Jack Lear is the hero of Tycoon, a bigger-than-life-figure with a chip on his shoulder who rises from a modest Jewish background to take on the WASP world on his own terms, without ever quite succeeding in his ambition to become accepted as one of them, as he secretly yearns to be.
He makes a great fortune as a pioneering radio and television broadcaster, founds a landmark network, not only gets his own back on the WASP bankers who are his natural enemies by seducing their daughters and wives, but marries two WASP princesses, yet at the end, despite his money, his fame, his women, his art collection, he continues to hunger for what he cannot have. Lear is based on the figure of the late Bill Paley, founder of CBS, a man of protean appetites and grand ambitions, instantly attractive to women and determined to sleep with many of them.
