proposals about the same cable behemoth, unbeknownst to one other. When they got wind of each others’ projects, the writers took inspiration from the companies they cover and consolidated. “It was serendipity,” said Gillette. “We texted each other, and we were like, so we’re just gonna do this together.”
