Although Lovell had merely approached Ecclestone's former wife, Ivy, and his daughter, Deborah, and asked for permission to interview them - and had been politely turned away in each case - what had gotten to Ecclestone was much different and sent Ecclestone into a fury which was directed at Lovell. Although Lovell tried to explain himself, all that mattered to Ecclestone was that someone had approached his family asking questions.

Questions. One of the things that lingers in my mind after closing the book upon reading the last page is that, well, there are questions that the answers to are not exactly an endorsement for wanting to deal with Mr. Ecclestone. While Ecclestone makes much of his excellent memory and that his word is his bond, there are excellent reasons to doubt both. Throughout the book there are repeated claims by Ecclestone to not remember or call people or deals that he allegedly had made. That there is a curious tendency for Ecclestone to "forget" items not necessarily beneficial to his affairs is perhaps just a coincidence.

One image that popped into my mind time after time as I read Bernie's Game was that of Gordon Gekko in the movie Wall Street giving his "greed is good" speech. That is certainly a sentiment that Ecclestone seems to have taken to heart. Like Gordon Gekko, Bernard Ecclestone fervently believes that, "Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cut through and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit." I wonder if this is not perhaps a reason for the appearance of Michael Douglas at more than a few Grands Prix over the years.

As mentioned, this is not the work of one a Scribe engaged in covering the comings-and-goings of the Formula One world. This produces a few howlers that will raise yelps from the Purists and their modern equivalents, the Internet F1 Fans. However, to single out pink-liveried Yardley BRM's or NASCAR being the acronym for "North American Sports Car Racing," to mention but a few, is to miss the entire point of the book: the story of Bernie Ecclestone and how he came to dominate Formula One. And, as a consequence, turn Formula One into something that is difficult to look at in quite the same way again after reading the book.

I will fully admit that I had a difficult time reading this book. It was not because of the howlers that I've mentioned or that it could have used the hand of a stronger editor in a number of places. No, it was because the Bernie Ecclestone who emerges is someone with whom it is difficult to feel much empathy. While I genuinely tried to approach this book with an open mind - after all, until you have a better command of the information available you can ride way up a mental box canyon - I found myself becoming more and more annoyed, disturbed, irritated, and disgusted with Ecclestone. This is not to say that Ecclestone is not without his merits, but somehow one finds it easy to cast a dubious eye event on those since he sees everything in the light of what benefits him.

Nor does Ecclestone's usual business partner, Max Mosley, come off very well in this book. It was with a sense of creeping dread that I read the story of how Ecclestone and Mosley went from being the Bolsheviks storming the Winter Palace to being the Emperor and his trusted advisor. The same can be said of Jean-Marie Balestre. He, too, emerges a much - if possible - diminished man when you realize the deals that he, Mosley, and Ecclestone were to craft and which Formula One is still having to live with.

One is supposed to have a certain detachment when reviewing or discussing a book such as Bernie's Game. After all, Ecclestone is not known for his tolerance of dissent or any challenges to his control over the world of Formula One. This crossed my mind as I remembered the feeling of standing outside the Formula One Paddock at Indianapolis last year. This resembled exactly what it was supposed to be - a secure compound, much as one would expect on a military base after 9/11. Cocooned safely inside were the moneyed fellow voyagers of Ecclestone and Gekko, whose idea of Formula One was more a matter of making and breaking deal than any sense of sport or the actual racing that took place on the track.

While it had been years since I last attended a Grand Prix event, the 1984 Dallas Grand Prix, I left Indianapolis having had my fill with Bernie Ecclestone and Formula One. The whole atmosphere surrounding the event was a bit surreal. The players - the teams - were completely isolated from the fans as well as the action on the track spotty and remote. I freely admit that while I had expected to attend the USGP as a member of the "working press" - whatever that means these days - and then ran into a small "problem" that left me at loose ends to wander around the Speedway to hobnob with the likes of the Historic Grand Prix crowd and great folks like B.S. Levy. I left with the thought that it would be a very cold day in Hell before I ever attended a Formula One race. Truth in advertising as they say.

At the end of Bernie's Game, Lovell summarizes Ecclestone in a manner which had me nodding my head time and time again. Lovell sums up Ecclestone, correctly in my view, this way:

For Ecclestone has never been an innovator, a creative person bursting with ideas, able to create the product and the market. Throughout his life his true skill has been in picking low-hanging fruit.

And a former team owner and associate is quoted by Lovell as follows:

There is a lot of the Emperor's new clothes about what Bernie has done. When you really look at it, when you get all the newspaper crap out of your eyes, it's been the support and hard graft of others who have made it work, from the teams down. What Bernie did was to cash in on it all so ruthlessly.

The very last line of the book is taken from the Gospel of St. Matthew (16:26): "What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world yet forfeits his soul?" At many points during the book I kept expecting to feel some sense of that empathy I found myself unconsciously searching for as I read the book. Lovell does not tar and feather Ecclestone by slanting the book in an ad hominem hatchet job. Lovell takes surprising efforts to allow Ecclestone the opportunity to respond to and refute material that others had given him during the period he was researching the book. However, the record that Ecclestone leaves is not one that is easily ignored in its single-minded ruthlessness. Ecclestone set out to own Formula One and to ensure that there was nothing capable of challenging it.

I don't dislike Bernie Ecclestone. Nor does, in my opinion, Terry Lovell. It is that it simply difficult to like someone who is devoid of any real, well, "soul." People like Ecclestone, those to whom power and money are the only elements of life, if indeed the very reason for existing, make tradeoffs. Terry Lovell chronicles the story of how those tradeoffs left us with the Bernard Charles Ecclestone of today, a used motorcycle and used car salesman with a will of cold, tempered steel, who is now a billionaire. It is easier to love a shark, in my view, than Bernie Ecclestone. At least the shark serves a purpose, whereas what purpose has Ecclestone really served beyond his own narrow interests?