Ted Turner: It Ain't as Easy as It Looks: The Amazing Story of CNN, by Porter Bibb (Virgin, £9.99 in UK)

Once you get over gawping in disbelief at the title and the name of the author, this proves to be a rather wordy biography of the "first he did this, then he did that" kind. Mr Bibb is long on facts and figures, short on human interest, though the notion of a news mogul who said "I hate the news. News is evil" is as interesting and as human as it gets, I suppose. He is constantly at pains to stress how charming and charismatic is his subject - methinks he doth protest too much, for when you ruffle that charming, charismatic surface, you find ruthless, reactionary and repulsive beneath. But then you don't get to be among the world's "two hundred or so billionaires" by being a nice guy every day. What this book isn't, is a history of CNN itself - that awesome organisation is glimpsed, alas, only from a distance - but Turner goes from strength to strength, and may well, Bibb hints in his final chapters, move into the political arena.