In 1983, he and partners bought Investment Dealer's Digest and sold it three years later for approximately 40 times the purchase price.
He received widespread attention in 1987 for his attempt to acquire Harper & Row (now HarperCollins) for a reported $190 million, but was outbid by Rupert Murdoch.
[1] Cross took a leave of absence from his job working as general counsel for Sheraton hotels and participated in the voting rights marches of 1965.
Cross later served as an adviser to the Richard Nixon and Lyndon B. Johnson administrations.
[5] Cross also founded Birders United, a group formed in 2004 to oppose President George W. Bush's reelection on habitat destruction grounds, but who later expanded its role to a general political watchdog group for bird habitats.