1 comments about I'd Do It Again!: -A Memoir -.

1. This was such a fun book, spanning the life of Harriet Wright, the last living member of the original Copacabana chorusline. I thought the book would just be about the club years, but it is so much more. She dated the presidents son (FDR) and ran with the rich and famous. Her time in Hollywood, the hichhike across country her time in Cairo were all fascinating. The story of her son was equally amazing: he grew up to become famous. WOW, what a life this woman lived, and she had so many ups and downs.

No comments about Gucci Wars: How I Survived Murder and Intrigue at the Heart of the World's Biggest Fashion House.

No comments about The House That Jack Built.

No comments about Elvis: A Celebration in Pictures.

3 comments about Tips from the Top: Advice for a Young Person from 125 of America's Most Successful People.

1. I bought this book as soon as it came out over three years ago, and I still refer to it this day for some sound, quality advice. It's a great resource for ambitious young people eager to learn some simple yet often thoughtful advice. I would recommend this book to parents, children, and young adults everywhere.
   
   Thank you, Mr. Gallagher, for this comprehensive and diverse compilation.



2. If you are a young person looking for any female role models, look elsewhere. I was disappointed not only with this gender oversight, but also that the author focuses on men in office (plus a few entertainers, athletes, and coaches). Where are the artists, physicians, and Nobel Laureates? America certainly has its share, but these successful people are not represented here.



3. This collection of advise from world leaders in government, business and entertainment shows how common sense values are the key to success. There is a consistent theme of hard work, high moral character, and overcoming failure throughout the book.

   Anyone of any age should read this book and they will find common sense advise that will trump all the self-help de jour literature on the market. So forget about Six Sigma, Steven Covey, and all the other "corporate consultant" lingo, and discover the very basic common themes of successful leaders in society.

No comments about Royal Holidays.

5 comments about Tina and Harry Come to America: Tina Brown, Harry Evans, and the Uses of Power.

1. This book is a nasty, in a sophistiacated 1930s sort of way. Think, Clare Booth Luce's "The Women". This book is the story of an unrelenting social climber who had genuine talent and ability on her side but little grace, humility or kindness. And it caught up with her. The book does a good job of showing why Ms. Brown has so many enemies and why she rose to such starry heights in the first place. It's great for people who love NYC, or who love journalism, or anyone who just wants a juicy piece of shameless gossip.



2. WHAT did Tina Brown do to Judy Bachrach? That's really the question you keep asking yourself while reading this bitchy if amusing book. Not that Ms Brown and Mr Evans don't deserve quite a bit of the stick they get here, but it is so... unrelenting. Judy Bachrach now works for Tina Brown's successor at Vanity Fair, and she applies to Tina and Harry the gossipy techniques which made VF's success. She should have applied fuller disclosure to her motives.

   That being said, most details here are probably accurate. Thebook is not published in the UK for fear of libel suits. Not very sportsmanlike of Tina and Harry.




3. Hi there and apologies for bothering you. Judy Bachrach has contacted me to point out that when I say an anecdote was repeated twice at the start of the book, I should in fact have said an entire quote. I know this sounds like splitting hairs, but she seems a little perturbed by this and so if you could change the review to make it 100 percent accurate I'd be very grateful. Many thanks in advance for your understanding.

   David Ljunggren




4. journalism and its practice isn't really everybody's top interest, but this is one of the best books i've ever read. tina brown is the editor of our generation, and how she did it is of compelling interest to women in journalism everywhere. one way she did it was by writing what can only be called faye wray journalism in the 1970s -- something invented by older blondes on this side of the atlantic. it makes for a great read, and it helped both of them find rich mentors. that's part of the way the world is, and this book is exactly about that, including the anti-semitism of britain (tina is one-fourth jewish) and how when she could not conquer british society as she wished, tina chose to conquer hollywood. (her father, whom she loved, was a B-movie producer.) how she persuaded media mogul s.i. newhouse to fund her money-losing yet spectacular rise is suggested (let's just say blondeness is involved). the biography of her husband, harry evans, is as compelling as tina's -- almost d. h. lawrence -- starting out sexually compulsive as the crusading editor in some polluted northern england rust belt town. how tina has mined her older husband's gift for graphics is displayed. i loved the roseanne issue of the new yorker which all the white boys hated. roseanne is tina and tina is roseanne. and i'll wager (were i a bettin' man) that that's why people hate this book. you need to read it. tina (along with katharine graham and princess diana) was a captain of the girl team. and this is how she got there. cover 'em up if you got 'em.



5. I started this book with the conviction that I would finally learn what had made Tina Brown such a feared and respected editor. Unfortunately, when I finished it I was somewhat disappointed. Judy Bachrach certainly does a good job of finding disaffected former employees who dish out all sorts of dirt on Tina Brown and detail working practices and habits which seem to have caused her underlings some serious grief. But what I did not really learn was what exactly why she was brought across from London to edit first Vanity Fair and then the New Yorker. She was clearly not a charlatan, she clearly had talents, but the use to which she put them is obscured by the dirt and nastiness regularly dumped all over Brown by other people quoted in this book. As a reader of the New Yorker for the last 15 years I can say that she did indeed change it, in many ways for the better. I still have some of my old pre-Brown copies of the magazine and while they do contain the occasional excellent articles, there are also many long, long screeds about fruitflies and tomatoes and some obscure aspect of baseball which were allowed to ramble on and on. Whatever faults she may have had, Tina Brown at least turned the magazine into something I wanted to read and actually looked forward to every week. She did make mistakes (as the book makes clear) and I agree with critics who say the Diana issue was extremely ill-judged, but the magazine now is in many ways a sorry shadow of what it once was. It saddens me to say that I look forward to Harper's and Atlantic Monthly with more anticipation than I do the New Yorker. The one area where the magazine has really collapsed is the fiction section, where whoever is in charge seems to have completely given up. Almost every week it's the same thing, exceedingly well-known names writing variations on the same themes, be it Alice Munro or William Trevor or whoever else it might be. What happened to the magazine's fine old tradition of unearthing new authors? I note that Zadie Smith is now going to be writing a story for the magazine, which is a good thing, but it would have been more impressive had the magazine published her before the success of "White Teeth". Yes, there has been the odd New Fiction issue with a few new authors, but I can think of no area where the New Yorker has collapsed so miserably as in fiction. So do read Bachrach's book if you have an interest in Tina Brown and Harry Evans but don't expect an answer to all your questions.

5 comments about Just Desserts p Martha Stewart: The Unauthorized Biography.

1. I must say, Jerry Oppenheimer's book is definitely a page-turner. The whole Martha Stewart phemonenon always made me a little queasy; after reading his book, I know exactly why. Some reviewers have said that this book is mean-spirited or overly negative. That's not Oppenheimer's fault. During the course of the book he interviewed family members, colleagues, and former friends/business associates of Stewart's. The portrait they unanimously paint is of a really awful human being; a petty, vindictive, greedy woman who clawed her way to success frequently on the stolen ideas and hard work of others. At best, she comes across as cold, aloof, and distant. Nevertheless, truly villainous people are fascinating in their way, and Martha Stewart is no exception. I always had the feeling she had a closet full of skeletons, and Oppenheimer's book colorfully brings them to light. It's not a deep intellectual read, but it's definitely a fun one.



2. Before the story broke about the insider trading scandal involving Martha Stewart, I did not have a good idea of who she was. I was curious to find out so I purchased "Just Desserts". The book did not seem to be a "hit piece", as others have portrayed this book. What I found was a writer who disected the image from the the real person. It is a very interesting study on Martha Stewart's troubled past regarding her domineering father and Martha's need to become rich and famous no matter what the cost and no matter who got in the way. I came away feeling very sorry for her. Whether you are a fan of her's or not, the book does a very good job of showing the fake from the real. The onscreen personae and her real actiions behind the scenes will shock and astound. The author also delves into the fantastic business savy that Stewart displayed throughout her career. She was very often underestimated, but always a step ahead of the competition. A real modern day Jeckyl and Hide story.

   Not only does the book describe the interesting antics and unreal behavior of Stewart, it also touches on the gullibility of the people who surrounded her and how they naively followed her every whim. It is an interesting study of how people will believe in the image of a person and cling onto it no matter what the true reality is. In the case of several people such as her former husband and several business associates, they finally saw past the facade and saw the real person behind the disguise. This is a tragic story but very revealing on what motivates some people towards ultimate fame and power.




3. Ok, first off, let me say that I have nothing wrong with a woman that is independent, hard working and creative.

   What I do have a problem with is a woman that won't get therapy for her lack of people skills due to her lousy childhood.

   Look Martha, not all women feel "inadequate" becaue they don't spend lots of time on silly compulsive activites such as gathering fall leaves from the backyard and matching them! (when you're rich and have a staff, then you can do these things)

   Do I feel rage or jealousy becaue I don't do these things? No.

   Do I realize that Martha would be nobody without her PR machine and spin doctors? Yes.

   Does she make pretty stuff? Yes,

   Does she have some serious interpersonal problems? Yes.

   Good book all around.

   I do feel sorry for her family.

   And yes to some reviewers, even men have to contend with this.




4. WOW, was this a ruthless illustration of Martha Stewart! She's described as an obsessive-compulsive insomniac (she would only sleep for 2-4 hours a night, then get up and paint her entire house in one day), who's main goal is to be on top through ruthless power and manipulation (she stole business ideas, designs and didn't give credit to friends, coworkers... to the point where if a person demanded royalties, she would find some loophole in the legal system to prevent them from getting any profits -- Me-YOW!) This depiction is a far cry from the soft-spoken homemaker you see on her show. She's described by family and friends as dominating, cold, sadistic, abusive and absolutely ruthless. She even cuts down her elderly mother in front of her family: "She only makes peasant food!" she snipes. I've never read anything like it.

   It starts with Martha's family and where she came from in New Jersey. Apparently, Martha's father was a perfectionist who shoved his beliefs, anger and attitude down her throat; nothing was good enough in his eyes and because of him, the Monster-Martha is what is alive today. Even as a child, she sabotaged a little girl's cake recipe in order to take her little business away for herself. Signs that a powerful, heartless woman was going to surface.

   Martha was cutthroat and vindictive. She pretty much screwed over anyone and everyone around her to further only herself -- she didn't even care about her family, including her daughter and husband, whom she brow-beated to death in front of family and friends until he (who was just wimpy from the start) finally had the nerve to leave her, prompting incredible stories of stalking, vandalism and public screaming fits -- till he had a restraining order put on her.

   Martha is depicted as someone who never learned affection, or at least had an incredible dark side that was calculating and vindictive. She would purposely hire people who were creative and brilliant, but they either had low self-esteems to begin with or she broke them down. She DEFINITELY was masochistic and manipulated everyone who came in her path on her rise to power. The only time her affections seemed to be positive, were when sex was involved, and then she came across predatory. She's also illustrated as an incredible liar; family and friends reflect on her writings of her "happy past" and say all of them are either exaggerated or completely fabricated.

   After reading what a terror she was in the past, I can actually believe the insider trading stories -- it just fits. Oh and the new edition adds that little chunk in the end.

   Upon finishing this, I'm blown away at what a terror she was and has become. She is obviously a person who will stop at nothing to be on top, including her cheapness and just downright vicious scheming. She's also obviously brilliant, with a chip on her shoulder about her poor past and is also considered racist, sexist and as the book says: "WASPy in true form."

   Martha Stewart is a nightmare in this book! I wouldn't want to come within 20 ft. of her (much less meet her in a dark alley) after reading this. Personally, I think she's mentally screwed up something fierce, but the fact that she concentrates all of it into her work is phenomenal.

   4 stars -- one missing due to some anonymous sources (which I don't always trust as true) and the fact that it pretty much had NOTHING positive to say about her; I would have liked to see a little positive stuff. You know, to kind of balance it out. Then again, maybe there wasn't anything positive. This woman is the anti-Christ!

   Otherwise, good trash to read!




5. Certainly one of the greatest uses of biography is to learn from someone else's mistakes. For that reason alone it's worth it to read Just Desserts. I have been in awe of the curious Martha Phenomenon since it first began many years ago. Martha could not have made her climb to the top had she not been pandering to a generation of women not unlike herself, women who were scarred by the aftermath of World War II. These women, bereft of family structure and traditional roots, were particularly vulnerable to Martha's opportunistic nature. As an astrologer, I understand many of the dynamics of Stewart's personality. That she fantasized her past was but an extension of her ability to turn common lead in to gold on a daily basis. The emergence of her dark side might be understood as the obsessive wrath and demonic unresolved self hatred of her father, whose aspirations she was doomed to pursue because he had not been able to. And more. Dear Reader, read ye and learn! Like another commentator before me on this website, I decided by page 38 that I was glad I was not Martha!

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No comments about J. P. Morgan: Banker to a Growing Nation (American Business Tycoons).