5 comments about Masters of Enterprise: Giants of American Business from John Jacob Astor and J.P. Morgan to Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey.

1. Common beliefs shattered by uncommon men- Henry Kaiser would have taken on the challenge to build Rome in a day!

   "Rags to riches" is another common adage; but the route to getting there is what distinguishes the daring from the rest. But the most important factor that has made these great achievers who changed and paved the course of business history is the strong desire to excel against all odds. What else can explain the rise of Andrew Carnegie from the drudgery of working in a dirty shop floor to being the master of one of America's greatest steel company.

   Do not read this book in a hurry. Brands has an excellent command on the English language and his style of narration matches the true values that one can derive from the 25 great persons described in this book.

   I have recommended this book as the first assignment to my daughter during her summer vacation.

   Your search for human excellence ends here.




2. If you are chasing the, "American Dream," of becoming a successful entrepeneur, this book is definitely a must read! H. W. Brands has compiled a collection of highly enterprising and inspirational people in his book. I not only was encouraged by reading about such great American men, such as Cornelius Vanderbilt and Andrew Carnegie, I was even more impressed with the profiles of such determined business women as Oprah Winfrey and Mary Kay. Their lives and positive, business tactics shed a shining light, leading the way to establishing a successful enterprise.



3. These brief portraits of great American businessmen and women are well written. Brands does a creditable job laying out the basics of each of their lives and presenting it in a highly readable fashion. His purpose is to show the historical development of how Americans have made money in a country where the making of wealth has became almost a divine calling.

   Brands' selection of business giants could have been better. He seems to have picked his membership more for their diversity as people than for their masterful entrepreneurial skills. Why include Berry Gordy, but not Warren Buffett? Brands' choices obviously skew his presentation of U.S. business history, making it seem more diverse than it really has been.




4. Business is a ruthless business. Dog eat dog and all that. Extraordinarily successful businessmen may have the same basic character traits as their fellow men (and women) but often in more extreme forms. Some of these traits are admirable: ambitious, industrious, driven, resilient, clever. Some, not so much: greedy, cruel, ruthless, opportunistic, dishonest.
   
   Don't count on Brands to notice the latter in his subjects. H.W. Brands has written a history of American businessmen as they would like themselves to be seen. If you enjoy this book, you may also enjoy browsing the National Association of Manufacturer's press releases.



5. H.W. Brands' Masters of Enterprises devotes each of his 25 brief, but enjoyable chapters to a successful entrepreneur. I particularly like this book because the author recognizes the importance of the individual in building a business dynasty. Tragically, this recognition is very rare from many business historians today who seem more interested in focusing on the post-retirement philanthropic activities of many great industrialists as opposed to the prodigious effort which was required to first accumulate the wealth.
   
   This book contains great chapters on all of the well known productive geniuses of the U.S. Industrial Revolution, including the following: John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, J. P. Morgan, Henry Ford and Cornelius Vanderbilt.
   
   One of the great values from this book is that it contains a satisfying amount of material on several important and often unsung heroes in business history. This includes, but is not limited to:
   
   * Ray Kroc: The man who turned the McDonalds' franchise into the world's most recognizable fast food empire.
   
   * Robert Woodruff: The man who made the Coca-Cola logo the world's most recognizable logo.
   
   * Alfred Sloan: The man who built up General Motors to defeat the Ford Motor Company as the most dominant automobile manufacturer in the United States.
   
   * Sam Walton: The man who turned Walmart into the retail giant that it is today.
   
   * Andy Grove: The man who made Intel.
   
   * Henry Kaiser: A true renaissance industrialist. He built the Hoover dam, the Bonneville Dam, innovated cement manufacturing, reduced the construction time of cargo ships during WWII to five days (when they previously required 30 days!), and even developed Waikiki beach into a resort.
   
   * H. L. Hunt: discoverer and innovator of oil drilling in East Texas. Unfortunately, he also crippled the industry by lobbying for more government regulation.
   
   The main downside of this book is that I think the mix of entrepreneurs covered could have been more interesting. For one, James J. Hill, the great empire builder of the Northwestern Railroads, is conspicuously absent. For example, if it were up to me, I would have added chapters on James J. Hill, E. H. Harriman*, Warren Buffett, Herbert Dow and C.J. Walker** and removed the chapters on Berry Gordy, Oprah Winfrey, Phil Knight, Ted Turner and Liz Claiborne.
   
   If you enjoy books about great individuals in business history, then I also recommend Andrew Bernstein's The Capitalist Manifesto, Burton Folsom's The Myth of the Robber Barons and Burton Folsom's Empire Builders.
   
   * The turnaround genius who converted the struggling Union Pacific Railroad into a transportation empire.
   
   ** She is probably the most under appreciated businesswoman in history. She not only is the first black woman to be a self-made millionaire, she is the first woman to do so. She made a fortune in designing and marketing beauty products for black women at the beginning of the 20th century, when the U.S. was unfortunately still plagued with discrimination.

5 comments about Greenspan: The Man Behind Money.

1. Martin writes a hero's biography in his view. No arguments here. Greenspan was a late bloomer. Not until age 42 did Alan Greenspan start to get some visibility-- lifting him from the ranks of just another Wall Street economist seeking publicity to some one that was going to be listened to by Presidents. It all started by working on the 1968 Nixon campaign to help out an old musician friend. In 1974, when President Ford make him head of the Council of Economic Advisors (CEA) many in Wall Street were outraged that Greenspan would be the man. At age 48 Greenspan had slowly risen from very humble beginnings to a powerful place in government that would be his springboard to an exulted place in the history of the nation---one of the important contributors to America's greatness.

   Martin provides an entertaining tour of Greenspan's early life as a musician that quit Julliard training to become a professional jazz musician despite his love of classical music. His passion for reading economics evolved to a new endeavor and enrollment in New York University in 1945. He contributed to the economic thinking of Ayn Rand (novelist and philosopher) and he gained greatly from the 15 year close association that sustained a friendship, lasting until her death. It was the moral foundations for his contribution to helping some sectors of public opinion find the virtues of free markets, free trade and limited government. Martin's liberalism never allows him to really hear the Greenspan message of free markets and less government. Woodward's book follows the Fed events more closely then Martin, but he really brings Greenspan to life. More people need to aspire to be an accomplished economist in public service. This book may help by showing the potential for fame.

   The book is entertaining about his personal life. With power he became attractive to powerful women journalists ( Barbara Walters. Andrea Mitchell and others). His Washington social life is fascinating. Martin is a light weight when it comes to writing about the occupation of economist and economic history. He is particularly weak on monetary policy, but he makes a good effort. After all this is a book about a hero. I am inclined to be skeptical about the authors economic policy observations on Milton Friedman, Arthur Burns, Henry Kissenger, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush 41,William Clinton, and George W. Bush.. The author exaggerates Greenspan's skills and diminishes his weaknesses. The passion to tell the most salable story for the book allows him to overlook the fact that no economist is going to have a great track record for forecasting the economy. Congressional criticism of Greenspan's forecasting in initial confirmation hearings should have been about any economic forecast not just Greenspan's. The book perpetuates the myth that the Council of Economic Advisors or the Federal Reserve can have a detailed forecast of the future with great odds of success.

   Greenspan was a noted (perhaps revered) inflation hawk. Some say he turned weak in the Clinton years. Martin totally misses the issue of so called modest inflation of two to three percent for more than a decade versus the no inflation talk of Greenspan in his early years. If it had been possible to have no inflation long term interest rates could be half what they are today. He does note that the Fed has little influence on long term rates. He just does not make the connection that the markets never believed that the Fed would or could commit to a true policy of no inflation. The daily failure to bring inflation to zero is the direct cause that the Fed lacks any influence on long term interest rates except as now being enthroned as perpetrators of two to three percent inflation for a long, long time to come. The public will be paying a high price on home mortgages and corporations on bonds as the result of more than a decade of so called modest inflation after the preceding radical inflation that preceded the Greenspan era.

   Martin's review of Greenspan's "Irrational Exuberance" remarks is very frumpy. Martin does catch the fact that if the money supply grows to fast it does not always translate into inflationary product prices. Sometimes excess money growth has the insidious impact of driving up asset prices and or stock prices. This creates a time bomb that the Federal Reserve has great difficulty dealing with as the potential for adjustment is so impossible to forecast. Hence, the irrational exuberance remarks came a few years before the stock market correction. Had he understood this, Martin could have researched why the Fed never utilized its power to set margin requirements on stocks. On this point, Martin really blew it. It really stems from his struggle to know just enough economics to tell a good story and not take so much time so that he could make some fast money while Greenspan and the stock market was still popular. The book is well enough written that I would seriously look at any future book that Justin Martin writes. A serious reader is left with a deep passion to read hopefully Greenspan's memoirs and the resulting discussion of irrational exuberance, the weakening on inflation and his views on Federal Reserve oversight and independence. Greenspan will every right to brag about his policy of opening up Fed actions to more timely public understanding of deliberations.




2. An extremely shallow book that offers no insight how Greenspan thinks or makes his decisions. The reason Greenspan is such an interesting character is how he has managed to constantly adapt to changing market conditions. The real story would be why and how he came to the decisions he did, but this book just reports his actions. There is almost no economic anlysis or justification. Anyone looking to gain some understanding of Greenspan's thought process will be left wanting and extremely disappointed with this book.



3. The principles that Alan Greenspan follows politically and economically are all accounted for in the in-depth writing Justin Martin presented in this book. Justin Martin even gets into small details about Alan Greenspan that not many people know about. I recommend this book to anyone willing to learn rock solid principles surrounding our economic conditions.



4. This book is an excellent journalistic account of Alan Greenspan's life up to the first part of 2000 - the zenith of his career and fame.

   The book is not a serious biography. You will be disappointed if you expect the book to give you a deep and insightful analysis of Greenspan's life philosophy, his work methodology, or a revelation of the detail working of the Federal Reserve System.

   On the other hand, this book is a fascinating account of his life - both its private and public sides. Greenspan's brush with band music, his own economic consulting business which employed mostly female economists, his relationship with Ayn Rand and as an esteemed member of her Objectivist Collective, his role and relationship with the Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush and the Clinton teams. There are also some vivid accounts of how he handled some high profile financial and monetary situations as well as how he left his handprints on several important presidential commission reports and recommendations. And, of course, the book has not neglected to give brief but interesting accounts of the women in his life.

   This book is very well written - the material is interesting and well organized, and presentation is smooth and captivating. I find it to be very enjoyable reading.

   Read to the end. The last two paragraphs of the book were as weighty as everything written prior!




5. Justin Martin's "Greenspan" -- from beginning to end -- is a delightful read. I was laughing over and over as the pages turned, and was disappointed upon running out of pages to read.

   Here is one humorous example (page 225), about Greenspan changed his seating position at the FOMC meeting table.

   "Then there's the table flap. Since 1977, the FOMC has conducted its business around a twenty-seven-foot-long table fashioned out of Honduran mahogany, with a center section made of black granite. It weighs two tons. Since becoming Fed chairman, Greenspan had always sat at the head of this table. But in November 1998, attendees at one of the Fed's periodic public meetings noticed that he had moved to a spot in the middle.

   "The hubbub began immediately. What did it mean? Was Greenspan sending a message about increased 'collegiality' at the Fed? Turns out the move was for the sake of acoustics. 'Given the speed of sound, the advice arrived too late and inadvertently we got behind the curve,' joked Greenspan, during a meeting of the Fed's Board of Governors."

   I'd recommend this book to anyone interested in economics.

1 comments about Growing Up Harley-Davidson: Memoirs of a Motorcycle Dynasty.

1. This book proves that dreams due come true. The book Growing Up Harley Davidson is about the life of a family whos dream came true one day. It also shows that dreams come true even if the odds of doing so aren't so great. The book proves that if two minds are working together that anything is possible. However, this book showed along with this is a lot of time and money. This book first caught my eye because it envolved a family environment. It talked about in great detail about each generation of the family receiving it and the changes they made to make it better. The most interesting part of this book was at the ending chapters. It discussed the selling and of the buyback of the Harley Davidson Company. This was interesting to me because during that time of the selling the qualtiy of the motorcycles were going dowm along with the families dreams. I would recomend this book to anyone who is interested in learning more about Harley Davidson Motorcycles.

No comments about The Playboy Interviews: Movers And Shakers (The Playboy Interviews).

5 comments about John Maynard Keynes: Volume 1: Hopes Betrayed 1883-1920 (John Maynard Keynes).

1. Robert Skidelsky provides a punctilious account of the most influential economist of the 20th century and the intellectual and social milieu's that shaped him. Keynes is easily the most recognizable name in 20th century economics, followed somewhat closely by John Kenneth Galbraith and Milton Friedman.

   In the book's preface, Skidelsky claims he was the first biographer to attempt to go into detail about Keynes' hitherto undiscussed homosexual relationships. The most notable and emotionally involved of these affairs occured with painter and fellow Bloomsbury member Duncan Grant. Skidelsky confirms that Keynes also slept with Bloomsbury biographer Lytton Strachey. Several corresponding letters between Keynes and Strachey not only confirm this, but a subsequent sexual rivalry over the affections of Grant. G.E. Moore's 'Principia Ethica' unquestionably wrought out a strong influence on Keynes and Strachey's radical sexual attitudes after they had read it. Some unfastidious anti-Keynesians have tried to tie in Keynes' early predispositions to homosexuality (he later in life married a Russian Ballet dancer named Lydia Lopokova) with his rejection of the gold standard. This probably isn't a valid argument, given the level of abstraction Keynes' mind reached at an early age to develop and entertain such unorthadox methods.

   Keynesian economics has been repudiated by many laissez-faire proponents over the past two decades. The most well reasoned of these critiques have come from Friedman and Robert Lucas; who have each received Nobel Prizes for their work. Notwithstanding, both pale in comparison with the impact Keynesianism has had on post-WW2 macroeconomics.

   Whether or not you're an unyeilding Keynesian or a free market capitalist, you'll find it impossible not to marvel at this remarkable biography of a remarkable man. Keynes should be included at the top of anyone's list of the 20th century's most important intellectuals.




2. Hopes betrayed is an exceptionally well researched and insightful book. The author goes into detail, and confirms previously unspoken truths about Keynes early life. It pays particular attention to Keynes homosexuality, such as his long held affections for Duncan Grant, and also his relationships, coiteries, and philosophies. Personally I found the chapters deailing Keynes' influence in the war most interesting.

   Although the book goes into ample detail, it is a little dry, and possibly lacks a little life. One sometimes feels as if there are a few too many quotes, names and places. This somewhat detracts from the interest of the book.

   However, overall anyone who is curious as to what made father of modern economics ought to read this book.




3. John Maynard Keynes' life faithfully portrayed by Robert Skidelsky, is a life of a man grown up amidst the intelectual aristocracy of his time, which coincided with the beginning of the downfall of the Victorian age and was to culminate in the First World War. His father John Neville Keynes was a famous economist of his time and had many other intelectual atributes which he didn't want to put up to test in the academic arena, despite a lot of incentives by the famous economist Alfred Marshall, the most proeminent thinker of the neo-classics school of thought. Neville Keynes was determined instead to follow closely and have influence upon the professional careers of his most inteligent son. To anyone who whished to compare this situation to the education the philosopher James Mill gave to his son John Stuart Mill, I would warn he/she to be cautious cause the result is very much different than could be foresaw.
   What the book shows is the fascinating formative years of one of the most influential men of all times, who had a strong appetite for getting all the knowledge he could get and who didn't hide behind his geniality. Quite to the contrary, Keynes was up for everything he could grab, be it different sexual male partners, a lot of trips to Italy and a lot of academic prizes, estimulated by the spirit of competion his father tried to assert on him, at the end to no avail. Also, the pace of his intelectual output is outstanding, being Keynes almost always pushed to the limit to do a lot of different things at the same time.
   Some crude aspects of Keynes sexual life are also all there via the transcriptions of the many letters he exchanged with his male lovers and friends of the many different intelectual cycles he was part of.
   His education at the noblest institutions in England (Eton and Cambridge)where he got the opportunity to intermingle with the likes of Bertrand Russell, Virginia Wolf, Whitehead and the philosopher Moore, the latter certainly the most fundamental influence he had in these formative years, provided the social and intelectual backgrounds needed to awake the geniality of the most brilliant economist of the last century.



4. This profoundly researched and uncensored (sexually speaking) biography gives us a fascinating look into a highly privileged group of people in England when the British Empire was at its zenith. Half (sic) of the world's trade was financed by British credits in 1914.
   It pictures the education of young Keynes, groomed by his parents for the highest civil duties, his acceptance in the exclusive Cambridge Apostles Circle (a main discussion point was Higher Sodomy) and his membership of the, in all aspects, anarchic Bloomsbury group. It shows without restaint Keynes' (homo)sexual awakening and his conventional (based on the Gold Standard) beginnings as an economist.
   In the meantime, this book reveals the functioning of the British elitist School system (Eton, Cambridge) as well as the 'moral' environment of this period: the death of God and the birth of mass democracy.
   Prof. Skidelsky's book contains a wealth of information on e.g. the conservative reasoning behind the Gold Standard, Utilitarianism or Moore's essentialistic, but influential, ethic system.
   He shows us Keynes as a fundamental nationalist: 'it is better to have Englishmen running the world than foreigners'.
   But nothwithstanding his exhausting efforts, he saw Britain and mainland Europe sinking under the war debts and being taken over by the US as world power, which was effectively controlled by one man, J.P. Morgan.
   He attacked severely the Versailles Treaty but was devastated that politicians preferred suicidal short-time revenge and election success rather than long-time beneficial solutions.
   This book is sometimes too detailed with extensive letter excerpts. Nonetheless, it is a fascinating read.



5. This book is an excellent choice for a potential reader who is searching for a general overview of Keynes's early life.Like Moggridge's one volume study,Skidelsky's first volume(of three)has many interesting anecdotes and discussions of Keynes's interactions and involvement with a wide range of people.Unfortunately,Skidelsky drops the ball when he tries to evaluate the technical and intellectual contributions that Keynes made to applied probability,statistics and decision science in the period from 1904 to 1920. Keynes finally published his pathbreaking work in 1921 in his A Treatise on Probability(TP).A specialist can only come to the conclusion that Keynes made no breakthroughs in his TP after reading Skidelsky's bare bones treatment.This is most likely due to the fact that Skidelsky is a historian who has no training in the fields of mathematics, probability and statistics.It is true that Skidelsky limits his discussion of the TP in his first volume because he wanted to make an extended discussion of it in the second volume.Unfortunately,the treatment of the TP in volume II is badly marred by a number of mathematical errors.The interested potential book buyer is advised to read my review of volume II.Skidelsky fails to mention anywhere in Volume I that Keynes is the founder of the interval estimate approach to probability.In general,excluding the cases of symmetry and series or sequences composed of homogeneous frequency data,it takes two numbers,not one,to correctly specify an estimate of probability.A probability estimate is thus made up of a lower bound and an upper bound.Further,Keynes specified a clearcut approximation method based on the original work of George Boole in chapters 15 and 17 of the TP.The reader should note that all of this material is present in Keynes's 1907 and 1909 fellowship theses that he submitted to Cambridge University.Also present in these theses is an index created to measure the weight of the evidence,w.Keynes used different terms to describe weight,such as value,before settling for the term weight in the final published 1921 version.w measure the completeness of the relevant, potential evidence upon which a decision maker is going to base an estimate of probability.w is defined on the unit interval between 0 and 1,i.e.,0<=w<=1.Finally,Skidelsky ignores Keynes's conventional coefficient of risk and weight,c.Keynes presented this coefficient in both the 1907 thesis and the 1909 thesis ,which was accepted.This coefficient is the first time in history that a decision rule incorporated nonlinear probability preferences, as well as the weight of the evidence ,or what D.Ellsberg later called the ambiguity of the evidence in a 1961 Quarterly Journal of Economics article.

No comments about Fleeing the Nazis, Surviving the Gulag, and Arriving in the Free World: My Life and Times.

5 comments about At Random: The Reminiscences of Bennett Cerf.

1. When all of us who are now officially Older Than Dirt were growing up back in the 1960's, we usually aspired to be one of three particular men of achievement. For those of us with an athletic bent, Mickey Mantle was the man of choice. For those adventurers and dreamers among us, John Glenn appeared to offer the perfect life. Finally, for us bookish sorts, Bennett Cerf, publisher of Random House, panelist on "What's My Line," author of some of the worst puns ever written, and all around man about town, was who we aspired to be. This book is in essence his memoirs, told in oral history format just a short time before his unexpected death in 1971. He describes in detail why he was able to grow Random House at such a rapid rate: in his day, the book business was a stuffy one, and no publisher worth his salt would dream of lowering himself to seek out new authors. Bennett, being young, foolish, and very intelligent, would travel to wherever these authors lived and impress them with his obvious wit and sincerity. The sheer number and weight of authors whose service he was able to acquire through these means was absolutely staggering: Eugene O'Neill, James Joyce, Robinson Jeffers, Gertrude Stein, and Bill Styron, to name a very few. Through his liberal editing policies, he was even able to publish authors whose ideas he completely disagreed with, such as Ayn Rand. Some, like playwright Moss Hart, became lifelong friends. Although New Yorkers have long thought of their city as the center of the universe, Bennett's long and storied career made many believe it was true. The reader will enjoy his chatty, breezy style time and again, as a reminder that at one time, in the world of books and publishing, one man truly made a difference.



2. Bennett Cerf's legendary career had him founding, leading, then selling one of the world's pre-eminent publishing houses, writing best-selling anthology and humor collections, speaking live and appearing weekly on the "What's My Line?" quiz program. He assembled much of his oral history through transcribed interviews and journals for what would be his autobiography, which he planned to write before dying in 1971.

   His family, most notably son Christopher, assembled "At Random" from Cerf's exhaustive life chronicles. His family focused it, according to their introduction, "primarily about publishing and (Cerf's) pre-eminent role in it."

   The result is a fascinating story which assembles Cerf's life and career as businessman, newspaperman, TV celebrity and, finally, his role as husband, father, and friend (a lovingly remembered childhood, glimpses of his marriages and family, loving remembrances of friends and co-workers from George Gershwin to Moss Hart.)

   Cerf knew and published some of the 20th century's most well-known and beloved authors. "At Random" teems with anecdotes and personal remembrances of James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, Dorothy Parker, Sinclair Lewis (with some frank critique of his career), William Faulkner, and Ayn Rand. Cerf also crosses paths with legends like New York's Cardinal Spellman (who shares an unusual lunch date with author John O'Hara) Presidents Roosevelt and Truman, and General David Sarnoff who, at the book's conclusion, clashes with Cerf over a fraction in Random House's sale price to RCA.

   "At Random" has much to teach about publishing, its machinations and the egos and careers of its stars, the authors. But you come away wanting to know Bennett Cerf better: his political liberalism, hot temper, love of celebrity and of language. He hints at each in his narrative, only leading you to wish other quotes and remembrances could have been included in an addendum to this lovingly compiled book.. (Excerpts from some of his still popular pun collections may have helped.)

   "At Random" examines the life and legacy of a celebrity too rare amid an increasingly sordid and more coarse media landscape - an author and businessman who became a TV celebrity first, celebrating the brief period when books were as anticipated and celebrated as films and recorded music are today. It's essential for anyone appreciating 20th century classic literature and history, a love letter to its first star authors and, by proxy, the man who published them.




3. The beauty of this book is that you get to know Bennett Cerf as the scholarly, brillant, and excellent businessman who met the most amazing and well known writers of the 20th century. The gentle questioner on What's My Line was the powerhouse of Random House.
   
   This is the book you keep if you want insights into the personalities of such greats as Sinclair Lewis, F Scott Fitzgerald, William Saroyan, James Joyce, William Faulkner, Dorothy Parker, and a hundred other writers.
   
   This is the book you keep when you want to remember a time when, in business deals, your word was all that was needed and great writing meant having something intelligent to say.



4. When I was a young girl, one of my favorite television shows was 'What's My Line' where the game participants had to guess from various hints what the person was representing. Along with Dorothy Kilgallen, I enjoyed most the witty, debanoir Bennett Cerf. I tried in vain to be on the show as at that time, I had "four mothers" instead of forefathers. But that was off-limits back then. In 1955, his autobiography 'The Life Of the Party' portrayed a humorist along the vein of Mark Twain. He loved to solve puzzles. He was master at humorous anecdotes, always at random: as apparently was his sense of thought.
   
   Here are a couple of examples from one of his "Bumper Crop" books"
   The learned but unwordly head of the department devoted to the study of comparative religions at Harvard invariably asked the same question on every final exam: "Who, in chronological order, were the Kings of Israel?" Students came to count on this procedure as a sacred institution and prepared accordingly. Only once did he vary from this practice, asking instead: "Who were the major prophets and who were the minor prophets?" The class members were at a loss and all but one left the question unanswered. This sole survivor scribbled furiously and deposited his paper with the air of a conqueror. "Far be it from me to distinguish between these revered gentlemen, but it occurred to me that you might like to have a chronological list of the Kings of Israel."
   
   Do you know why so many Hawaiian words sound and look alike to the uninitiated? There are only twelve letters in the Hawaiian alphabet. The vowels, (A, E, I, O, and U) and the consonants H, K, L, M, N, P, and W.
   
   He was a clever man and an educated man. It's too bad he never received his well-deserved 'Star" in Hollywood, but he was an Easterner (no doubt), and it probably is reserved for the game show hosts. He could have been one, and a good one at that!



5. From his early days at Columbia, starting out with the Liveright Publishers in the 1920's, and buying into the Modern Library Classics, this is without doubt the best look at publishing I've ever read! The amusing story of how a special copy of Ulysses came across the Atlantic, and into the hands of US Customs is worth the price of the book! Add to that, hilarious yarns, like meeting with Gerturde Stein & her Sidekick Alice, featuring the hilarious promotion of their book so it could "compete" with the hot new book FOREVER AMBOR ,and its even hotter author K. Windor makes for some real fun. Mr. Cerf even wrote a short comment in some of Ms. Stein's books admitting he could not always figure out what they were about. A trip to London to meet Bernard Shaw is also good for some laughs. His comments on many other "Literati", including Saroyan, Faulkner, O' Hara, Ayn Rand,Wittaker Chambers, etc. plus general comments on the state of the world are all top. In short, a must read for anyone of all ages, even if you don't care too much about writing and publishing!

5 comments about Make It Happen: The Hip-Hop Generation Guide to Success.

1. I teach middle school in a diverse setting, and I'm interested in perhaps brining this book into my classroom. Is there any content in it that would be inappropriate for that age group (sexual content, profanity)?



2. THIS BOOK IS VERY GOOD. IT'S PACT FULL OF PRINCIPLES WE MUST FOLLOW TO BECOME A SUCCESS. THOUGH THE AUTHOR IS A SUCCESS AT HIS JOB, HE SHOWS THAT HE IS A WORKAHOLIC AND NOT TOO SUCCESSFUL AT THE HOME FRONT. THIS IS THE ONLY REASON WHY I DID NOT GIVE IT 5 STARS.



3. Kevin Liles is the guy from Def Jam that most people don't recognize. Everyone knows Russell, most people know Rick Rubin. Kevin's one of the guys who came on board in the days when the company was transforming from start-up to big-time. He delivers a really simple message throughout Make It Happen... work harder than everyone else. That's the real gist of the 242 pages. There are chapters that have other themes, but the underlying cause of his success comes out in every section. Liles worked hard and was single-minded in the pursuit of his goals.



4. 
   It's a very good book overall. The book is very inspiring and has alot of good wisdom. It's right along the same lines as Russell Simmons's book, "Do You". Don't expect to see any Def Jam rumors or juicy gossip. Kevin Liles is not the type of guy to stay on the negative. Kevin is very humble, he emphasizes hard work and dedication.
   
   If any drawbacks, the book is maybe a bit too long. Kevin makes sure to stay on good terms with other successful business men and successful rappers by mentioning them often. He's makes a real point of playing the business politics game.
   
   I do think that Kevin is slightly misrepresenting his roots to appear more "down" with hip hop. The areas (Woodlawn and Pikesville) which Kevin mention in the book are really upwardly mobile, middle class white collar and blue collar types. However, Kevin is portraying them as rough neighborhoods.
   
   He talks a bit too much about the group he was in, "Numarx". I've never even heard of the group before and I'm from Baltimore. It's definately Kevin Lile's book, not so much a book on Def Jam. It would've probably have been more interesting to hear a little more about the actual artists and albums. Yet, it's a very good read for all ages.



5. Year after year I try to instill the importance of volunteering and giving back into my students. I think it is hard for them to grasp the concept of working for something other than money. This book makes for a great tool to help them understand what I am talking about.
   
   In addition to being a great resource for our youth I personally found this book to be extremely motivational and inspirational. I found myself immediately applying the concepts to my life and thinking of ways that I could make my writing career soar.
   
   I highly recommend this book to any and everyone because while it uses hip hop as the context, the advice applies across the board.
   
   Monica Marie Jones
   Author of FLOSS, The Ups and Downs of Being Round and Taste My Soul
   
   FLOSS
   
   The Ups and Downs of Being Round
   
   Taste My Soul

3 comments about Memoirs of Lorenzo Da Ponte (New York Review Books Classics).

1. The best thing about this book is the preface by Charles Rosen. The rest it hugely disappointing. It is amazing how a poet can be so non-descriptive! How can any writer has been friends with both Mozart and Casanova and yet have nothing to say about them? One gets no sense of what life was like during the end of the 18th century at all. Even Da Ponte's own thoughts and motives do not come across. All that is left are petty political games at an assortment of different opera houses. Da Ponte's story is less amusing than the description of a single flirtation in the truly interesting and picaresque memoirs of his friend Casanova.



2. Da Ponte's Memoirs are a worthy, if eccentric, addition to the NYRB catalog, but the NYRB provides almost no help in situating it. This translation first appeared, I believe, in 1929 and has been available in recent years from both Dover and Da Capo. One, (or was it both?), carried an excellent preface by the distinguished scholar of the Renaissance, Thomas Bergin. NYRB does not republish Bergin. It does republish the original 1929 introduction (by Arthur Livingston, once a teacher of Italian at Columbia) but with no hint of its provenance and, so far as I can discern, no mention of the date (the biblio page gives you a hint when it mentions a "renewal copyright" dated 1957). There is also an LC entry identifying "Livingston, Arthur, 1883-" but I doubt very much that Livingston was still alive when NYRB published in 2000. There is a preface by the distinguished music-scholar Charles Rosen, but it is beneath him: a slapdash affair that does little aside from assuring us that Italian olive oil is now available everywhere in America.

   Aside from these matters of production - the text itself is absorbing and instructive if you understand what you are getting. Da Ponte's only real claim to fame is, of course, that he is the librettist of Mozart's three great comic operas. Da Ponte cheerily declares that Mozart was the greatest composer of his time - perhaps the greatest ever - yet he gives this greatest of all composers perhaps a half dozen pages out of the entire 472-page text, less than any of a dozen other drifters and dreamers or down-market impresarios whom he met along the way.

   Rather than reading it as a work of music criticism, you can take it as a loose-jointed adventure story, in the tradition of Casanova (Da Ponte claims him as a friend) or Benvenuto Cellini. A perhaps more interesting comparison would be to Stendhal's "Charterhouse of Parma": readers who are scandalized that Da Ponte gives such short shrift to Mozart will recall that Stendhal's hero trekked all unknowing through the Battle of Waterloo. I suppose it is just possible that Stendhal read Da Ponte: I have no idea whether he did in fact. But it doesn't matter; the comparison adds a gratifying resonance anyway.

   Moreover, even if this book is not remotely useful as direct criticism of Mozart, I think it does cast the great libretti in a new light: you come to understand the schemers and seducers of the Mozart operas were not a mere nonce creation: they accompanied Da Ponte throughout the whole of his long and rumbustious life. "I trusted them and they betrayed me..." would be a pretty good title for the whole. You can certainly tire of his preening, his score-settling his tale-telling. Indeed you come pretty quickly to realize that not 100 percent of it can possibly true. How much, then? 80 percent? 50? 20? Of course I have no idea: maybe 50 will do as a guess. But I don't think that matters either. Recall what Goethe said about Livy: yes, they are just stories, but they are good stories. At the end, I think you can give Da Ponte credit for his most (nearly) disinterested passion: his desire to spread Italian culture to the Anglo-Saxon world. In this light, we can greet him on his own terms: se non e vero, e ben trovato.

   Four stars for the book, one for the presentation. Compromise on three.




3. I trawled my way through this book as I usually like to start what I finish, but, my, it was hard going. The first half particularly is basically a lot of score settling which comes across as being so irrelevant especially now two centuries later. Half the time, my mind wandered and I just found the whole thing difficult to follow. Da Ponte seems full of self-pity and perhaps a justified sense of victimhood. Anyone would think he was a failure!

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