Dr. Dennis Kimbro not only gives you a look at the strategy and mindset of many black millionaires, he gives a clinic on how to market to his audience. Here he gives a master class in rhetoric, and how to grab your intended audience's attention and hold it for 20 minutes. If you'll notice, he's selling you his book.
He makes it look easy.
From the Youtube description: "Engage with Dr. Dennis Kimbro as he shares excerpts of learnings from his best selling book, The Wealth Choice. Based on a seven year study of 1,000 of the wealthiest African Americans, The Wealth Choice offers a trove of sound and surprising advice about climbing the economic ladder, even when the odds seem stacked against you.
Readers will learn about how business leaders, entrepreneurs, and celebrities like Bob Johnson, Spike Lee, L. A. Reid, Herman Cain, T. D. Jakes and Tyrese Gibson found their paths to wealth; what they did or didn't learn about money early on; what they had to sacrifice to get to the top; and the role of discipline in managing their success."
Please answer the following 3 questions:
Do you think the strategy talked about here will work?
Which path to wealth did you find most interesting?
Was Dennis Kimbro's delivery / message effective? Why or why not?
1) When Pride Still Mattered, by David Maraniss. This book is not only the definitive biography of Vince Lombardi, the legendary football coach, it is a prism into an America that is gone. Maraniss used Lombardi’s reputation and life to explain the coach’s life, but also a time when your word was bond, and hard work, craftsmanship, and pride in one’s self and work was paramount. Lombardi spend years as a football coach at a small Catholic High school, and he scratched and clawed his way to the top. There was no building of a ‘brand’, no posing for the cameras, and no handouts. It’s a fantastic journey into a more difficult, and perhaps better, America.
2) Carnage and Culture, by Victor Davis Hanson. There are reasons why the Christian West has won key battles throughout history. Hanson details all the key decisions, predicated on the culture of the West, that helped the British win at Rorke’s Drift, Cortez win at Tenochtitlan, and the Americans to win at Midway. There are other important battles talked about in the book. The chapter I go to repeatedly is the one on Cortez in Mexico. How a much smaller group of Spaniards could take down a powerful and violent Aztec Empire is fascinating. Hanson’s thesis is solid, and he impeccably defends it.
3) Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, written by Himself. This is the first of the autobiographies, and the most raw. A young Douglass intuitively recognized not only the double and triple standards of society in his young life, he learned, and unashamedly described, human nature. The worst personality traits of each sex, the way power corrupts a soul, the power of literacy – Douglass learned them all before he was ten. A short read, but it has the depth of a much longer book.
4) The Underground History of American Education, by John Taylor Gatto. Gatto was a schoolteacher for 30 years. The last decade of his career he researched the creation and motivation behind the American public school system. What he found is both fascinating and disturbing. Disturbing is probably not a strong enough word. A small group of powerful people wanted a mass of malleable, thoughtless citizens who would be good factory workers and soldiers. To create the Elite top of the pyramid, look at the curriculum of the 8 top boarding schools in the United States (Kent, Hotchkiss et al). To create the managers of society, look at where I went, Brooklyn Tech High School. To look at how to create millions of unthinking consumers, take a walk through your local K-12 system. If you really want to get black pilled, read the Common Core State Standards. Gatto rips the cover off the system and shows you some dirty secrets. Often people ask me “what can one person do?” You can do what John Taylor Gatto did.
5) Until Proven Innocent, by Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson. When they look back at the ‘woke’ era, this incident, meticulously recounted by the authors, will be one of the bellwethers of the time. 3 young men, all white and well off, were accused of a rape they did not commit. Because of their race and economic status, the Corporate Media told the American people, for months, that they were rapists and racists. The rhetoric and actions of the press, the awful behavior of the school administration and many professors, show you that the media and woke culture are 2 of the most despicable entities ever let loose within American society. The future Robot Historians will wonder why we didn’t put the press and university administrators on an ice floe and push them into the sea.
6) The Great Bridge, by David McCullough. The Brooklyn Bridge construction project began right after the Civil War. It is still one of the most busy and functional bridges today. How did they do it? Who dreamed it up and built it? There was no electricity. There were no combustion engines. And yet, the bridge towers are 275 feet high, and one of them is grounded on bedrock. The Manhattan tower never made it down to bedrock. They were so deep under the riverbed, and the silt was so thick, Roebling, the chief engineer, made the executive decision to anchor the tower and move forward. In an era of small to no government help, a gold standard, no unions, no bailouts … you get a look at how things got done and the intellectual firepower of the men who got them done. One of the best post-Civil War books of all time.
7) The Power Broker, by Robert Caro. This book won the Pulitzer Prize. Caro goes through the life of Robert Moses, one man who irrevocably changed the shape of arguably the most important city on earth: New York City. Moses wasn’t interested in money, but he was interested in power. Once he learned how to get it, he got more, and he learned how to keep it. The early years of his career under Alfred E. Smith are particularly interesting as Caro explains the monumental amount of effort Moses put in to cement his positions of power. A study of government, the nature of power, and the gaping flaws within people are all on display. This is one of those books where the subject is closed. No one will ever write another biography of Robert Moses as there is nothing left to write.
8) The Illusion of Victory, by Thomas Fleming. One of the last nails in the coffin of a once free America is the Progressive Era and America’s entry into World War I. The story you get in school (see #4) is that the good guys suited up and beat the bad Germans. Then they celebrated Armistice Day. This isn’t even the comic book level of history usually found in the textbooks. Fleming explains the massive propaganda campaign surrounding America’s entry into The Great War. You learn that the Industrial and Banking interests didn’t really care if a few hundred thousand American citizens were killed. If they were made financially whole, that didn’t matter. Britain and France were going to lose, and America’s entry was necessary to win. With the help of the worst president in American History, Woodrow Wilson, America went into an unnecessary war, and the Progressives got their claws into the American Free Enterprise system. It was all they needed to eventually bring the whole thing down. Fleming got kicked out of the Conservative author club for telling too much truth. This book is an example of that.
Lessons from The Odyssey, Book XII. Scylla and Charybdis
Odysseus talking to Circe. Kirke - Kirk - Circe Church (controller of a flock of animals.
"Three times in the day does she vomit forth her waters, and three times she sucks them down again; see that you be not there when she is sucking, for if you are, Neptune himself could not save you; you must hug the Scylla side and drive ship by as fast as you can, for you had better lose six men than your whole crew.'
"'Is there no way,' said I, 'of escaping Charybdis, and at the same time keeping Scylla off when she is trying to harm my men?' *
Here is one of the lessons we cover. Odysseus wants there to be a third choice. There often isn't a third choice. No one will offer you one, do you have to choose between a bad choice and a worse choice. This is a LIFE lesson. The Odyssey is filled with them. I cover 3 of there here in this Video Lesson.
1) Three times in the day does she vomit forth her waters, and three times she sucks them down again; see that you be not there when she is sucking, for if you are, Neptune himself could not save you; you must hug the Scylla side and drive ship by as fast as you can, for you had better lose six men than your whole crew.'
"'Is there no way,' said I, 'of escaping Charybdis, and at the same time keeping Scylla off when she is trying to harm my men?'*
"'You dare-devil,' replied the goddess, you are always wanting to fight somebody or something; you will not let yourself be beaten even by the immortals. For Scylla is not mortal; moreover she is savage, extreme, rude, cruel and invincible. There is no help for it; your best chance will be to get by her as fast as ever you can, for if you dawdle about her rock while you are putting on your armour, she may catch you with a second cast of her six heads, and snap up another half dozen of your men; so drive your ship past her at full speed, and roar out lustily to Crataiis who is Scylla's dam, bad luck to her; she will then stop her from making a second raid upon you.
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2) "Immediately after we had got past the island I saw a great wave from which spray was rising, and I heard a loud roaring sound. The men were so frightened that they loosed hold of their oars, for the whole sea resounded with the rushing of the waters, but the ship stayed where it was, for the men had left off rowing. I went round, therefore, and exhorted them man by man not to lose heart.
"'My friends,' said I, 'this is not the first time that we have been in danger, and we are in nothing like so bad a case as when the Cyclops shut us up in his cave; nevertheless, my courage and wise counsel saved us then, and we shall live to look back on all this as well. Now, therefore, let us all do as I say, trust in Jove and row on with might and main. As for you, coxswain, these are your orders; attend to them, for the ship is in your hands; turn her head away from these steaming rapids and hug the rock, or she will give you the slip and be over yonder before you know where you are, and you will be the death of us.'
"So they did as I told them; but I said nothing about the awful monster Scylla, for I knew the men would not on rowing if I did, but would huddle together in the hold.In one thing only did I disobey Circe's strict instructions- I put on my armour. Then seizing two strong spears I took my stand on the ship Is bows, for it was there that I expected first to see the monster of the rock, who was to do my men so much harm; but I could not make her out anywhere, though I strained my eyes with looking the gloomy rock all over and over
"Then we entered the Straits in great fear of mind, for on the one hand was Scylla, and on the other dread Charybdis kept sucking up the salt water. As she vomited it up, it was like the water in a cauldron when it is boiling over upon a great fire, and the spray reached the top of the rocks on either side. When she began to suck again, we could see the water all inside whirling round and round, and it made a deafening sound as it broke against the rocks. We could see the bottom of the whirlpool all black with sand and mud, and the men were at their wit's ends for fear.
While we were taken up with this, and were expecting each moment to be our last, Scylla pounced down suddenly upon us and snatched up my six best men. I was looking at once after both ship and men, and in a moment I saw their hands and feet ever so high above me, struggling in the air as Scylla was carrying them off, and I heard them call out my name in one last despairing cry. As a fisherman, seated, spear in hand, upon some jutting rock throws bait into the water to deceive the poor little fishes, and spears them with the ox's horn with which his spear is shod, throwing them gasping on to the land as he catches them one by one- even so did Scylla land these panting creatures on her rock and munch them up at the mouth of her den, while they screamed and stretched out their hands to me in their mortal agony. This was the most sickening sight that I saw throughout all my voyages."
The Jobs book was everything it was supposed to be. I’ll start at the end. Walter Isaacson spoke with Jobs right before he died. Isaacson told Jobs that the book would have many things in it that he wouldn’t like. Jobs was happy about that. He realized that it would therefore not sound like a stock biography. The ‘approved’ biographies are all the same. They have a little bit about some of the public scandals, perhaps a few things that weren’t released to the public, but not much new or exciting. The rest is just hagiographic babble. The Jobs biography avoids this. There are times in the book where Jobs is such a jerk, I’m glad he died early. You read that right. I’m not proud of feeling that way, but in the interest of telling the truth, which this book does, I have to say it. Isaacson lets it fly when it comes to Jobs’ legendary rancid ability to be an asshole. The good thing about this? It brings about the most interesting parts of the book regarding Apple and the business world. How do you maintain such an arrogant, prickly personality and simultaneously create, ruin, then resurrect a company? And not just that, a company that has become a technological leader, an earnings behemoth, and an industry standard? One would expect a well spoken, polite, friendly guy to make deals and create goodwill. Isaacson shows with candor how Jobs was a rude jerk while using that trait to move himself and his company forward. This unlikely scenario is brought to light with granular detail.
Jobs was a relentless leader. Reading the book, it seemed to be that the was allergic to soft pedaling anything – ever. Beginning with the ‘start the IT company in the garage’ (true in this case), to the magnificent resurrection of AAPL from 1997-2010, Jobs was the helmsman who was able to get his top engineers to push themselves to create the products we rely on today. Where the book exceeds expectations is showing that you don’t need a meeting. There were production delays, design delays, manufacturing delays, disagreements among marketers, engineers, friends all throughout the creation of all the major Apple products. Jobs would decide which way to go himself. What would be scheduled in a meeting in other companies and take weeks, would be decided in 15 minutes at Apple. According to many in management, this simply cannot be the way to go. Actually, it can. As a crusading leader, Jobs would, in his rude way, explain why the other companies’ products in the same niche were ‘shit’ (an opinion), or ‘failures’ (quantifiable fact), He’d show how a lack of decisiveness, how the need to make every division of the company happy was keeping the products from being great. Even though he was a jerk about it, he was right. Being right doesn’t engender good feeling. Being right, successful, prickly, and rich alienates many. I think if Apple had failed, he’d have been pilloried by hundreds. Two things happened – Apple didn’t have any major stumbles, and Jobs died too soon.
An entrepreneurial take away that will stay with me: Jobs wasn’t a person to ‘give the customer what he wants’ type of guy. At the end of the book Isaacson writes about Jobs’ philosophy. Jobs was always explaining that the customer doesn’t know what he wants. He’ll know it when it’s put in front of him. Jobs quoted Henry Ford on this, mentioning that Ford once said that if he’d asked his customers wanted, they’d have said “a faster horse”. It takes a strong personality and a driven genius level mind to actually pre-empt the desires of your customers. Jobs was able to do that, from the beginning with his top gun technologist partner, Steve Wozniak, to the very end at the wheel of a multinational technology giant.
One of the unspoken secrets in the sports book world is that the referee / umpire books are usually really good. My own theory, for which I have no basis other than the books themselves, is that the arbiters of the game weren't coddled since childhood and thusly have to actually learn English and communication skills. Earl Strom's book Calling the Shots, My Five Decades in the NBA, is one of those hidden gems that has flown under the radar for 25 years.
Earl Strom, while he was active, was seen as the best referee in the NBA. He was seen by players and coaches as the referee who would make the right call, no matter the venue. This gave him the reputation as an 'away' ref because he wouldn't cop out at the end of games and make the hometown call.
Calling the Shots give the reader a history lesson of the NBA that is unparalleled in its uniqueness. Hearing about the St. Louis Hawks and the Buffalo Braves and the Syracuse Nats - what their fans were like and what the arenas were like - is something that you'll not find through modern channels. Strom gives you a walk through of the early days of the league, through the supernova growth of the 80's. Listening to the referee's perspective is different enough, but Strom, who called his first NBA game in 1957, lets you visualize how different and third rate the early basketball was. The arenas were small and smoky, the fans were on top of the players and refs, fights were everywhere, and you never knew what would happen on any given night. There was no glitz, no agents, no marketing to speak of, and little money for anyone.
Strom took a detour in the ABA (American Basketball Association) in the 1970's. The red white and blue ball league was the wild west, but it also birthed Moses Malone, George Gervin and Julius Erving. Strom was there. He saw all of these guys play up close. Because he was a chatty fellow, his dialogues with these people are were numerous and worth preserving. Strom, who was all about honesty and making the correct call, was almost driven out of the NBA when he came back from the ABA and its dollars. Because he was rabidly independent, and constantly spoke his mind about the game and the state of refereeing, he made enemies in the NBA and ref hierarchy. It is these same qualities that make this book worthwhile, even after all of these years. Strom ends the book with ways to improve the game and the refereeing systems. Even after 25 years, they still ring true. Perhaps the oddball loudmouth - which some would say is a kind way to describe Strom, should've been listened to back then because his reforms would work today. This is a high level sports book, devoid of jargon and cliche.
Here I recommend three podcasts I've been listening to recently. They are:
The Unexplained with Howard Hughes.
The Higherside Chats.
Occult Science Radio.
The two books I've read and recommend highly, particularly the King memoir: On Writing, by Stephen King. The War of Art, by Steven Pressfield.
No Man Knows My History - the life of Joseph Smith, provides a detailed, interesting and yes, entertaining picture of the life of the founder of the Mormon Church, Joseph Smith. I don't fully understand why I am fascinated by the story of the origins of the Mormon Church. Perhaps it is my love of conspiracies, esoteric knowledge and independent thinking. Reading John Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven got me started. Like most Americans, I had heard of the the Mormon church, I knew about the polygamy of the old days of the church, and knew it was vaguely connected with Christianity. I did not know initially about the tight connection to Freemasonry. Like everything we learn in our adult years, the truth is much more complicated and interesting. Fawn Brodie provides a wondrous explanation of what happened at the very beginning. No Man… also sends the reader back to these days as if one were in a time warp.
The details of Smith's early life in the Burnt Over District in New York State sets up both a base for who Smith became and a detailed portrait of that era. The difficult life presented explains clearly how it was easy to be hungry, tired, cold and impoverished. Smith's insatiable desire to avoid hard work, to get wealthy by sticking rods into the ground to locate buried treasure via a peep-stone, fortune telling, and mooching off of others is well documented. Brodie took a lot of criticism from the Mormon church (she was excommunicated) for her depiction of Smith as what he document-ably was. A feather in her cap and one of the reasons I felt compelled to buy the book.
Part of me, throughout my reading, kept asking 'why did people believe this guy?' There are instances that are beyond credulity once Joseph Smith became the leader of somewhat sizable organization. The discovery of the 'golden plates' and the following creation of The Book of Mormon seem impossibly ridiculous today. (Don't go looking for the plates, the same angel that showed them to Smith spirited them back to Heaven). Much of the book explains what Smith said and how it was received by his flock and his detractors. Smith routinely had 'revelations', dictates from God that told him what to do and how others should behave. Brodie explains: "In January 1841 he presented to the church a revelation from God ordering the Saints to build a hotel. The extraordinarily mundane details of of this commandment seem not to have troubled his people" "…and they shall not receive less than fifty dollars for a share of stock in that house, and they shall be permitted to receive fifteen thousand dollars from any one man for for stock in that house. But they shall not be permitted to receive over fifteen thousand dollars from any one man…" No Man… is filled with this kind of thing. That God would lay out the financial details of building a church is strange, if not blasphemous. Was God worried about inflation - did He take into account the Jacksonian attacks on the Central Bank? The subtly adjusted Gold Standard? Throughout much of the book I started to see a common thread: people, even intelligent free thinking people who have gone through real struggle, will believe anything.
I had heard of the connection between Mormonism and Masonry via my readings within the Conspiracy Community. I was curious if Brodie would comment on the topic. Perhaps when she wrote this book mentioning Masonry didn't get you branded a conspiracy theorist! and therefore a fringe kook, because Brodie goes into great detail the Smith's close connection to the Freemasons (he was one) and the Mormon practices and initiations that mirror the Mason's. The Mormons believe that with enough prayer, practice and patience they can become like God (hence the Latter Day Saints), and the Book of Mormon has close parallels to the stories within Freemasonry. Joseph Smith, out of bullets and about to jump out of the Carthage jail window and be killed, reportedly flashed a Masonic symbol and pleaded for help from his 'brothers' in the crowd.
It is easy to bash the Mormon Church, and I feel I have to be careful that this review not become a polemic against the LDS Church. Firstly, America is supposed to be a place where people can worship whatever and whomever they choose. Shamefully, many of Smith's peers seemed to have forgotten that part and persecuted him and his followers because of their nonstandard beliefs. Secondly, Smith, in an entrepreneurial fashion stuck with what worked and discarded what didn't in his creation and evolution of the Church. He moved to different areas of the country and overcame seriously violent opposition. (He was killed while he was the prisoner of a rogue prosecutor). Lastly, Smith's life was fascinating. His story reads like the incredible thing it was, and Brodie combines exhaustive research, multiple appendices and a free flowing writing style in order to depict it appropriately. Despite my incredulity and disbelief, I highly recommend this book.
I have mentioned to students over the years how I was a comic book reader in my youth. I've always stressed reading anything to my students - I am quick to mention that I read comic books and Sports Illustrated maniacally as a young person. What I noticed starting around the age of 13 was that I became more interested in who was writing and drawing the comics than the characters themselves. If John Byrne left Alpha Flight and went to write and draw the Hulk - I went with him, even though I didn't collect the Hulk regularly.
These runs are what I feel are the best long term tenures on various books. They are by the creators / artists I feel created the best work and stayed on to come up with a timeless body of work that will be a standard bearer for future artists and writers. I limit the list to post 1980, simply because that is the era where I am an expert. I realize there are others that should be on the list, but I was a Marvel / DC person for most of those years, so something like Dave Sim's Cerebus is not on the list, as I read one issue of it as a young person and didn't like it too much. Maybe I missed out on something but I can't comment on it with any authority.
Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, a professor of history and economics at Golden Gate University in San Francisco has done every American High School student a service. Hummel presents the history of the American Civil War in a readable manner, while taking on not just the major conflicts, but the economic aspects of the war as well.
The American student gets a raw deal from 'school' history on the Civil War. Hummel uses short chapters and readable prose to allow access to difficult concepts about the Civil War. Hummel covers the ideological and economic rifts over slavery. The varying camps within the abolitionist movement as well as the numbers and viability of southern slavery are both handled skillfully. Did you know that 25% of southern whites owned slaves, and half of that number owned 5 slaves or more? I don't know what you were taught, but the garden variety American history class teaches that all southern whites were slaveowners, and it was Lincoln and the Civil War that ended slavery. The political power of the south was cobbled together and held by the large plantation owners, but the majority of the population of the South did not own a single slave.
As you read through Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men, you learn that much of what we are told about the Civil War is wrong - from both sides. The northern apologists worship Lincoln and his actions, while the Southern Apologists cavalierly dismiss the role of slavery leading up to the war. What Hummel craftily manages to do is find the answer to this difficult question: If there had been no Civil War, would slavery have eventually ended peacefully, as it did in every other western hemisphere country except Haiti?
The only way to answer that is to analyze the economic, political and social effects of slavery before the war. Hummel invites the reader to skip the 2 chapters he dedicates to the economics of slavery (Was slavery profitable? How did it affect trade? How did the economy of a slaveholding society compare to a free one?). I, however, found these chapters the most interesting in the book. Slavery was not an economic boon to really anyone except the large plantations, and they controlled Southern government. Working whites hated slavery as it made their quest for work and salary demands more difficult. How do you compete against free labor? There were also slaveowners who barely monitored their slaves and allowed them to work and manage enterprises. There were also the cruel and vicious slaveowners - how did these two types coexist economically? Why were there differences?
After reading Hummel's book you'll have a much better picture of the United States before and after the Civil War. You will learn that it was ironically the first strike against widespread freedom, as the explosion of federal power began and has never been checked since. The federal government was 2% of the US economy before the war, and 25% of it afterward. Realizing that government makes no money and creates nothing, you begin to see the beginning of the huge drag it has been on the American people. This began before the war, with the Fugitive Slave Act. The Federal Government passed the costs of capturing runaway slaves to the Northern states. There were many abolitionists who were happy to see the South secede and be done with - this was unknown to me beforehand.
You will also see the horror show that was the Lincoln administration. The forced jailing of dissenters, the stifling of free speech, the suspension of habeus corpus - I will never see the Lincoln administration the same way again. Hummel shows just how arrogant and fascist Lincoln was - not the usual take on an area of history that has been captured by the Cult of Lincoln.
I highly recommend the book. The bibliographical essays at the end of each chapter show the depth of research the book contains. They are somewhat complex, so if you are a high school student and you want an honest look at a complex area of history, skip the essays. The short, easily readable chapters will clear up the inconsistencies you've been presented when it comes to this era.
In 1983, fifty corporations dominated most of every mass medium and the biggest media merger in history was a $340 million deal. … [I]n 1987, the fifty companies had shrunk to twenty-nine. … [I]n 1990, the twenty-nine had shrunk to twenty three. … [I]n 1997, the biggest firms numbered ten and involved the $19 billion Disney-ABC deal, at the time the biggest media merger ever. … [In 2000] AOL Time Warner’s $350 billion merged corporation [was] more than 1,000 times larger [than the biggest deal of 1983].
~ Ben H. Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly, Sixth Edition, (Beacon Press, 2000), pp. xx–xxi
The earliest version of The Media Monopoly came out in the early 1980's. The version I read was after the above quote, from The New Media Monopoly, published in 2004.
Bagdikian's grasp of what has happened in the Mainstream Media is superb. The book, however, is a mixed bag. The material on the media and the disconnect between what they say they do and what they actually do is worth reading. The mainstream media (MSM) is one of the institutions that over the years has become a parody of what it was supposed to be. The corporatization of the MSM is a topic that Bagdikian handles with skill. A de-centralized media has become a tool for The Regime, The State. Bagdikian shows bravery and independence by exposing the drum beating of establishment media outlets such as the NY Times. One chapter in particular called "(not) All the News That's Fit to Print" exposes the government bootlicking and outright fraud perpetrated by the Times during the early W years. The next chapter, called "All The News That Fits" goes into historical detail about how the Media became a profit machine, at the expense of individuality and meaningful reporting.
While Bagdikian's grasp of the media is good, there are parts of the book that are not. He routinely (and correctly) laments the power of the big corporations to alter the media landscape. The consolidation of power has destroyed media independence and obliterated the FCC as a regulator. Bagdikian has a blind spot, however in realizing that the government is always the other half of the equation. The special dispensations given out by the FCC and government regulators in order to allow the massive corporatization movement that began in the 1980's would not have been possible without government help. Bagdikian seems to only see the corporations and their malfeasance as the issue. He turns a blind eye to the necessary cooperation by government. This exposes a shameless leftist bias and only exposes half of the problem.
This bias also shows in all of his economic explanations. The worst examples are his trotting out the tired socialist shibboleth that the USA is the only modern country without universal healthcare - despite those schemes failing in Canada and the UK for decades. He childishly talks about the the politics of the country veering to the "far right" because of the power of the moneyed interests and the corporations. Bagdikian should know better - that this is the 'corporatization' of the country and has nothing to do with the "far right". Lastly, he refers to the "uninhibited free market" of the 1920's multiple times. This is unforgivable. Both Lionel Robbins and Murray Rothbard have shown that the 1920's were manipulated severely by the Federal Reserve and the US Treasury. They manhandled the money supply (creating inflation), managed interest rates and butchered sound monetary policy that had allowed a certain stability from 1879 to 1914. Bagdikian apparently spent zero minutes and zero seconds studying this topic. A middle aged nobody English teacher in the crappy neighborhood (me) should not be able to point out such obvious flaws in a book by a Media Analyst Giant like Mr. Bagdikian.
Overall, this book is worth it, just stick to the chapters that deal directly with media analysis. Ignore the rest.
In the section of Bill James' Historical Baseball Abstract (one of the best baseball books ever written), that discusses the 1960's, he mentions the best baseball books of that decade. Of Lawrence Ritter's The Glory of Their Times it says "often imitated, never excelled." I know why he wrote this about the book - it is glorious in many ways.
The book is really a history book. The author's poignant introduction states that his motivation was to write about the stars of the early era of Major League Baseball before they were forgotten, or dead. Ritter traveled the country with what we would consider today archaic recording equipment and interviewed people like: Rube Marquard, Sam Crawford, Joe Wood, Chief Meyers, Rube Bressler, Specs Toporcer and Lefty O'Doul. The most recent interviewee (Hank Greenberg) retired from playing baseball in 1947 and died in 1986.
Most of the players were not stars (Bill Wambsganss?). This regular guy flavor makes the book seem like walking into a time warp. The men were farm boys and country boys mostly. Greenberg's youth in the Bronx stands out as most of the chapters start with the humble beginnings of boys in rural America or small town America. The men came from families where the father worked, usually self employed and the mothers mostly stayed at home. We hear of dad being a lawyer or a farmer or anything in between. Most of the men had little growing up in terms of money but lots of life experience.
This was a time that according to today's Intellectual Elite, today's Guardians of Established Opinion, could not have existed. Why? The way my mind works, I thought about all of the things that were going on in the early 1900's when these people were growing up. There was no FED. The world (until 1914 and the USA until 1933) was on a gold coin standard. There were no unions to speak of, the federal government was minimal, the EPA, OSHA, minimum wage, welfare, and Department of Education didn't exist. Were a person to suggest abolishing all of those things today he'd be considered dangerous. Hand wringing and wailing would ensue: "what would happen to the poor - who would care for the downtrodden? Yet there is not a spec of evidence that life was miserable. On the contrary, they all talked about how they had immense freedom and exciting amounts of opportunity.
While reading about the young lives of these men, I kept waiting for some social commentary about how awful things were before the New Deal, or before American Empire post WWII. It never came. The interviews take you back to an era of communities and people that took care of themselves. Parents who allowed their children to read and work and think for themselves. Multiple times in the book dad tells the young baseball player that he'd rather he follow in his footsteps as a lawyer, or a shopkeeper (advice I have to admit I would probably give my child) but eventually tells him to go after his passion. A few of them got seed money, but most hopped trains, hitched rides and slept in barns to get to the minor league town that sought them. Re read that last sentence and think about the reaction from one of today's Caring Adults who Manage America's Youth.
The historical, first person accounts are rich in detail and will give you a snapshot of early 1900's America. The baseball information is first rate, from the style of uniforms to the style of play. Interestingly the former players are realistic about the amazing increase in skill and speed of the current (at the time 1966) players. One might expect a biased lamenting about great the past player were and how overrated the new guys are. But no, these seem like honest honorable men and they all realize that Willie Mays is a talent that exceeds just about all of the turn of the century players.
There is a look back to earlier times by Chief Meyers, a grizzled, tough American Indian catcher who didn't mind being called 'Chief'. He talks about how things have gotten worse with regard to the money and the business of baseball and what happened to Jim Thorpe, but this snippet from page 184 caught my eye. Remember, this is from 1966: "The world seems to be turned all upside down today. Progress, they call it. The radio and the television and all, brainwashing the children and teaching them to cheat and steal and kill. Always violence and killing. I think it's an awful bad example for the youngsters. Why can't they teach people about the good things in life instead?"
The Glory of Their Times is a wonderful book of great depth and character. I highly recommend it.
"I have been working on a curriculum for high school student that is designed to help them understand the freedom philosophy, and will enable them to articulate it. This involves the ability to read carefully, analyze arguments, write clearly, and defend their position verbally."
"What I doubted (about the Obama appeal in 2008) was the practicality of a philosophy of government that presented the state as an agency of healing."
- - Ron Paul, pages 34 and 35 of The School Revolution
Ron Paul's The School Revolution, A New Answer for Our Broken Education System is a calm, methodical case for parents who want two things: freedom to oversee their children's education, and adherence to the freedom philosophy within that education.
Most people are confused about the libertarian philosophy. It's very simple - the use of force is never justified, unless in self defense. This includes education of children. Parents should not be forced to send their children to schools with which they disagree. Your local public school is staffed by people who were products of a system that says that government schools are the 'agency of healing' and the people in them are dispassionate unbiased quality educators. Some of them are. Most of them are not.
Dr. Paul spends little time ripping the current education system. What he does spend a lot of time on is explaining, in clear terms, what his philosophy is, why he promotes homeschooling, and what the data shows with regard to student performance. His program, at Ron Paul Curriculum, is strong on what used to be called 'classical education' (and it also used to be in the public school program).
A curriculum must be integrated and coherent,
There must be a common theme: the freedom philosophy.
The best methodology is self instruction.
Courses should reinforce each other.
Students must learn to write and to speak in public.
A top flight education is not expensive. School districts spend thousand of dollars per year per child. The national average is somewhere around $10K a year per student. The system is churning out barely literate students unable to communicate and helpless on many fronts. The upper level classes in his program cost $250 for the year. Not only that, Dr. Paul focuses on the idea that people should be first and foremost - free. Then his program goes into a low cost (grades K - 5 are free) system of rigor that uses the internet and primary sources that are available on the web. American History is taught by people like Tom Woods. Literature and entrepreneurship are taught by people like Gary North.
The content rich program offered by Ron Paul is superior to what the public schools are offering today. It is offering it for much less. I think he is one of the early adopters of what will be the next wave of education. The internet has destroyed the Establishment Media. Public School is next. The gatekeepers of Public Education are still standing at the gates, but people are slipping under the wall faster and faster. Ron Paul's book gives them the roadmap.
"Good learners risk doing things badly in order to learn how to do things well." - - Harvey Dorfman
Jaime Moyer always seemed like someone to watch. As a fan of Major League Baseball, I was intrigued by Moyer's career path. I had seem him arrive with the Cubs, then disappear, then resurrect and transform himself in Seattle as a top flight pitcher for a decade. I enjoyed watching Moyer, with guile and smarts, dissect major league hitters by pitching 'backwards', changing speeds and hitting spots. It is a select audience that enjoys watching an old lefty changeup artist carve up steroid fueled gorillas, and that audience will immensely enjoy Just Tell Me I Can't.
My interest in Moyer was confirmed in the book Moneyball - the smartest sports book of this era. Moyer is portrayed as an old ghoul in that book - a vampire who will scramble your brain by out thinking you and feasting on your desire to crush his slow offerings. It turns out there was a method to the psychological madness, and his name was Harvey Dorfman.
The best part of the book was Moyer's introduction to Dorfman. Moyer had been reduced to being offered a job as a pitching coach. He was on his way out of the majors - seen as a failure and at the end of the line. Dorfman was recommended to him and with Dorfman's mental re-working of Moyer's psyche and confidence, turned Moyer around. Dorfman taught Moyer how to train the mind and ones approach as one would train a muscle. Dorfman seems to have been a master at getting people to take responsibility for their actions and failures, and use those things as strengths. The fact that a man who could not top 84mph, by changing his mental approach, was able to not only change his life and career around, but thrive in the major leagues is what makes this sports book different.
Just Tell Me I Can't is really a book about failure and risk. How to deal with failure, learn from it, control the after affects and become motivated rather than defeated by it. The lessons learned from failure and taking risks are liberally sprinkled throughout all of the success stories I've know, and Moyer's is no different.
The old adage is "hitting is timing, and good pitching destroys timing.". Moyer was able to pitch until he was 49 years old in the majors, with stuff that frightened no one, because he was a master technician and his mental approach was fostered by an old asthmatic man from the Bronx who never played baseball. I found this book motivational and useful - baseball is just the medium used, it is the message within the book that makes it worth it.
"To aspire to great achievement is to risk failure"
"Think and talk the solution - not the problem"
- - Harvey Dorfman
Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air fittingly begins with this quote. The book tells the story of a group of people who, in May 1996, attempted to climb Mt. Everest. It unfortunately became the deadliest day in the history of Mt. Everest.
Normally, this would not be news. It is the undercurrents within the book that are more entertaining than the surface news of the tragedy. People climb mountains often, and there are often accidents and deaths. What makes this different is that the groups were part of a wave of clients who essentially paid big money to 'get' up the mountain. Some weren't experienced climbers, some were experienced (as Krakauer was), but none were what any experienced mountaineer would call 'prepared' for a climb such as Mt. Everest.
Krakauer diligently details the parameters of the trip, the high cost in time and money, and his constant doubts about the whole enterprise. His ability to foreshadow disaster while keeping reader interest is unparalleled. Each character is introduced in such a way that I wanted to know how it turned out for each one, even though the list of people who didn't make it is in the front of the book.
Krakauer is understandably wary of the whole enterprise of guides, for large sums of money ($15,000 to $75,000), essentially pulling up Regular Joes and Janes up Mt. Everest. Postal clerks, social butterflies, photographers and airline pilots seem miscast among the sherpas and the tour guides. Because of the worst storm in years, the inherent weaknesses in the guides, the plans, and the clients were all exposed, all at once. May 10th 1996 was a day of intense tragedy on Mt. Everest and the story is fascinating.
While reading about the book, I found out that Krakauer took a lot of abuse after writing the book - enough to warrant his issuing a rebuttal in the 1999 version of Into Thin Air. The criticism is unwarranted. It seems that people are unwilling to admit mistakes, that no one ever is guilty of overreach, as the guides both were. No one should tell the truth, or admit that people screw up, or get into situations where they had no business being. Krakauer actually admits serious wrongdoing on his part in the book. Yet, he was accused of unfairly attacking one of the assistant guides. I did not see it that way at all nor did I get that impression while reading it.
Ortega y Gasset was right. It is the 'civilized' world where the tragedy is. At least one can see why people will go into the mountains and play at tragedy to escape it all.
Ken Kamler, who was on Everest that day, recounts some of the horrors:
I first saw Joel Salatin in the latter half of the eye opening documentary called Food Inc. He was taking chickens in for processing - killing them one at a time and then plucking and packaging them outdoors in the fresh air of his small farm. Big Agra / Food sees his method, one that's been used for millennia, as 'unclean', and their method in a secretive, filthy industrialized feedlot as 'safe'. Folks, this ain't normal.
Situation #1) Monsanto grows a GMO (genetically modified organisms) crop, and the GMO crop blows its seeds onto your property. Monsanto sues YOU for patent infringement - and wins. This is normal (and true).
Situation #2) A food sickness outbreak is traced to a factory egg farm. The Food Industrial Complex, combined with its enforcement arm (USDA / FDA) decide that chlorine will sterilize the eggs and kill the bacteria, therefore USDA approved eggs must be bathed in chlorine. The American Public now sees USDA chlorine soaked eggs as 'safe' and non USDA approved eggs as 'unsafe'. This is normal.
Situation #3) Joel Salatin makes quiche, and it is very popular and people want to buy it from him - by choice, uncoerced. Government regulations state that if he wishes to sell quiche, he has to build a commercial kitchen ($50,000) on his property and have it inspected regularly. However, if he wishes to give it away to people, church groups, schools - neither the kitchen nor regulations are necessary. This, too, is considered normal.
Folks, this ain't normal is a look at our warped society through the lens of a man who runs a small family farm. He speaks about our country in general, but focuses on the food system and explains, in great detail, how the Big Industrialized Food Giants, aided and abetted by the Federal Government have destroyed the legitimacy and value of our national diet, and to some degree, culture.
Salatin's book is a treatise on how government regulations hurt small and midsize organic farms. Through personal examples and painstaking explanations, Salatin shows how the regulations imposed on farmers are really about limiting market access for small and midsize farms, and increasing market share for the large food corporations. Under the aegis of 'protecting the consumer', the enforcement arms of the large food companies, the USDA and the FDA work hand in glove with lobbyists and create rules and regulations that small players cannot afford.
Salatin's book will educate you about how the farm system works, how things used to be done, and how much of our modern system has become horribly abnormal. The USDA approval process has become a boon to the large corporate players - at the expense of the small organic farmers and the health of the American public. Salatin craves for a more educated, connected population with regard to their farms and their food. Here Salatin sounds naive - even though he is a worldly and versatile man. He doesn't seem to understand that the average American (HL Mencken called them the booboisie) believes what he is told. If something is USDA approved - it is safe. If something is not approved - it is unsafe. Our government regulators are looking out for our best interests and are fighting the good fight - I know people who actually think this. Salatin requests that people research who runs these government regulators - a ridiculous task for most indoctrinated Americans who have spent at least 12 years in the Church of the Religion of Government. Basically, Big Food and Government Regulations are not helping you.
Folks, this ain't normal, combined with Food Inc. and Food Matters have changed the way my family and I eat. It is imminently readable, filled with interesting history and independent ideas for solving the problems we have in the United States today. His solutions are clear, common sensical and place the power over your life and health in your hands. If I believed in required reading, this book would be on the list.
I used to cut class in high school - but only when there was a substitute teacher of course. What I used to do is go to the back corner of the library and read the sports books during this unexpectedly free period. One of the books that I remembered even after all of these years was Peter Golenbock's Bums.
The oral history format is a difficult one to do well. Oral histories often sound campy and rehearsed, or they are all hyperbole and serve as platforms for stating the obvious (Jackie Robinson was great, Duke Snider swatted lots of homers). Bums is different and wonderful because it shows, in the words of the people involved, what happened in the Dodger years from about 1900 to their last season in Brooklyn, 1957.
Golenbock has the players words interspersed with commentary on the information presented. It is a good mix of prose and interview material on a topic any serious baseball fan would find appealing. Bums originally came out in 1984, when many of the players on the 40's and 50's Dodgers were still alive. He also includes the men who wrote for the local papers as well as a few people who were around the team - executives, employees and fans.
Naturally one of the most interesting parts of the book is the section on the breaking of the color barrier spurred by Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson. The behind the scenes information told by Jackie Robinson's widow Rachel Robinson, and Happy Chandler (former MLB commissioner - whose actions supporting Rickey cost him his job) is unique and not widely known. Jackie Robinson's first season was the one with the 'no fighting back' policy and the pressure to conform to this Rickey rule had to have been astronomical. The back office pressure provided by the other owners on Commissioner Chandler was intense. They voted to not allow Robinson to break the barrier, and when Chandler gave Rickey the green light to allow Robinson to play, the owners didn't renew Chandler's contract and he was out. The owners never had more than a puppet commissioner after that.
Jackie aslo had a prickly personality, and was not loved by the other players. Apparently he was aloof and difficult to get along with. Later on he became intensely political, supporting Republican Richard Nixon, and this turned off many of his former teammates - not because of his allegiance, but because he was unwilling to talk about anything else. It is this type of non mainstream information that is the gold that is sprinkled throughout the book. Also lost in the Robinson mystique is how fantastic an athlete Jackie was, and how skilled a second baseman he was. Bill James gives him due credit in his Historical Baseball Abstract, but rarely does one see in print quality analysis of Robison's skill as a player. Even the players who were not Robinson fans per se recognized his hall of fame ability on the field. Bums provides much of the heretofore unseen backstory.
The Dodgers have had a rich history. Their tenure in Brooklyn sounds like it was one of the aspects of an older, non corporate New York City that was even more rabid for baseball. Bums covers a lot of ground: What happened to Karl Spooner - comes up as a left handed 23 year old and pitches two games, both complete game shutouts with 27 strikeouts in 18 innings? What did Sandy Koufax do in Brooklyn - and why was he so invisible during his time there? Who were the Daffiness Boys and Uncle Robbie? Why is Walter O'Malley vilified when his actions are justifiably those of a smart businessman? Why are they called the Dodgers in the first place?
These questions get answers, the history gets an honest look (this is not hagiography) and the prose is smooth and detailed. I understand, 23 years later, why Bums stayed in my memory.
The heart of the 1957 Dodger lineup, the final year in Brooklyn.
A Different Kind of Teacher, despite its being 12 years old, reads like an analysis of present day schools. Gatto does what most educators refuse to do - look at schools for what they are and parallel that to what the creators of government forced schooling said they wanted schools to become. If you are a fan of real world analysis and unsanctioned thoughts, Gatto and his works are for you. Unsanctioned Thought, from page 52: "Between 1896 and 1920, a small group of industrialists and financiers, together with their private charitable foundations, subsidized university chairs and researchers, and school administrators, spent more money on schooling than the government itself did, with the aim of bending schooling to the service of business and the political state. Carnegie and Rockefeller alone, as late as 1915, were spending more than the state. In this laissez-faire fashion, a system of modern schooling was constructed without public participation."
These kinds of statements turn everything you learned in school on its head. We get taught that the Big Bad Businessmen are to be reviled, and want to systematically crush the little guy in their lust for money and power. The irony is that your State loving, Left leaning teacher was right - they just had the methods incorrect. It isn't the 'free market' or 'capitalism' that is your enemy. These are red herrings. The school and the school system that you are forced to go to was created for the purpose of keeping the little guys in their place. The radically independent, free thinking entrepreneurial American had to be shaped and molded into a time serving drone whose allegiance was to the State (wholly controlled by the Moneyed Powers). Your independent family might teach you the things of the world, you might learn by doing. Even worse, you might become a competitor to the large corporate interests, like Thomas Edison, Benjamin Franklin, Ingvar Kamprad, Madame CJ Walker, SB Fuller, Richard Branson. The aforementioned were all exceedingly educated, but unschooled. What the State / Corporate Alliance had to try to do was break apart the dynamic, flexible and most importantly, independent family unit. School was the bludgeon to do that.
Proof: Here is where the garden variety unthinking American, who has been schooled into oblivion, will meet you with silence. "In our dreams...people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present education conventions fade from their minds, and unhampered by tradition we work our own goodwill upon a grateful and responsive folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning of men of science. We have not to raise up from them authors, educators, poets, or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters musicians nor lawyers, doctors preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we have an ample supply. The task is simple. We will organize children and teach them in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way." You can read the whole thing here. You should be angered at the paternalistic 'we' constantly used. Who is the 'we' that is to mold the children of America? They certainly weren't talking about the average, free, independent American parents doing the molding.
I was taught by well meaning people who believed in the system. Chances are so were you. However, what Gatto does in this book, which is really a series of essays, is show you that the illogical failing system that is foisting illiterate and incapable parasites into the American Electorate, isn't failing at all. It was engineered to be that way. I cannot think of any person more qualified to show you that you live in a house of mirrors. Gatto is careful in A Different Kind of Teacher to explain that the teachers and administrators are almost always nice, caring people who believe that they are looking out for your best interests. What they don't know, and from my experience, don't care to know, is that they are part of a system that was engineered to create a mass of unthinking spenders, never able to think for themselves or understand the world around them. In short, they are used to simply doing as their told, which after 12 years of compulsory, authoritarian indoctrination, is what they do. A Different Kind of Teacher explains this point thoroughly through Gatto's research and 30 years experience as a middle school English teacher in the NYC Public School system.
In case you think that school is supposed to provide a way out, instead of keep you in your place, I'll leave you with this quote, by Woodrow Wilson, hero of the Progressives, from a day when the elites were much more forthright about their intent:
“We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class of necessity in every society, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.”
― Woodrow Wilson
Intentionally or not, we are predisposed and taught that the Ancient World was a place of simplicity and ignorance. The imagery is usually one of people so unfortunate as to live lives hand to mouth, gathering fruits and berries, handling simple farming and doing little to no analysis of the world. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Sacred Number and The Origins of Civilization, The Unfolding of History through the Mystery of Number, by Richard Heath sends the above premise into the trash. Think of measuring the following measurements of the Earth in the modern age, gotten via GPS and satellite tracking, in addition to using advanced math: Equatorial Radius, Equatorial Circumference, Mean Radius, Mean Circumference, Meridian Circumference and Polar Radius. All of these were measured by the ancient peoples of the earth, and were known thousands of years ago. Not only did they know, but the accuracy of the measurements is astounding. The LEAST accurate measurement by the ancients was the Meridian Circumference of the Earth, and it was 99.906% accurate to the modern measurement. All of the others were closer, from 99.962% accurate (Mean Circumference), to 99.998% accurate (Mean Radius). (p.55)
Stated further, not only was the Equatorial Bulge of the planet known, it was measured correctly by people who did not have modern methods, electricity, manned flight or rapid travel. While reading I kept thinking of the Isaac Newton quote "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Perhaps these were the people about whom he spoke.
Sacred Number not only shows what these people knew, but how they represented their knowledge of the Earth and the Heavens. The Great Pyramids of Egypt show the mathematical relationship of the Earth to the Moon, as well as serving as a solar calendar.
"Squaring the Circle", or having a circle with the same perimeter as the square (see above) inscribed by the mean Earth. The Great Pyramid of Giza has the exact shape to demonstrate the 3:11 relationship of the Moon to Earth. The difference between the perimeters of the two circles above (the perimeter of the Earth and the circle that passes through the center of the Moon) equals in length exactly the circle that is the Moon. The Moon is exactly in this proportion to the mean Earth. The Egyptians had figured this out thousands of years ago, and Heath goes further, noting that the difference in height between the uncapped pyramid and the capped pyramid is the ratio between the mean and polar radii of the Earth.
Sacred Number is more than simply letting on what the Ancients knew. Heath's premise is a philosophical one. The idea of God, God's works and the representation of God(s) can all be found in the monuments, temples and placement of these representations. He gives a wonderful summation of this premise in the chapter called "Life, the Universe, and Everything". The 'prehistoric' way was God and the Works of God, and it became, during the 'historic' era, The Idea of God and the Works of the Idea of God. We know this now as the Word of God, or Logos, or scripture.
Sacred Number effectively shows the role of Number in nature, and the recognition of this knowledge by the Ancient People in the ancient monuments. Heath is open about the lack of recognition by The Establishment of this knowledge, and in doing so, shows a genuine respect to the societies of yesteryear, as opposed to the trendy snark that passes for modern analysis. The chapter "Ancient Theme Parks" is worth the price of the book, as you'll be amazed at the deft accuracy of monuments throughout the world and the celestial and solar relationships they mirror.
This video, from Secrets is Plain Sight, got me interested in Ancient knowledge. It is from the bibliography here that I learned about Sacred Number.
This is the update I sent my parents and students today on my online web grading system:
All, We are in the middle of Marking Period 4. The English classes just finished '12 Angry Men'. Ask your child what the play was like - have him explain what the concepts were that we discussed. The class notes are a good resource for tying in the concepts and ideas. There was a connection between the Milgram Obedience to Authority experiment, the Stanford Prison Experiment and the play itself. The idea was to show how Groupthink and ad verecundiam (the latin term for Fallacy of Authority) can be dangerous. Having your child verbalize this idea would be a good way to help his Active Literacy skills. Going forward we will watch "A Few Good Men" and analyze the themes of the movie and the connection it has to "12 Angry Men".
There are some links I've come across and some books that might help in these times of troubled schools and dumbed down education. I see what my children get at 'school' and most of the times I have to augment the history and the English classes, as well as de-program the effects of the textbook propaganda. I realize how that sounds, but I've spoken to many parents of late who are seeing the same thing. Let me share some of the resources that I've come across as of late:
Books: 1) What Smart Students Know - by Adam Robinson. Robinson is one of the co-founders of the Princeton Review. He explains how 'school' and much of what it does is something of a random game that fits the style of only a few students. Worth it for a strategy book for education, and rife with great quotes. Robinson sold his share of the Princeton Review in the '80's for millions and now speaks and writes. 2) Weapons of Mass Instruction - By John Taylor Gatto. Gatto uses his knowledge of the history of school to explain how people, modern day and in the past, have used their innate intelligence to live full lives. The book is rich in showing the wealth and experience or people who have 'written their own script', rather than followed others' ideas for them. Gatto's work is always worthwhile, and there are many youtube videos of his that are quite interesting.
Video: This latest video I showed my Strategic Reading classes. It is not only inspirational, it might change the course of schools in general. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3jYVe1RGaU
Article: The One Laptop Per Child project is fascinating. This article at Technology Review explains how children in wretched conditions in Ethiopia were able to learn, on their own, how to hack the tablets they had been given. The ability of people to learn, when unshackled, is astounding.
Bill James, in his Historical Baseball Abstract, lists Honus Wagner as the greatest shortstop of all time. It isn't even close. Number two on the list is Arky Vaughan - something of a surprise even to someone like me, a baseball stat freak who has been reading James' work since 1987. James states clearly that the difference between the number one shortstop (Wagner) and the number two shortstop (Vaughan) is about the same distance between the number two shortstop and the number 30 shortstop.
With Wagner so completely superior to the rest of the shortstop field, I looked forward to Arthur Hittner's Honus Wagner. James is not generous with praise, and, being pathologically independent minded, routinely finds flaws where conventional analysis does not. That being said, I figured I had the key to the mystery that was Honus Wagner, as Hittner's book is well researched and filled with detail. I was disappointed.
Hittner's book leaves a lot to be desired. I didn't learn much about Honus Wagner that is not on his stat sheet or in a basic online biography. Hittner's book reads like a series of news articles read in sequence at the library. He reports on the news of the games found in the local papers of the day, and shares tidbits of commentary found in those articles. The tone and tenor of the book is such. I was never interested while reading the book, and at one point decided to read faster to get it over with. There isn't one single event that is dealt with in an insightful manner. I was looking forward to the section on the 1909 World Series. The World Series was young - the American League was only 8 years old, and the Tigers had a young Ty Cobb, and the 110 win Pirates had an aging powerhouse led by Wagner. I was expecting to get transported back to those days and 'see' the event. Baseball at that time was still figuring itself out, and it was becoming the national pastime. Hittner falls flat here as he covers the events of the game, and little material below the surface. This is indicative of most of the book.
In Hittner's defense, Wagner was apparently a quiet loner of a man - almost secretive. Wagner's comments to the press were bland. He was unwilling to share personal details with many friends, and spend his offseasons away from the game. Toward the end of the book Wagner's marriage happens almost by surprise. Hittner had no choice, it seems, than to recount the Wagner story from the press clippings. Unfortunately, this created a dry read, one that lacks depth.
