Behind Closed Doors: The Rise and Fall of Canada's Edper Bronfman and Reichmann Empires

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian studies at
Concordia University, and the author of Kurlek, Margaret Laurence: The
Long Journey Home, and As Though Life Mattered: Leo Kennedy’s Story.

Business reporter and financial columnist Susan Gittins tackles a
labyrinthine topic with energy and a taste for detail. Behind Close
Doors weaves biography, business history, and financial intrigue into a
heady mix that reads, in part, like an adventure novel. Within a
generation, Edward and Peter Bronfman had gained control of assets
totalling $100 billion, while the Reichmanns had become the world’s
biggest real-estate developer. The two families were first opponents,
later friends. Gittins traces their ambitious origins, their corporate
warfare, and the eventual miscalculations that almost destroyed both
empires.

In the “Author’s Notes,” Gittins documents earlier studies of her
material, especially Peter Newman’s The Canadian Establishment (1981)
and The Bronfman Dynasty (1978), Diane Francis’s Controlling Interest
(1986), and Peter Foster’s Towers of Debt (1993). Behind Closed Doors
updates the data and affords some new angles.