Matter Of Principle

I never ask for mercy and seek no one's sympathy. I would never as was once needlessly feared in this court be a fugitive from justice in this country only a seeker of it." --Conrad Black in his statement to the court June 24 2011 In 1993 Conrad Black was the proprietor of London's "Daily Telegraph" and the head of one of the world's largest newspaper groups. He completed a memoir in 1992 "A Life in Progress " and "great prospects beckoned." In 2004 he was fired as chairman of Hollinger International after he and his associates were accused of fraud. Here for the first time Black describes his indictment four-month trial in Chicago partial conviction imprisonment and largely successful appeal. In this unflinchingly revealing and superbly written memoir Black writes without reserve about
the prosecutors who mounted a campaign to destroy him and the journalists who presumed he was guilty. Fascinating people fill these pages from prime ministers and presidents to the social legal and media elite among them: Margaret Thatcher Tony Blair George W. Bush Jean Chretien Rupert Murdoch Izzy Asper Richard Perle Norman Podhoretz Eddie Greenspan Alan Dershowitz and Henry Kissinger. Woven throughout are Black's views on big themes: politics corporate governance and the U.S. justice system. He is candid about highly personal subjects including his friendships - with those who have supported and those who have betrayed him - his Roman Catholic faith and his marriage to Barbara Amiel. And he writes about his complex relations with Canada Great Britain and the United States and in
particular the blow he has suffered at the hands of that nation. In this extraordinary book Black maintains his innocence and recounts what he describes as "the fight of and for my life." "A Matter of Principle" is a riveting memoir and a scathing account of a flawed justice system."