Book excerpt: Newhouse is the first full-scale biography of the turbulent life and business career of Samuel I. Newhouse, Jr., who could arguably be described as the most powerful private citizen in America. Controlling a fortune estimated to be in excess of thirteen billion dollars, Si and his brother Donald are richer than the Queen of England, or Bill Gates, or Ross Perot, or any of the Kennedys, Rockefellers, or Hearsts. But Newhouse is not primarily about the accumulation of money by a family that two generations ago was literally impoverished. Rather, it is a book about power.