Up All Night

The definitive, wild inside story of how Ted Turner changed the world. An NPR Best Book of the Year.

With the passing of media titan Ted Turner, the world is looking back at the "Mouth of the South"—the visionary, yachtsman, and philanthropist who fundamentally disrupted how humanity consumes information. But before he was a global icon, he was a billboard magnate with a "lunatic" idea: a 24-hour news channel launched from the basement of an abandoned Atlanta country club.

In Up All Night, journalist Lisa Napoli delivers a breezy, anecdote-rich account of the birth of CNN. It's a story of high-stakes gambles, a motley crew of non-union newbies, and the charismatic, uncontrollable founder who turned a struggling UHF station into a global empire.

How did we move from a world of three networks and a half-hour nightly broadcast to the era of the "breaking news" crawl? The answer lies in Turner’s relentless ambition and his refusal to accept that "no news is good news."

Up All Night honors the legacy of a man who succeeded beyond his own wildest imaginings, paving the way for the digital age and the 24/7 world we live in today.