Rupert Murdoch Unleashes His Inner Book Critic on Twitter

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Move over Oprah, another media titan is stepping into the hardback endorsement space. Rupert Murdoch, with his inexplicable but highly entertaining presence on Twitter, is on a book critic tear, firing off terse, 140-character reviews of literature ranging from the controversial to mainstream bestsellers. The News Corp. chairman and CEO has a rather unpredictable reading diet. Here's what he's tweeted about so far:

Charles Murray Coming Apart Make no mistake, Murdoch loves Charles Murray. The co-author of the controversial book The Bell Curve, which associated race with IQ differences, is the only author the media mogul confesses to "re-reading." "Profound" and "strongly recommend," gushes Murdoch of Murray's new book Coming Apart. In this tome, instead of dissecting racial differences, Murray appears to focus on white America exclusively. "The top and bottom of white America increasingly live in different cultures, Murray argues, with the powerful upper class living in enclaves surrounded by their own kind, ignorant about life in mainstream America, and the lower class suffering from erosions of family and community life that strike at the heart of the pursuit of happiness. That divergence puts the success of the American project at risk," reads the Amazon review.

As he's known to do, Murdoch looks at the book through the prism of the GOP primaries. "Re-reading Charles Murray. Profound. Can Santorum lead moral regeneration and restoration of original American dream? Tall order!" he tweets. One of his rather cheeky Twitter followers replies: "A call to restore morality from the man who debases the political discourse & peddles gossip, rumor and scantily-clad women."

Matt Ridley The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves For everyone who's sick of headlines about famine, natural disaster, rape, and murder, this sounds like the book for you. The Rational Optimist's premise is that "life is getting better...Though the world is far from perfect, necessities and luxuries alike are getting cheaper; population growth is slowing; Africa is following Asia out of poverty; the Internet, the mobile phone, and container shipping are enriching people’s lives as never before." Blaming negative sentiment on the "pessimists who dominate public discourse," the book puts an optimistic gloss on the sweep of human history. What saith Murdoch? "Have just. Read The Rational Optimist. Great book." A nice endorsement for a product that, unlike his adulatory endorsements for movies, isn't owned by News Corp.

Walter Isaacson Steve Jobs The fawningly appraised book seems to aim a little too close to the jugular for Murdoch. "Steve Jobs biog interesting but unfair. Family must hate," he tweeted. Did the passages about Jobs being posthumously described as a controlling jerk hit a little too close to home?

Alain de Botton Religion for Atheists: A non-believer's guide to the uses of religion Murdoch likes to support religious causes (Catholicism) and candidates (Rick Santorum) but he's pretty comfortable delving into a book tailored to atheists. "Just read Religion for Atheists," he tweeted earlier this month. "Great writing, thoughtful, disturbing...Highly recommend." The book is advertised as a guidebook for atheists on how to "look to religions for insights into how to build a sense of community, make our relationships last, get more out of art, overcome feelings of envy and inadequacy, and much more."

David Shenk The Genius in All of Us A book with a rather uplifting premise, Shenk's tome rejects the "long-standing notion of genetic 'giftedness,' and presents dazzling new scientific research showing how greatness is in the reach of every individual." Murdoch hasn't finished reading it but it sounds like he's skeptical of mankind's universal potential. "Just starting on much acclaimed 'The Genius in All of Us' by David Shenk. Hard to reconcile with all these tweets, including mine!"

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.

The South Coast, a 30-mile drive from Palo Alto, is facing an affordable-housing shortage that is jeopardizing its agricultural heritage.

On the drive up the coast from the southernmost part of Northern California’s San Mateo County, Highway 1’s two lanes are surrounded by wind-whipped seas on one side and redwood forests on the other. The landscape is dotted with wild yellow mustard in the spring and pumpkins in the fall. A popular place for day-trippers to picnic, go wine-tasting, and shop at roadside farm stands, the region—affectionately nicknamed “the Slowcoast” for its unhurried pace—is a balm to the busyness nearby in Silicon Valley, to the east, and San Francisco, to the north.

Home to fewer than 3,000 people, the South Coast is the least densely populated part of the Bay Area. While it feels like a region unto itself, it is part of San Mateo County, which is where—just over the Santa Cruz Mountains—several big tech companies, such as Facebook and Oracle, are based. South of those firms’ campuses (in Santa Clara County) are the well-known tech hubs of Mountain View, Cupertino, and Palo Alto. San Mateo County is also the home of some of the wealthiest tech executives: The city of Atherton, about a 30-mile drive from the South Coast, was, according to Forbes, the country’s most expensive zip code in 2015 and the third-most expensive in 2016. The countywide median price for a single-family home reached $1.2 million last year.