The best business books are almost always the ones about scandal.

Success is great, but it's much more interesting to read about a convoluted web of lies designed to bilk investors out of $500 million over 20 years in what is possibly the largest Ponzi scheme in U.S. history (with the exception of Social Security).

In The Hit Charade: Lou Pearlman, Boy Bands, and the Biggest Ponzi Scheme in U.S. History, Radar reporter Tyler Gray examines boy band mogul Lou Perlman's illustrious career that involved deception from the beginning. It started with an airline that didn't own any planes but was able to raise hundreds of millions to fund a lavish lifestyle and later provide the start-up capital to form hit boy bands including N'SYNC, The Backstreet Boys, and O-Town.

Gray writes well, with an eye for what's interesting and relevant -- I read the entire book in an afternoon, and The Hit Charade isn't bogged down with the minutiae of the scam the way that so many of these books are. Instead it paints an interesting portrait of a complex charlatan -- Gray was the only reporter to interview Pearlman while he was behind bars.

What sets Pearlman apart from so many other frauds is that his impact is so enduring: He created the soundtrack for a generation of teenage girls, and paved the way for Justin Timberlake to become one of the biggest pop stars ever. Without Lou Pearlman, there never would have been this.

In a press release, Callaway Golf (NYSE: ELY) announced that it has signed former NSYNC'er and current pop prince Justin Timberlake to an endorsement deal.

Timberlake, who currently hosts the PGA Tour's Justin Timberlake Shriners Hospitals for Children Open, will "play a full complement of Callaway Golf clubs, golf balls and will carry a bag branded with the Company's logo."

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but here's my question: Would you -- would anyone? -- buy Callaway golf clubs because Justin Timberlake plays them? He may be one of the better celebrity hackers, but he's no Tiger Woods.

The endorsement deal will probably get Callaway's logo to show up in places you don't normally see it: US Weekly, People and PerezHilton. But are those really places Callaway will benefit from exposure?

It's hard to imagine that regulators are still fretting over Janet Jackson's naked nipple more than three years later, but somehow this contretemps is still working its way through the courts.

According to The New York Times, CBS (NYSE: CBS) has asked a three-judge panel in a federal court to reverse a $550,000 fine levied on the company by the Federal Communications Commission for broadcast indecency. A lawyer for the company argued that CBS had taken steps prior to that 2004 Super Bowl to install an audio delay system to allow for the blocking of profanity, but did not yet have visual equipment set up to do the same thing.

Michael K. Powell, the FCC Chairman at the time of the stunt, had said that he and his family were outraged by the ""classless, crass and deplorable stunt."

Oh please! Janet Jackson's nipple was on television for half a second. We have daily coverage of violence on the evening news, often with graphic pictures of bloody corpses. We have exhaustive coverage of Larry Craig's footsie-playing in public restrooms, and there's even a reality show version of Lord of the Flies.

And we're still talking about Janet Jackson's nipple. CBS appears to be appealing the decision on purely symbolic grounds. The $550,000 fine is in no way material to such a large company, but they're standing up for some kind of principle, however obscure. That's a rarity in business these days.