| Introduction: Welcome to the Party | p. ix |
| Straight Out of Brooklyn | p. 1 |
| A New Life Back in New York | p. 27 |
| Running Columbia Records | p. 44 |
| Columbia Gets Hot | p. 72 |
| Simon and Garfunkel | p. 100 |
| Talent Raids and Finding the Company's Soul | p. 149 |
| Recovering from Shattering Losses | p. 13 |
| Making A&R Moves | p. 53 |
| A Harvard Man | p. 19 |
| What Kind of Career Do I Want? | p. 125 |
| From Santana to Springsteen | p. 133 |
| The Offer That Changed My Life | p. 34 |
| Monterey Pop | p. 64 |
| Pearl | p. 89 |
| Dylan | p. 110 |
| The End of One Fantasy | p. 163 |
| Searching for a New Beginning | p. 179 |
| Arista Means Excellence | p. 186 |
| Manilow Mania | p. 192 |
| Building a New Label | p. 206 |
| Patti Smith and Lou Reed | p. 220 |
| Ready to Rock | p. 231 |
| The Grateful Dead | p. 241 |
| Gil Scott-Heron and Ghostbusters | p. 251 |
| Broadway, Soundtracks, and Comedy | p. 263 |
| Dionne Warwick | p. 271 |
| The Queen of Soul | p. 278 |
| New Wave, Heavy Metal, and Eurythmics | p. 297 |
| Whitney | p. 307 |
| Beyond the House That Barry Built | p. 341 |
| Arista Pop Explodes ... into Milli Vanilli | p. 355 |
| Arista Nashville and New Country Music | p. 373 |
| LaFace Rules! | p. 385 |
| Bad Boy | p. 400 |
| Sarah McLachlan, Ace of Base, and the Freewheeling Nineties | p. 412 |
| Supernatural Santana | p. 423 |
| Instant Major | p. 435 |
| Alicia | p. 452 |
| The J Records Years | p. 462 |
| Rod Stewart and the Great American Songbook | p. 472 |
| Rock at the Dawn of the Twenty-first Century | p. 483 |
| American Idol and Kelly Clarkson | p. 498 |
| More on the Idol Franchise | p. 517 |
| Accepting Change and Moving Forward | p. 536 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 553 |
| Index | p. 555 |