(FORTUNE Magazine) – In 2001 journalist Ken Auletta profiled CNN founder Ted Turner for The New Yorker and subsequently won a National Magazine Award for his depiction of Turner's evolution from regional outdoor-advertising businessman to media mogul. Now comes the book, Media Man: Ted Turner's Improbable Empire, which includes material that couldn't be squeezed into the previous story and new material based on 15 additional hours of interviews with Turner.

Turner is the rare businessman who speaks before he thinks, which makes for plenty of delightful anecdotes. He tells other executives that they are too fat. He declares that if he had it to do over again, he wouldn't have as many children--"I can't shoot them now that they're here." One of his more Turneresque moments comes at a 1999 address to the American Chamber of Commerce in Berlin. In an off-the-cuff speech, Turner tells a largely German audience that they had had a bad century, being on the losing side of two wars and all, but that when he bought the Braves, they couldn't win either. "If the Atlanta Braves could do it," he says, "then Germany can do it."

Outrageousness aside, Auletta is deft at capturing the other sides to Turner--for example, his genuine concern for the planet, and how a Warner Bros. cartoon movie called The Iron Giant brought him to tears.

Perhaps the best reason to read the book rather than the article, however, is that Auletta fleshes out the characters around Turner (Gerald Levin, Dick Parsons)--making the story feel more complete. Perhaps it should have been titled Media Men. Somehow, though, we doubt that Turner would want to share the spotlight. -- Ellen Florian