Content tagged with “memoir”

“This is the inside story of The Plame Affair – the revelation that Valerie Plame was a CIA operative, allegedly initiated by the Bush White House because Plame’s husband, Joe Wilson, had been critical of the administration’s reasoning for starting the Iraq War. The most obvious part of this book is…”

“This is a lovely, comprehensive biography of one of the greatest thinkers in history. This is one of the rare biographies I read of someone who lived so long ago that exact records are not available. There is no video footage of Da Vinci’s life. There are no photographs of him. No newspapers quoted…”

“This is not a sophisticated book. The author rambles. He tells stories. It jumps back and forth between time and scope. Subjects come and go and you never know what he’s going to talk about next. But this is a fun book. Boehner tells a great story. He swears a lot. He’s a good old boy. He’s met a…”

“Robert Caro writes a very particular type of book. He hasn’t written that many, but they were (and are) huge and detailed. He wrote a book called The Power Broker which was a 1,200 biography of the NYC city planner Robert Moses. Caro won a Pulitzer for that. He won another Pulitzer for one of the…”

“This is a history of Fred Koch and his sons. Fred started what would become Koch Industries. He had four sons: Frederick, who never took much interest in the business, never married, and apparently spoke with the author multiple times to insist he wasn’t gay Charles, who is the mastermind of the…”

“This is a compelling auto-biography. It reads fast and stays interesting. Agassi claims to hate tennis. His father groomed him to be a tennis player, and the stories he tells of his childhood border on abuse. He grew up hating the game. But he dropped out of school in the 9th grade, so that’s all…”

“I very much regret not getting the audiobook. It would have been spectacular to listen to the author read this. This is a memoir. It was made out to be more than that because (1) the cover is funky, and (2) it has a lot of pictures of artifacts (?) of McConaughey’s life, but make no mistake – this…”

“This book just wasn’t for me. This book is about when famous scientists make mistakes. For example, Darwin misunderstood some critical aspect of heredity. And someone else got the age of the Earth wrong. When this happened, big scientific arguments ensued. Letters were exchanged. Conference…”

“Before he was a news show host, Chris Matthews was chief of staff to Tip O’Neill in the 1980s. During that period, Tip was the most prominent Democrat in the country as Speaker of the House, and he was the constant adversary to President Ronald Reagan. This book chronicles the six years from 1980…”

“Fascinating story of Huguette Clark, the youngest daughter of mining baron W.A. Clark. She was fabulously wealthy, but reclusive and eccentric. She maintained ‘empty mansions’ that she never lived in, and even spent the last 20-ish years of her life contentedly living in a hospital room. (How do…”

“You read memoirs for two things: (1) a play-by-play re-telling of history, and (2) some higher truth to it all; some ‘gestalt’ that makes you look at things differently. This book has #1, for sure. Not so much of #2. The book starts with Obama’s childhood (but doesn’t spend a lot of time on it),…”

“This is a book of essays – short chapters that have nothing to do with each other, though they are somehow grouped into sections. I have never read a book of essays. And this is not a book that I would have picked up, but a friend sent it to me. I had sent the friend a different book years ago. He…”

“A stunning memoir of a dysfunctional childhood. Jeannette’s parents weren’t actively abusive, but they were passively abusive in the sense that they had no personal responsibility, and they never gave any regard to holding down jobs and providing basic care to their children. In retrospect (and in…”

“For the last few years, my brother has gotten in the habit of buying me a biography of an 80s music star for Christmas. First it was Motley Crue, then Billy Idol, then Phil Collins, and now Elton John. Good book. Easy to read. Flows nicely. Lots of neat recollections of famous people you know….”

“I read this book because I had heard Felix Dennis was a character, and I wanted to see how someone would explain how they got rich. The book was stupid and unnecessary. It’s really a self-help or motivational. There is no actual practical advice here except for general platitudes about focus,…”

“You need to understand that this isn’t a book about the process of writing (as the title would suggest). This is really a meandering memoir of a particular writer’s life. I keep looking for some constructive instructional value, but it’s buried pretty deep. Mostly, McPhee just wants to tell…”

“I love Atul Gawande, but I didn’t love this book. It wasn’t what I expected, which I normally take as my own fault, but I don’t think it’s what anyone would expect from this book. But, first, the book is really interesting. He has a total Malcolm Gladwell thing going on with this book – it’s a…”

“Absolutely, one of the best books I’ve read in years. Enraging in places, it’s one of those books where you watch the protagonist suffer, and make choices you don’t really understand because you’re not as deep into the situation as they are. But, in the end, you have some appreciation for how they…”

“I’ve become a little obsessed with the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum heist lately, after listening to the ‘Last Seen ‘podcast. This book is by the definitive reporter to cover the crime – he’s been reporting on it, on and off, for 25 years. Sadly, the book is scattered. It’s not a…”

“Entertaining history of Nike from its beginning in 1962 through to when it went public in 1980. Those 18 years were run on a shoestring budget, and the company was constantly, hilariously broke. In the last chapter, Knight catches up to everything that’s happened since 1980. That sounds rushed, but…”

“I originally thought this was just the transcript of The Last Lecture video, but it’s more than that. It’s an expansion of the principles Pausch discussed in TLL, which basically becomes a book of life advice. Some of it is good, some of it is obvious, but it’s a quick easy read. If you’ve seen the…”

“My brother gave this to me as a gift. I had forgotten how much exposure I had to Phil Collins as a teenager. Looking back, he was seemingly everywhere. Turns out, I missed most of his career in the first incantation of Genesis (with Peter Gabriel). I only stumbled on the scene when Genesis was a…”

“Wonderfully written biography. Makes me want to read more Chernow. JDR was a flawed man, certainly. While an upstanding citizen in his personal life, he was a ruthless business, who destroyed his competitors with glee. Provoked some wonder at the line between the personal and professional. Can…”

“I enjoyed this book, which is more of a rebuke of President Trump than anything else. I agreed with most everything in it, and Flake makes his case well, though I don’t know what other purpose the book serves. I didn’t really learn anything new, except that there are Republicans who explicitly…”

“My daughter bought me this for my birthday. She had read the back of it at the bookstore, and ‘thought I would find it interesting.’ It was riveting. It’s actually a fairly nondescript story of abuse, but it’s intense. The author is currently an attorney in San Francisco. The book begins with her…”

“This might be the Whitest thing I could ever say, but I just didn’t get it. I understand the point of this book – it’s a cry of protest, meant to be a reminder of how far we have to go as a society in terms of racial equity, lest we get too impressed with ourselves. Stylistically, the book can be a…”

“I read this book as the supposed successor (or maybe predecessor?) to ‘Kitchen Confidential.’ It was just okay. I had trouble with the names. The author careens back and forth between Italy and New York, and there are a lot of people to sort out. There are Marios and Darios and Marcos and Memos and…”

“I read this book for the pure titillation level, because I’m fascinated by high society in general and New York culture in particular. And the book delivered on that level – there are some horrifying anecdotes where of a woman trying to fit into Upper East Side mommies. Women who use Birkin bags as…”

“Amazingly wonderful book on the history of the digital age, all the way from Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage through to Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Wonderfully written, always engrossing. It begins with a long discussion of Lovelace, Babbage, and Turing’s thoughts on whether a machine could ever…”