JAMES SCURLOCK - King Larry

From Howard Hughes to Mark Zuckerberg, the public has always been fascinated by larger-than-life entrepreneurs and their eccentricities. Now, James Scurlock engages us with the riveting story of one such man, Larry Hillblom, who dressed in rags and lived in relative obscurity, but who has had a profound and lasting influence—a pioneer who shrank the globe, toppled the postal monopoly, anticipated electronic mail, and, most important, envisioned a world driven by economics rather than by laws.

King Larry is a three-part journey, beginning with the early years of a mercurial young man who grew up fatherless on a peach farm outside of Fresno, California. Months after graduating from Boalt Hall School of Law in 1969, Larry Hillblom cofounded DHL—three years before FedEx was formed—and it quickly became the fastest-growing corporation in history. Hillblom’s expatriate life began twelve years later, when he retreated to a small tax haven in the Western Pacific. There, James Scurlock reveals, Hillblom led the resistance to American meddling in the Mariana Islands, rewrote the tax code and real-estate laws, and became a Supreme Court justice—among other unlikely exploits. When his vintage seaplane disappeared off the coast of Anatahan in May 1995, he left behind an estate worth close to a billion dollars. Weeks later, five impoverished women and their attorneys came forward to challenge Hillblom’s will, his former business partners, and his alma mater, provoking a legal battle that has raged for over fifteen years. 

James D. Scurlock studied at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania before dropping out to pursue an entrepreneurial venture and later a documentary film career. His first film, Parents of the Year, won numerous awards and was an official selection of more than twenty-five film festivals. His first feature-length documentary, Maxed Out, explored our culture of debt and won the Special Jury Prize at South by Southwest. His first book, a companion to the award-winning documentary, was nominated for the National MS Society's "Books for a Better Life" Award. He has written, primarily about the impending (and now realized) financial crisis, for Slate, Newsweek, The Huffington Post, and AARP Magazine, among others. He has also appeared on numerous programs, including Nightline, The Today Show, and CNBC's Power Lunch.

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