Bloomberg by Bloomberg VS. Losing My Virginity

BOOK BY ITS COVER

A color photo of Michael Bloomberg staring down the reader against a stark white background (plus his scrawled signature).

A black-and-white shot of Branson proudly gazing into the distance like some kind of romance-novel hero.

AUTHOR’S CURRENT NET WORTH

$59B

$4.4B

WE OPEN ON . . .

Bloomberg getting fired from his first job, at Salomon Brothers, with a $10 million severance after a “Last Supper” meeting where executives ate “greasy steaks.”

A flight on the Virgin Global Challenger hot-air balloon.

Branson and his friends were attempting to circumnavigate the world, starting in Morocco. They crashed in the Sahara Desert.

FIRST PAYDAY

$9,000 starting salary at Salomon Brothers, plus a $2,500 loan.

10 shillings from his Auntie Joyce for learning to swim.

AMAZON RANKING

#582,909 in the Kindle Store

#106,078 in the Kindle Store

REVIEWS

“Reading it feels like being trapped inside a Power Point presentation about why billionaires are interesting.” —Jia Tolentino, The New Yorker

“Surprisingly, Branson comes off as a lovable underdog battling the establishment, instead of a spoiled tycoon.” —Tom Faucett, CNN

WEIRD FLEX

“I was one of the youngest Eagle Scouts in that organization’s history.”

Won a case where the manager of a Virgin Records shop was arrested because the poster for a Sex Pistols’ album used the word “bollocks” (the group was signed to Branson’s record label at the time). A linguistics professor argued on behalf of Virgin that “bollocks” was an old nickname for “priests” or “rubbish,” and that it was therefore not offensive.

IN THE YEAR THE BOOK WAS PUBLISHED, HE . . .

Was CEO of his eponymous company, Bloomberg LP, a post he left to run for mayor only a few years later.

Flew a hot-air balloon from Morocco to Hawaii. He still didn’t make it all the way around the world, though.