bookshelf

THE EDUCATION OF AN AMERICAN DREAMER

Name: THE EDUCATION OF AN AMERICAN DREAMER
Author: Peter G. Peterson
ISBN: 978-0-446-55603-3

HOW A SON OF GREEK IMMIGRANTS LEARNED HIS WAY FROM A NEBRASKA DINER TO WASHINGTON, WALL STREET, AND BEYOND

by Peter G. Peterson ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 8, 2009

Disingenuous candor is not unknown in works like this, but Peterson’s memoir is persuasive and lucid.

bookshelf

Sagacious octogenarian and genial plutocrat Peterson (Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It, 2004, etc.) recalls his journey from Kearney, Neb., to the White House and Wall Street.

During the Depression, the author, then a young scion of hardworking Greek immigrants, tended the cash register in the family restaurant. Soon the bright lad was off to MIT and then to Northwestern’s business school. As a young go-getter in a gray flannel suit, he found a natural place in advertising with a prominent Chicago agency. He quickly moved into management at Bell and Howell, where he created the boombox. An open-minded Republican, he entered the world stage as Nixon’s adviser on international trade policy and then secretary of commerce in the early ’70s. He became a member of corporate boards, study groups and think tanks. Then Wall Street beckoned, and Peterson took charge of Lehman Brothers. He later co-founded the Blackstone Group, leaving it as a billionaire. His life story epitomizes the American Dream, as our earnest autobiographer tells it, and no wonder, since he freely confesses to “troublesome traits” like “perfectionism and obsessive devotion to work.” Of course, Peterson’s life wasn’t entirely unproblematic, fraught as it was with brain surgery, two divorces and Richard Nixon. He covers all of these, offering frank appreciation of friends (like Henry Kissinger and David Rockefeller) and candid assessment of foes (Chuck Colson). The author remains devoted to family—he’s now married to Joan Ganz Cooney, who helped create Sesame Street—and to public service.

Disingenuous candor is not unknown in works like this, but Peterson’s memoir is persuasive and lucid.

Pub Date: June 8, 2009

ISBN: 978-0-446-55603-3

Page Count: 364

Publisher: Twelve

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2009

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

- BOOK REVIEW
STEERING CLEAR
by Peter G. Peterson

- BOOK REVIEW
GRAY DAWN
by Peter G. Peterson

- BOOK REVIEW
WILL AMERICA GROW UP BEFORE IT GROWS OLD?
by Peter G. Peterson

bookshelf

THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

bookshelf

Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Well-told and admonitory.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

bookshelf

INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

bookshelf

The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).

Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)