As he rises to the pinnacle of success in the broadcasting industry, corporate predator Jack Lear makes a fortune as a pioneer of network television, marrying two gorgeous socialites along the way, but, despite his many triumphs and great wealth, he continues to long for what he cannot have Jack Lear, son of a wealthy but ruthless and vulgar self-made man, eschews his background by marrying a seemingly proper young Bostonian woman whose father sets Jack up in the radio business. Jack uses his father's techniques to catapult one radio station into a multimillion-dollar broadcasting network. The novel opens in the 1930s and moves briskly through the war years, ending in the 1970s, telling an interesting tale of the beginning of an industry that has shaped and defined, as well as reported, our culture. But make no mistake, Robbins's reputation doesn't rest merely on character, plot, or historical detail; he writes sex, and there is plenty of it in this offering. Every conceivable manner of sexuality is described except couplings between species (for the next book?). Given his past successes, fans will line up for this latest and will doubtless be, uh, gratified.?Terrill Persky, Woodridge P.L., Woodbridge, Ill. Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. Best-selling novelist Robbins relies on a general plotline that has proven successful for him in the past. According to the book's promotional copy, "sex, money, ambition, power, and more sex" has been Robbins' modus operandi for the past couple of decades, and he makes expedient use of it in his latest book. The story follows the ascent of Jack Lear, son of a Jewish salvage collector from California, who marries into a blue-blooded Boston family and is soon on his way to wealth, fame, and fortune, having gotten into radio and network television at the right time. Through World War II, a couple of marriages, business upheavals, and problems with his dysfunctional children, Lear sleeps his way around the world with what must be hundreds of women who magically cannot resist his frequently touted overendowed physicality. Robbins uses every sexual encounter imaginable to describe Jack Lear's life, and soon the story of his business success becomes merely a backdrop to his continuing escapades. Condescending to women in the extreme; however, there is definitely a market for this, and his fans will appreciate it. Kathleen Hughes Another dreary, sex-drenched saga in which Robbins (The Stallion, 1996, etc. etc.) does his roman … clef number on broadcasting. In 1931, young Harvard-educated Jack Lear defies father Erich, who wants him to join the family's Los Angelesbased scrap-metal firm; instead, Jack puts down roots in Boston, where he weds a blond deb named Kimberly and buys a local radio station. The precocious, upwardly mobile go-getter soon builds a small network that earns him the backing of megabuck investors, plus the favors of showbiz hopefuls and other men's wives. Although willing to preserve a crumbling marriage for his children's sake, Jack (whose career vaguely resembles that of William Paley) meets and falls for Anne, the widowed Countess of Weldon, while sitting out WW II in London as a brigadier general on Eisenhower's staff. Kinky Kim (who's been making S&M whoopee with banker Dodge Hallowell) grants him a divorce, and he's able to make the stylish Brit his own. With beauteous Anne beside him, Jack moves to Manhattan and expands his empire, taking advantage of the postwar era's favorable economic conditions to put the Lear name on a nationwide string of TV stations. The influential magnate's charmed life is not without a downside, however: He learns his kids by Kim are engaged in a committed incestuous relationship, then loses Anne to leukemia after two decades of wedded bliss. Meanwhile, the business prospers, and by the early '70s, a younger generation emerges to challenge Jack for control of the media colossus he's created. In an abrupt and anticlimactic windup, the founder loses a proxy fight, sells out to a conglomerate, and walks away with his third wife, a New Jersey congresswoman. Despite the author's customary surfeit of clinical sex scenes, this is a limp and linear take on cafe-society capitalism--one that ends not with a bang but a whimper. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.