Crowd gathering on Wall
Street after the 1929 crash
In The Startup Game: Inside the Partnership between Venture Capitalists and Entrepreneurs, Wililam H. Draper writes: I was born in 1982, so I was only an infant when these fateful decisions were made. But I gradually became aware that in the Draper household, money was tight. I remember, for example, that throughout my childhood, my father would invariably return the Christmas gifts that my mother bought for him, because he felt that the family needed the cash more than he needed a present. My father was by nature a hard worker, bu in those difficult years, he drove himself at a punishing pace as he struggled to hang on to his investment banking job, in the deepest and darkest economic depression that our country had ever faced.
“In 1962, when my partner, [Franklin] "Pitch" Johnson, and I started our first company, Draper & Johnson, we got no action. We would sit around waiting for the phone to ring. It didn't, so we drove out into the fruit orchards—remember, it wasn't Silicon Valley back then. We'd look for companies with names that sounded like they might have something to do with technology or at least like they weren't warehouses for prunes. When we saw a promising sign, we'd knock on the door and ask the receptionist, "Is the president in?" A man would come out—usually our age, early 30s. And he'd ask, "What do you do?" We'd say, "We're in the venture capital business. We buy a minority interest in a private company and help it grow."”
“Most of all, I am looking for judgment. Why did he make certain choices in life? For example, I'm not in favor of serial entrepreneurs. If they've changed jobs every two years, I'm suspicious, even if they did a good job running things. I also pay a lot of attention to where they went to college, because it shows whether they took their education seriously. If they went to a top college: good. If they were top of their class at a second-tier college: terrific. It means they worked really hard. I have not had very good luck with Ph.D.'s. But I have had excellent luck with Ph.D. candidates who left early because they wanted to start their companies without waiting the seven years for a degree. Maybe someone with the patience to wait that long is not going to be a very good entrepreneur.”
In January 2011, Luke Johnson wrote “Memoir eclipses venture capital textbooks” for the Financial Times. Draper’s story is an unusual one. His father was a pioneer in venture capital, and his son Tim has become a hugely successful venture capitalist too, at Draper Fisher Jurvetson. They must be the only family where three generations have worked as VCs. And it seems one of Tim’s sons might carry on the tradition. The book also reveals an interesting fact: ex-generals helped establish the industry – both General Georges Doriot, the true inventor of the model, and General Anderson, co-founder of Draper Gaither and Anderson, the first Palo Alto VC firm, set up with the author and his father in 1960.
“One of the most passionate and energetic entrepreneurs I know is Jonathan Bush, whom I met in New Hampshire when he was 18 years old and out campaigning for his uncle, George H.W. Bush. Jonathan was everywhere—knocking on doors, working phone banks, driving around on a truck with a megaphone. He really inspired people. Later, he connected with me when he wanted to start Athenahealth, which offers billing, electronic records, and other services for medical providers. We supported him, and I also got the Rockefellers to invest, as well as my son's firm. Athenahealth became a fine, rapidly growing company and had a very successful IPO a few years ago, in which we got back 10 times our investment.”
In January 2011, Janet Maslin wrote “But Will It All Make ‘Tiger Mom’ Happy?” for The New York Times. “There are all these new books out there portraying Asian mothers as scheming, callous, overdriven people indifferent to their kids’ true interests,” Amy Chua writes. She ought to know, because hers is the big one: “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,” a diabolically well-packaged, highly readable screed ostensibly about the art of obsessive parenting. In truth, Ms. Chua’s memoir is about one little narcissist’s book-length search for happiness. And for all its quotable outbursts from Mama Grisly (the nickname was inevitable), it will gratify the same people who made a hit out of the granola-hearted “Eat, Pray, Love.” You might wonder how this is possible. In “Eat, Pray, Love,” Elizabeth Gilbert presented herself as a seeker of solace, whereas Ms. Chua eagerly overacts the role of wicked witch. The litany of her outrages has made her an instant conversation piece. What kind of mother throws her 3-year-old out in the cold? (“You can’t stay in the house if you don’t listen to Mommy.”) Or complains that her family’s pet rabbits aren’t smart enough? (“They were unintelligent and not at all what they claimed to be.”) Or, most memorably, makes her two daughters’ music lessons so grueling that one girl leaves tooth marks on the piano?
“In Disney movies, the [studious kid] always has to have a breakdown and realize that life is not all about following rules and winning prizes, and then take off her clothes and run into the ocean or something like that. But that's just Disney's way of appealing to all the people who never win any prizes. Winning prizes gives you opportunities, and that's freedom - not running into the ocean.”
“Chinese parents can do things that would seem unimaginable — even legally actionable — to Westerners. Chinese mothers can say to their daughters, "Hey fatty — lose some weight." By contrast, Western parents have to tiptoe around the issue, talking in terms of "health" and never ever mentioning the f-word, and their kids still end up in therapy for eating disorders and negative self-image. ... Western parents are concerned about their children's psyches. Chinese parents aren't. They assume strength, not fragility, and as a result they behave very differently.”
In January 2011, Maureen Corrigan wrote “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother” for NPR. Amy Chua may well be nuts. What kind of a mother hauls her then-7-year-old daughter's dollhouse out to the car and tells the kid that the dollhouse is going to be donated to the Salvation Army piece by piece if the daughter doesn't master a difficult piano composition by the next day? What kind of a mother informs her daughter that she's "garbage"? And what kind of mother believes, as Amy Chua tells readers she does, that: "an A- is a bad grade; ... the only activities your children should be permitted to do are those in which they can eventually win a medal; and ... that medal must be gold"? What kind of a mother? Why, a mother who's raising her kids the Chinese, rather than the Western, way. In her new memoir, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, Amy Chua recounts her adventures in Chinese parenting, and — nuts though she may be — she's also mesmerizing. Chua's voice is that of a jovial, erudite serial killer — think Hannibal Lecter — who's explaining how he's going to fillet his next victim, as though it's the most self-evidently normal behavior. That's the other gripping aspect of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother: There's method to Amy Chua's madness — enough method to stir up self-doubt in readers who subscribe to more nurturing parenting styles. Trust me, Battle Hymn is going to be a book club and parenting blog phenomenon; there will be fevered debate over Chua's tough love strategies, which include ironclad bans on such Western indulgences as sleepovers, play dates, and any extracurricular activities except practicing musical instruments ... which must be the violin or piano. Listen to the podcast of that episode of NPR's Fresh Air about the Amy Chua book, here.
Based on the product description, provided for by the publisher: With the same directness that defined his career in public service, Donald Rumsfeld's memoir is filled with never before disclosed or otherwise revealed details and insights about the Bush administration, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as September 11. It also features Donald Rumsfeld's singularly surprising observations on over 80 years of history: his experiences growing up during the Great Depression and World War II, Rumsfeld's time as a Naval aviator as well; his service in Congress starting at the relatively young age of 30; his cabinet level positions in the Nixon and Ford White Houses; his assignments in the Reagan administration; and his years as a successful business executive in the private sector. Donald Rumsfeld addresses the challenges and controversies of his career, from the unseating of the entrenched House Republican leader in 1965, to helping the Ford administration steer the country away from Watergate and Vietnam, to bruising battles over transforming the military for the 21st century, to the war in Iraq, to confronting abuse at Abu Ghraib and allegations of torture at Guantanamo Bay. Along the way, he offers his plainspoken, first-hand views and often humorous and surprising anecdotes about some of the world's best known figures, from Margaret Thatcher to Saddam Hussein, from Henry Kissinger to Colin Powell, from Elvis Presley to Dick Cheney, and each American president from Dwight D. Eisenhower to George W. Bush. Rumsfeld relies not only on his memory but also on previously unreleased and recently declassified documents. Thousands of pages of documents not yet seen by the public will be made available on an accompanying website. Known and Unknown delivers both a fascinating narrative for today's readers and an unprecedented resource for tomorrow's historians. Proceeds from the sales of Known and Unknown will go to the veterans charities supported by the Rumsfeld Foundation.
Regarding the "Unknown" statement: The "there are known knowns..." statement was made at a press briefing given by former US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on February 12, 2002. Rumsfeld's statement relating to the absence of evidence linking the government of Iraq with the supply of weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups was criticised as an abuse of language, but defended as reflecting a profound, almost philosophical truth. Rumsfeld's defenders have included Canadian columnist Mark Steyn, who called it "in fact a brilliant distillation of quite a complex matter", and Australian economist and blogger John Quiggin, who wrote, "Although the language may be tortured, the basic point is both valid and important ... Having defended Rumsfeld, I’d point out that the considerations he refers to provide the case for being very cautious in going to war."
"[T]here are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know." - United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
In January of 2011, Michael Rubin at the National Review Online, posted "Debunking the Crudest Iranian Propaganda," in which he said this: Not only in Najaf, but throughout Iraq, there was an outraged buzz about rumors that former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had met with — and bribed — Grand Ayatollah Sistani. These reports — which originated on Iranian-backed Arabic news sites — are flatly untrue and are meant to discredit Grand Ayatollah Sistani. The Iranians know that it is the independent Shiites in Iraq which pose the greatest threat to the Iranian regime, since independent Shiite scholarship undercuts the theological legitimacy which the Iranian leadership seeks to claim.
In response to the rumor, Donald Rumsfeld’s office released this statement:
“The rumors currently making the rounds in some Arabic press outlets that allege Mr. Rumsfeld’s forthcoming memoir contains information about meeting with and bribing Grand Ayatollah Sistani are as laughable and inaccurate as they are disprovable. People will be able to see for themselves exactly what is in Known and Unknown when it becomes public on February 8.
Suffice it to say that Rumsfeld did not offer to pay for any of Grand Ayatollah Sistani’s opinions, nor would he have even entertained the thought. Furthermore, Rumsfeld never met with Sistani. Suggestions to the contrary are flat untrue.
Grand Ayatollah Sistani was and remains a courageous but distinctly independent voice in Iraq. It’s worth noting that the misinformation campaign began in Iranian-backed press outlets and looks to be nothing more than a not so clever attempt to mislead and sow mistrust among Iraqis.”
Meanwhile, Michael Crowley over at Time Magazine had this to say on the issue: NRO's Michael Rubin delivers the strange report that Iraq is abuzz with a rumor that Donald Rumsfeld met secretly with that country's powerful Shiite Grand Ayatollah Sistani before the U.S. invasion and offered him a massive bribe, purportedly so Sistani would tell his followers not to resist the Americans. It is a reminder, though, that Rummy's much-anticipated book--one that some people expect to hit hard and settle multiple scores--will be landing quite soon.
An American Life is the 1990 autobiography authored by former American President Ronald Reagan. Released almost two years after President Reagan left office, the book reached number eight on The New York Times' bestsellers list. The book is composed of 748 pages, describing Reagan's life from his birth in Tampico, Illinois, to his acting career, marriages, entrance into politics, years as Governor of California, loss in the 1976 Republican primary, and finally his years as President of the United States. Reviewer John O'Sullivan says of Reagan, "[H]e shows a tendency, where other people's feelings are concerned, to gloss over unpleasantness in a way which does him credit as a Christian, but detracts somewhat from his value as a historian." He revealed the events that led to his reluctant 1976 candidacy, as well as his relationships with members of Congress and his views on the world and the Cold War.
Reagan was married twice: the first to actress Jane Wyman (1917–2007) from 1940 to 1948. Reagan only mentions her in one paragraph in the book, saying "it didn't work out" but that the marriage "produced two wonderful children." He married Nancy Davis in 1952, saying in the biography "Sometimes, I think my life really began when I met Nancy."
Shawn Corey Carter (born December 4, 1969), better known by his stage name Jay-Z, is an American rapper and businessperson. He is one of the most financially successful hip-hop artists and entrepreneurs in America having had a net worth of over $450 million in 2010. He has sold approximately 50 million albums worldwide, while receiving ten Grammy Awards for his musical work, and numerous additional nominations. Jay-Z co-owns The 40/40 Club, is part owner of the NBA's New Jersey Nets and is the creator of the clothing line Rocawear. He is the former CEO of Def Jam Recordings, one of the three founders of Roc-A-Fella Records, and the founder of Roc Nation. As an artist, he holds the record for most number one albums by a solo artist on the Billboard 200. Jay-Z also has had four number ones on the Billboard Hot 100, one as lead artist. Along with his financial and musical success, Jay-Z is known for quarreling with other artists in the rap industry, the most famous feud being between him and fellow New York rapper Nas, which was eventually settled in 2005. He married American R&B superstar Beyoncé Knowles on April 4, 2008. On December 11, 2009, Jay-Z was ranked as the 10th most successful artist of the 2000–2009 decade by Billboard Magazine and ranking as the 5th top solo male artist and as the 4th top rapper behind Eminem, Nelly, and 50 Cent. Source: Wikipedia.
Excerpt (Jay-Z on Bono): The writer had asked me about the U2 record that was about to be released and I said something about the kind of pressure a group like that must be under just to meet their own standard. Bono told me that my quote had really gotten to him. In fact, he said it got him a little anxious. He decided to go back to the studio even though the album was already done and keep reworking it till he thought it was as good as it could possibly be.
Excerpt (Jay-Z on assault charges): People kept giving me the same name as the source of the bootlegging. It was someone I knew, someone I never would have suspected. One night I went to Q-Tip's solo album release party and at some point in the night, I ran into the guy everyone's been telling me is behind the bootleg. So I approached him. When I told him what I suspected, to my surprise, he got real loud with me right there in the middle of the club. It was strange. We separated and I went over to the bar. I was sitting there like, 'No the f--- this n---a did not ... " I was talking to people, but I was really talking to myself out loud, just in a state of shock. Before I even realized what I was doing, I headed back over to him, but this time I was blacking out with anger. The next thing I knew, all hell had broken loose in the club. That night the guy went straight to the police and I was charged with assault.
NPR program Fresh Air with Terry Gross featured the author and book on its program in November, 2010. This is what was said on the feature story's webpage:
Long before he sold 50 million records worldwide — and before he appeared alongside Warren Buffett on the cover of Fortune magazine, accumulated 10 Grammy Awards and became the CEO of his own record label — Jay-Z was living with his mom in the Marcy Houses housing project in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, just trying to survive day by day. "It was a very intense and stressful situation," he tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "There was playing in the Johnny-pump (an opened fire hydrant) and the ice-cream man coming around and all of these games that we'd play, and suddenly it would turn just violent and there would be shootings at 12 in the afternoon on any given day. It was a weird mix of emotions. One day, your best friend could be killed. The day before, you could be celebrating him getting a brand-new bike." Now 40, Jay-Z hasn't forgotten his past — or the lyrics he's written over the years about his childhood in the projects. In his new book, Decoded, he unpacks the detailed riffs and lyrics that make up 36 of his songs — while examining both his own life and the growth of hip-hop over the last two decades.
From The New York Times: For legions of Rolling Stones fans, Keith Richards is not only the heart and soul of the world’s greatest rock ’n’ roll band, he’s also the very avatar of rebellion: the desperado, the buccaneer, the poète maudit, the soul survivor and main offender, the torn and frayed outlaw, and the coolest dude on the planet, named both No. 1 on the rock stars most-likely-to-die list and the one life form (besides the cockroach) capable of surviving nuclear war. Halfway through his electrifying new memoir, “Life,” Keith Richards writes about the consequences of fame: the nearly complete loss of privacy and the weirdness of being mythologized by fans as a sort of folk-hero renegade. “I can’t untie the threads of how much I played up to the part that was written for me,” he says. “I mean the skull ring and the broken tooth and the kohl. Is it half and half? I think in a way your persona, your image, as it used to be known, is like a ball and chain. People think I’m still a goddamn junkie. It’s 30 years since I gave up the dope! Image is like a long shadow. Even when the sun goes down, you can see it.” By turns earnest and wicked, sweet and sarcastic and unsparing, Mr. Richards, now 66, writes with uncommon candor and immediacy. He’s decided that he’s going to tell it as he remembers it, and helped along with notebooks, letters and a diary he once kept, he remembers almost everything. [...] One of this galvanic book’s many achievements is that Mr. Richards has found a way to channel to the reader his own avidity, his own deep soul hunger for music and to make us feel the connections that bind one generation of musicians to another. Along the way he even manages to communicate something of that magic, electromagnetic experience of playing on stage with his mates, be it in a little club or a huge stadium.
"There’s a certain moment when you realize that you’ve actually just left the planet for a bit and that nobody can touch you[...] You’re elevated because you’re with a bunch of guys that want to do the same thing as you. And when it works, baby, you’ve got wings[...] flying without a license."
From The Guardian: The survivor's story is one of the predominant narratives of our time. It usually traces a familiar arc from excess through despair to redemption, and, as such, allows us to enjoy the vicarious thrill of voyeurism within the framework of a cautionary or salutary tale. Life by Keith Richards, the most famous survivor of them all, breaks with this tradition insofar as it contains excess aplenty but hardly any despair and very little redemption. Keith did it all, had a hell of a good time, and survived to brag about it. Life has the macho swagger that rock'n'roll in general – and the Rolling Stones in particular – once possessed. This is both its strength and its weakness. It often reads like a historical document of another time: a lost world in which women were always "chicks" or "bitches", an inflatable giant penis was a non-ironic stage prop, and a bottle of Jack Daniel's was the de rigueur rock'n'roll accessory. The Keith Richards book is a drug memoir of sorts, albeit without the hardcore confessional descriptiveness of the genre. Instead, it is almost casual in its cataloguing of excess: heroin, cocaine, Tuinal, Nembutal, STP, LSD, speedballs, Moroccan hashish, Jamaican ganja, and, inevitably, methadone, are just some of the substances mentioned – often in passing. Consider, for instance, the following passage from the book, which describes his daily breakfast routine during the 70s: "I would take a barbiturate to wake up … a Tuinal, pin it, put a needle in it so it would come on quicker. And then take a hot cup of tea, and then consider getting up or not. And later maybe a Mandrax or a Quaalude… And when the effect wears off after about two hours, you're feeling mellow, you've had a bit of breakfast and you're ready for work."
"People love that image[...] They imagined me, they made me[...] Bless their hearts. And I'll do the best I can to fulfill their needs. They're wishing me to do things that they can't. They've got to do this job, they've got this life, they're an insurance salesman[...] but, inside them, there's a raging Keith Richards."
Keith Richards's upbringing: Keith Richards was the only child of Bert Richards and Doris Dupree Richards. He was born in Dartford, Kent. His father was a factory laborer, who was injured during World War II. Their flat on Chastilian Road was hit by a Nazi V-1 flying bomb on July 5, 1944, while he and his mother were at the hospital, visiting with Bert Richards, who'd been wounded in the Normandy invasion. Keith Richards's paternal grandparents were socialists and civic leaders. His maternal grandfather (Augustus Theodore Dupree), who toured the U.K. in a jazz big band called "Gus Dupree and His Boys," was an early influence on Richards's musical ambitions; it's this grandfather that got Richards interested in the guitar. Richards's mother introduced him to the music of Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, and bought him his first guitar, a Rosetti acoustic. His father was less encouraging, telling his son to "Stop that bloody noise!" Richards's first guitar hero was Scotty Moore. Richards attended Wentworth Primary School, as did Mick Jagger. The two knew each other as schoolboys, and lived in the same neighborhood until 1954. That year, the family moved to what Keith Richards has described as "a fucking soul-destroying council estate at completely the other end of town" that looked like "a disgusting concrete jungle". The move was disorienting for the young Richards, as was his transfer a year later to Dartford Technical School (now and split into two schools named Wilmington Grammar School for Boys and Wilmington Enterprise College), which he attended from 1955 to 1959. The Dartford Tech choirmaster Jake Clair noticed Richards's singing voice and recruited him into the school choir. In a trio of boy sopranos Richards sang (amongst other performances) at Westminster Abbey in front of Queen Elizabeth II.
In 1959, Keith Richards was expelled from Dartford Technical School for truancy, and the headmaster suggested he would be more at home at the art college in the neighboring town of Sidcup. At Sidcup Art College, Richards devoted his time to playing guitar after he heard American blues artists like Little Walter and Big Bill Broonzy. He swapped a pile of records for his first electric guitar, a hollow-body Höfner cutaway.
"There was a lot of music being played at Sidcup, and we'd go into the empty classrooms and fool around with our guitars. ... Even in those days Keith could play most of [Chuck Berry's] solos. In order to stay up late with our music and still get to Sidcup in the morning, Keith and I were on a pretty steady diet of pep pills, which not only kept us awake but gave us a lift. We took all kinds of things – pills that girls took for menstruation, inhalers like Nostrilene, and other stuff. Opposite the college there was this little park with an aviary that had a cockatoo in it. Cocky the Cockatoo we used to call it. Keith used to feed it pep pills and make it stagger around on its perch. If ever we were feeling bored we'd go and give another upper to Cocky." - Dick Taylor
One morning in 1961, on the train journey from Dartford to Sidcup, Richards happened to get into the same carriage as Mick Jagger, who was then a student at the London School of Economics. They recognized each other and began talking about the LPs Jagger had with him (blues as well as R&B albums he had acquired by mail-order from America). Keith Richards was surprised and impressed that Mick Jagger not only shared his enthusiasm for Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters but also that he owned such LPs, as these were extremely rare in Britain at the time. The two discovered that they had a mutual friend in Dick Taylor, with whom Jagger was singing in an amateur band called Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys. Jagger invited Richards to a rehearsal, and soon after, Richards also joined the line-up. The group disbanded after Jagger, Richards and Taylor met Brian Jones and Ian Stewart, with whom they went on to form The Rolling Stones (Taylor left the band in November 1962 to return to art school). By mid-1962 Richards had left Sidcup Art College in favor of pursuing his fledgling musical career and moved into a London flat with Jagger and Jones. His parents divorced at about the same time; Keith Richards maintained close ties with his mother, who was very supportive of his musical activities, but became estranged from his father and did not resume contact with him until 1982. In 1963 Richards dropped the "s" from his surname and began using the professional name "Keith Richard", because Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham felt it "looked more pop". (He used the s-less version as his pen name and stage name until the late 1970s.)
Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption is a 2010 non-fiction novel by Laura Hillenbrand, author of the best-selling book "Seabiscuit: An American Legend". Unbroken is a biography of World War II hero Louis Zamperini. Source: Wikipedia. The New York Times said this about the book: Zamperini joked to Hillenbrand that he’d be an easier subject for her than Seabiscuit because he could talk. But that also presents perils. Though his wartime experiences faded with time, talking about them was pretty much all Zamperini did for years. From more than a thousand retellings, in newspaper and radio interviews and in inspirational speeches — “This Is Your Life” even devoted an episode to him — his story had been sanded down, and while Hillenbrand ably assembles its component parts, she rarely gets beneath the surface. That Zamperini does not seem especially introspective and may have forgotten or repressed certain memories only compounds the problem.
The Statesman had this to say about the author and book: Hillenbrand is careful not to demonize all of the Japanese guards; parts of her account of Zamperini's time as a POW are based on interviews with former Japanese soldiers at the camps who were clearly disturbed at the time by the goings-on. Yet it's hard to sugarcoat some of the incidents she relates. Zamperini was made to clean out a pig's sty with his hands. (He was so hungry that he shoved some of the pig's befouled feed in his mouth.) He was lined up with other officers and hit in the face by the enlisted men at the orders of guards, who finished off the beatings with a kendo stick after two hours of hitting. Like many of the other prisoners, he suffered from dysentery, at one point visiting the latrine as many as 20 times a day.
Decision Points is a memoir by former U.S. President George W. Bush. It was released on November 9, 2010, and the release is being accompanied by national television appearances and a national tour. The book surpassed sales of two million copies less than two months after its release, nearly matching sales of Bill Clinton's memoir, which took six years to achieve. Bush's 481-page memoir is broken up into 14 chapters. The first two chapters are about his life before the presidency. The first chapter is about notable events in his earlier life such as his decision to quit drinking in 1986. The second chapter is about his decision to run for Governor of Texas, and then President of the United States. The remaining twelve chapters are about events during his presidency: the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, aid to developing countries, the "surge" (a decision to deploy more U.S. troops to Iraq in 2007), domestic issues (including Medicare Part D, Social Security reform, No Child Left Behind, and Immigration reform), the federal response to Hurricane Katrina, stem-cell research, and the financial crisis of 2008. He wrote with the research assistance of former White House Deputy Director of Speechwriting Christopher Michel. Source: Wikipedia.
In November of 2010, Spiegel Online reported this about George W. Bush's Decision Points: Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder has said that ex-US President George W. Bush is not telling the truth in his memoirs, released on Tuesday. Schröder said he never offered his unconditional support for Bush's aggressive policy against Iraq. Both ex-German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and former United States President George W. Bush have been out of office for some time. But the enmity which they developed for each other while they were in office seems to have survived.
Also in November of 2010, Ryan Grim through the Huffington Post, reported this:
Crown also got a mash-up of worn-out anecdotes from previously published memoirs written by his subordinates, from which Bush lifts quotes word for word, passing them off as his own recollections. He took equal license in lifting from nonfiction books about his presidency or newspaper or magazine articles from the time. Far from shedding light on how the president approached the crucial "decision points" of his presidency, the clip jobs illuminate something shallower and less surprising about Bush's character: He's too lazy to write his own memoir. Bush, on his book tour, makes much of the fact that he largely wrote the book himself, guffawing that critics who suspected he didn't know how to read are now getting a comeuppance. Not only does Bush know how to read, it turns out, he knows how to Google, too. Or his assistant does. Bush notes in his acknowledgments that "[m]uch of the research for this book was conducted by the brilliant and tireless Peter Rough. Peter spent the past 18 months digging through archives, searching the internet[s], and sifting through reams of paper." Bush also collaborated on the book with his former speechwriter, Christopher Michel.
The author, Rick Bragg, won a Pulitzer Prize for feature writing in 1996, for his work with The New York Times. Rick Bragg recently spoke in front of Alabama's state legislature. The Gadsden Times reported this: “Remember My People,” was Bragg's topic and even though he spun yarns and told good natured tales, there was an edge to his voice several times as he defined just who his people are and how they can be taken advantage of by the powerful. “I know that lucky people, rich people, comfortable people don't need a lot of help,” said Bragg, whose best selling book “All Over But the Shoutin'” is partly the story of growing up dirt poor — “I come from several generations of poor white trash in northeast Alabama,” he said proudly — and his incredibly strong mother who raised him and his two brothers while married to an abusive, alcoholic father. “But I am not asking you to give my people, working people, anything they don't earn,” he said. “But I believe that every society, every great society really is judged by how it treats its working people and poor.See that Gadsden Time piece here. Rick Bragg also wrote these interesting books: The Most They Ever Had, The Prince of Frogtown (Vintage), Ava's Man, and Somebody Told Me: The Newspaper Stories of Rick Bragg.
In 2002, the author, via his webpage, said this about his book and the consequent movie that was inspired by the title:
I feel it is necessary to make the following statement concerning the book and the film, Catch Me If You Can. The reasons for this statement is to provide clarification and accuracy. I wrote the book, Catch Me If You Can, more than 23 years ago. Obviously, this was written from my perspective as a 16-year old with the help of a co-writer (I'm now 54 and I sold the movie rights in 1980). I was interviewed by the co-writer only about four times. I believe he did a great job of telling the story, but he also over dramatized and exaggerated some of the story. That was his style and what the editor wanted. He always reminded me that he was just telling a story and not writing my biography. This is one of the reasons that from the very beginning, I insisted the publisher put a disclaimer in the book and tapes. It has been reported that I had written $10 million, $8 million and $5 million worth of bad checks. The actual amount was $2.5 million. I was never on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List as this is reserved for very violent criminals who pose a threat to society. All of the crimes I committed were when I was between the ages 16 and 21. I served time in prison in France, Sweden and the United States. In the U. S. Federal Court, I was sentenced as a youthful offender because of my age at the time the crimes were committed. Even so, I was given 12 years of which I served a total of five years. This was considered harsh punishment then and almost unheard of today.
The New York Times recently said this about the book:
The graphic-novel genre is no longer young, but it retains, like Drew Barrymore and certain indie bands, a quirky and semi-adorable glow. Its fragile vibe is Etsy, not Best Buy. Attacking a pile of graphic novels is not unlike chucking a sackful of baby pandas into a river. If many graphic novels are, as Barack Obama put it about Hillary Rodham Clinton, likable enough, few are knotty works of art, things you’d eagerly give to both the sulky teenager in your life and your grandmother who reads serious nonfiction and thinks comics are infra-dig. Few zigzag toward the earth like mid-August lightning. The tail end of 2010 has delivered such a keeper, however, in Lauren Redniss’s graphic biography, “Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie: A Tale of Love and Fallout.” Here’s to hoping it doesn’t get lost amid the grog and tinsel and pay-per-view screenings of “Elf.”
Joseph Smith, Jr., first leader
of the Latter Day Saints (Mormons)
The White Horse Prophecy is a statement purported to have been made in 1843 by Joseph Smith, Jr., founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, regarding the future of the Latter Day Saints Mormons and the United States of America. The Latter Day Saints, according to the prophecy, would “go to the Rocky Mountains and ... be a great and mighty people,” identified figuratively with the White Horse described in the Revelation of John. The prophecy further predicts that the United States Constitution will one day “hang like a thread” and will be saved “by the efforts of the White Horse.”
“I heard Barack Obama talk about the Constitution and I thought, we are at the point or we are very near the point where our Constitution is hanging by a thread.”
- Glenn Beck
“I think that Glenn Beck is dangerous. The Anti-Defamation League has said basically, what he has done is he has taken ideas that are on the fringes of the Internet. You know, some of it is far right, talk of Nazis and fascists, the notion that FEMA may be operating concentration camps in Wyoming. And you never want to blame a television personality for some crazy thing that one of his followers do. But there are a lot of people out there who said they believe Beck is giving them a nod and a wink, that it is time to bring violence. And Beck will say, he will say -- he will talk about bullets in the brain. He will talk about fascists; he will talk about secession, a lot violent talk -- always qualified like we want a peaceful resolution to this. But he also says things like, “I want you to hear what I am saying in between the sentences. There may be a time when I’m not able to say what I want to, but hear me screaming to you in between the sentences.” So this, of course, is an invitation to the conspiracy theorists who indeed have cited Beck.”
In March 2010, Joanna Brooks, renowned Mormon scholar and writer, wrote “Glenn Beck Doesn't Speak For The Mormons I Know” for the Huffington Post. This morning at 6 a.m., I received an urgent call from a Presbyterian friend in Atlanta, Georgia. She wanted me to know that Glenn Beck threatened progressive evangelical Christian pastor Jim Wallis during his television and radio broadcasts. "He's gone too far," my Presbyterian friend said. “The only thing that's going to come of this is that Christians in the South will dislike Mormonism even more.” Glenn Beck is a Mormon.
Glenn Beck's progressive
"Tree of Revolution" chalk board
So am I. During the nineteenth century, my Mormon ancestors crossed the plains to live their faith without fear of attack from the mobs that had hounded them out of Missouri and Illinois. Watching Glenn Beck threaten to "bring the hammer down" on another person of faith makes my stomach turn. I could cite a host of scriptures from the Bible and the Book of Mormon about how Beck's attack on Jim Wallis is not in keeping with faith-based values. Suffice it to say, Glenn Beck does not speak for the Mormons I know. Most Mormons I know have quite a bit in common with Reverend Jim Wallis, who has dedicated a life and a career to the service of others. By contrast, Glenn Beck has devoted his life and career to expanding the media footprint of Glenn Beck. He's done whatever it's taken: from cavorting with chimpanzees as a "morning zoo" shock jock to threatening to "bring the hammer down" on people of good will like Jim Wallis. Who knows what kind of ugliness Glenn Beck will trot out when he "brings the hammer down" on Jim Wallis next week. As a Mormon woman, I agree with my Presbyterian friend in Atlanta: Beck has gone too far.
“I don’t want to live like this... Republic’s at stake! ... They’re telling you lies... Don’t you want to live in the country that we thought we lived in? [Beck starts to cry.] I have been a lonely voice for a very long time, and no longer! You can do whatever the hell you want with me. You will replace me.”
- Glenn Beck at a show in Norfolk, Virginia
“The hammer is coming, because little do you know, for eight weeks, we've been compiling information on you, your cute little organization, and all the other cute little people that are with you. And when the hammer comes, it's going to be hammering hard and all through the night, over and over!”
- Glenn Beck
In October 2010, David Oshinsky wrote a review of the Dana Milbank book for The Statesman. The book's title, Tears of a Clown, is also its hypothesis. Beck cries a lot in public. He can't help himself. He's just an emotional guy who loves his country too darned much to keep things bottled up inside. He cries about his family, and your family, and the daily perils we all face. He cries one day because America's on the brink of becoming Nazi Germany, the next day because it's morphing into Stalinist Russia, the following day because it's behaving suspiciously like (we've hit rock bottom here) France. "On this sea of tears," says Milbank, "Beck's boat has floated to the top of cable news and talk radio, and put him at the head of a mass anti-government conservative movement."
“I signed up for the elite membership on GlennBeck.com. I think he has a lower bar, and commercially, it’s pure genius. He has found the absolute sweet spot in the market right now.”
“Watching the shtick of the forty-six-year-old recovering alcoholic and cocaine addict, typical Beck viewers probably have no idea he is introducing them to some of the most controversial fields of Mormon theology, such as the White Horse Prophecy, which envisions the Latter-day Saints rescuing the U.S. Constitution.”
In October 2010, Ed Pilkington wrote “Glenn Beck under fire from Dana Milbank for gold-digging” for The Guardian. Glenn Beck, Fox News's Tea Party pundit-in-chief, has made his name by pouring vitriol on progressives and liberals who he accuses of trying to destroy America. Now he's being subjected to a taste of his own medicine. Dana Milbank, a Washington Post columnist, publishes today a 261-page invective against Beck which is just as caustic and sharply-worded as his subject's televised monologues, with the important distinction that Milbank's account is factually accurate. Chapter 7 of Tears of a Clown: Glenn Beck and the Tea Bagging of America, looks at how Beck, who likes to present himself to his viewers as a regular schmo, has amassed an empire with an annual turnover of $32 million. One route to his largesse, Milbank tells us, is his relentless plugging of gold which he tells his listeners and viewers is a sure-fire way for them to protect their savings amid economic collapse. "Conveniently, enough," he writes, "a top sponsor of Beck's radio, TV, and internet ventures is Goldine, a big gold dealer."
“Ultimately, only Beck knows if he actually believes the things he says on air. Given his background as a pro-choice, ponytail-wearing, drug-using DJ on morning radio, it’s tempting to think he invented the conservative persona, and found the ideology, to exploit a market opportunity. Anger and fear always grow in times of economic trouble—and Beck’s arrival at Fox News in early 2009 just after the American economy collapsed could not have been better timed. Yet even if Beck embraced the ideology for entirely commercial reasons, it’s entirely possible that, after playing the role for so long on radio and TV, he has internalized it.”
The Wall Street Journal recently juxtaposed two books on the same topic:
William Kuhn's "Reading Jackie" and Greg Lawrence's "Jackie as Editor" are seemingly the same book—chronological accounts of her 19-year career at the publishers Viking and Doubleday—but they are actually very different. Mr. Kuhn's is heavy on hagiography and analysis, Mr. Lawrence's is an energetically reported and crisply written story of a whip-smart, middle-age working woman who marshaled wits, charm, steely will and, of course, unmatched connections to make a new life for herself. In 1975, Jackie (as both authors choose to call her) found herself stranded in a 15-room Fifth Avenue apartment overlooking the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York after the death of her second husband, the coarse billionaire Aristotle Onassis. Two debonair godfathers rescued her from idleness and depression. The first was Tom Guinzburg, an old friend who had inherited Viking from his father and who invited Jackie to be a consulting editor for $10,000 a year. When that job ended badly, John Sargent, another charmer, brought her to Doubleday, where she had a long and productive run.
Read that article, in full, here. The Huffington Post also covered the book and author: Lawrence, just one of the many authors whose careers she touched, says that one of the most revealing anecdotes he's ever heard about Jackie came from a friend, editor Joe Armstrong, who visited her in Martha's Vineyard less than a year before she died. "I remember in her living room she had all these books," Armstrong told Lawrence. "And she said, `These are my other best friends.'" Read that blog post here.
The New York Times introduces the new Jane Smiley book this way:
“You know the story of the invention of the computer?” one character asks another midway through Jane Smiley’s best-selling 1995 novel “Moo.” The speaker, an animal scientist, dreams of striking it rich by pioneering a new dairy-farming technology. To that end, he hopes to pry major grant money out of the agricultural industry, and he wields the history of the computer as both cautionary tale and crowbar. “The short version,” he explains, “is that the guy at Iowa State who invented the computer in the late ’30s never patented a thing. . . . And the university . . . forgot about the old machine, and threw it out.” Now, in Smiley’s new book, “The Man Who Invented the Computer,” we have the long version. The title character — the real-life “guy at Iowa State” — is John Vincent Atanasoff, a physicist and mathematician who invented the computer largely out of frustration. Anyone who has studied calculus knows that solving differential equations is a tedious process: labor-intensive, error-prone, slow. That process grows more arduous as equations grow more complex, and by the 1930s, as Smiley recounts, the difficulty of calculation was impeding scientific advancement. In response, Atanasoff designed a machine to do what his own mind could not. “I did not want to search and invent,” he confessed, “but sadly I turned in that direction.”
Richard Scruggs is probably the only man in his prison, or even perhaps the entire U.S. Federal prison system, that is currently legally being paid $20 million a year, up until the year 2025, as part of a few legal settlements he'd put together with Big Tobacco in America. NPR's Morning Edition covered the book and the Dickie Scruggs story. See also: Dixie: A Personal Odyssey Through Events That Shaped the Modern South, Arkansas Mischief: The Birth of a National Scandal. NPR notes that: Right now, Scruggs is serving a sentence in an Ashland, Ky., prison. But he has held on to his money — and continues to make more. As Wilkie says, Scruggs' tobacco settlement fee arrangements will continue to pay him $20 million a year until the year 2025.View the webpage for this feature story, here.Read an excerpt here.
CHARLIE ROSE: Felix Rohatyn is here. He is known as the man who saved New York City when it almost went bankrupt in 1975. For years he was an investment banker. He became the consummate deal maker. He was on the front lines of a new culture that saw the biggest leveraged buyouts of the ‘80s and ‘90s. In 1997, he left the world of finance to become the United States ambassador to France. He writes about all of this in a new memoir. It is called "Dealings, a Political and Financial Life." I am very pleased to have him back at this table. In full disclosure, he is a great friend of mine, and one of the great things we have done in the history of this program is that we went to France when he was ambassador and did a one-hour profile of him there. And, in fact, the way he starts his book is a story he told me on film, which you can see on our website. And secondly, I hope he will remember that this is a book that I said you have to write, and now he has written it. Welcome. FELIX ROHATYN: Thank you. Thank you, always a pleasure. CHARLIE ROSE: You open this book with the scene of you leaving France.
The full Charlie Rose interview as well as the transcript of the discussion can be found here.The New York Times covered the book, and introduced the title and author, as well as his personal story, this way: Felix Rohatyn’s memoir, modestly titled “Dealings: A Political and Financial Life,” is the sort of vaulting success story that makes one yearn for the big-hearted America of the mid-20th century, a less mean and more innocent time when not every career seemed calculated and not every banker was a subject of scorn, and when the country welcomed enterprising immigrants.Find that NYT piece here. The Daily Reckoning, a financial column and blog of sorts, mentioned the author and book as well:
Felix Rohatyn just published his autobiography, Dealings: A Political and Financial Life. He remembers a meeting in 1975 with the then deputy mayor of New York, James Cavanaugh. The city’s finances had so deteriorated that it was not able to issue long-term bonds. (This is a timely reminder of what to expect in 2011: There will be states and cities unable to issue bonds or rollover debt. If the federal government, including the ever-expanding Federal Reserve, does not or cannot fill the gap, scrip will be issued to pay municipal bills and salaries.) Cavanaugh claimed that New York City was running a balanced budget. Rohatyn disagreed. Cavanaugh “breezily” patronized Rohatyn: “I see you don’t know much about municipal finance.” The investment banker who had negotiated the largest merger in American corporate history (ITT and Hartford Insurance Company) shot back: “Mr. Cavanaugh, I may not know much about municipal finance. But I know about bulls**t. And what you’re giving me is pure bulls**t.”
[2010-12-16 12:00:00] How did family jealousy culminate in the assassination of one of America's greatest presidents? We'll find out this hour with historian Nora Titone, whose new book is "My Thoughts Be Bloody: The Bitter Rivalry Between Edwin and John Wilkes Booth That Led to an American Tragedy" (Free Press, 2010).
[If] it seems that the acting profession has never been filled with more vile representations of the human race, one particularly atrocious case has generally escaped popular memory. Because 145 years ago, an actor who was the Steven Segal of his day shot the president of the United States in the back of the head and killed him, for no greater reason, author Nora Titone posits in her recently released first book "My Thoughts Be Bloody," than that he was jealous of an older brother. Even before Abraham Lincoln's assassination at the hands of hack actor John Wilkes Booth on April 14, 1865, writes Titone (who attended Castilleja School in Palo Alto from 1986 to 1990), actors were considered to be of the same class as prostitutes and thieves. Patrons flocked to theaters to forget the brutality of the ongoing Civil War for a short time, but when, for example, it was discovered that Lincoln's head had rested in actress Laura Keene's lap as a doctor removed bullet fragments, she was called a jezebel, was shunned for the rest of her acting career and, deeply in debt, died from a tubercular hemorrhage.
, Wililam H. Draper writes: I was born in 1982, so I was only an infant when these fateful decisions were made. But I gradually became aware that in the Draper household, money was tight. I remember, for example, that throughout my childhood, my father would invariably return the Christmas gifts that my mother bought for him, because he felt that the family needed the cash more than he needed a present. My father was by nature a hard worker, bu in those difficult years, he drove himself at a punishing pace as he struggled to hang on to his investment banking job, in the deepest and darkest economic depression that our country had ever faced.
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. The author was a guest on the NPR program, Talk of the Nation in October, 2010. That show is embedded below. 
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. NPR notes that: Right now, Scruggs is serving a sentence in an Ashland, Ky., prison. But he has held on to his money — and continues to make more. As Wilkie says, Scruggs' tobacco settlement fee arrangements will continue to pay him $20 million a year until the year 2025. 
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