Ed Snider

Rather than the familiar tale of a wealthy man who buys a sports team for fun, this biography follows Ed Snider, who gained control of the Philadelphia Flyers by pledging nearly all of his personal assets. He went on to serve as the team's longtime chairman and built Comcast-Spectacor into a business empire worth a billion dollars. Author Alan Bass shows how that climb made Snider one of the most influential businessmen in Philadelphia's history, so much so that he was once named the city's greatest mover and shaker of the millennium.

Snider emerges as an ambitious, hands-on entrepreneur who could be exacting to the point of harshness with the people who worked for him. He was devoted to his family and close friends, yet he often seemed unaware of how his behavior affected others and lacked the emotional awareness people might expect of him.

His firm free-market convictions existed alongside progressive ideas about how hockey should be run and a willingness to share his fortune with people in need. Bass presents all of these sides of Snider to build a layered portrait of a figure with few peers in the city's history.