(Harmony Books, NY, NY, 2009, ISBN 978-0-307-35375-7)

By Ben Miles

In one of several books published in 2009 about the late actor Paul Newman, author Shawn Levy writes that Newman’s was a “one-in-a-billion stardom.” After completing Levy’s marvelously crafted 474-page biography, Paul Newman: A Life, one would be hard-pressed to not consider Newman as a one-in-a-billion person. Not only did this Oscar-winner master the art of acting as few movie stars ever have but also he was winning auto races into his seventies and generating hundreds of millions of dollars for charity through his ongoing entrepreneurial efforts in Newman’s Own food products.

The most impressive lessons that Levy gleans from the long and rich life of Paul Newman appear to be the actor/humanitarian’s so-called terrierlike determination and “coltish” charm. And though Newman is among the most handsome of matinee idols to ever have graced the silver screen, he himself discounted those God-given attributes, often noting that “having blues eyes [is] no accomplishment.”

After all, Newman was a craftsman who saw acting as his job, writes Levy. “He was raised to work at work.” Newman studied his vocation intently and with passion, at both Yale School of Drama and the Actor’s Studio. Indeed, Newman’s belief was that passion for one thing tends to “bleed over” into one’s other life endeavors.

But Levy’s bio is no mere hagiographic tribute. Both the ups and downs of Newman’s life are examined here. Just as Newman grew from a noteworthy amateur actor into an adroit thespian, he also matured from a somewhat indulgent and uncertain youth into a philanthropic role model and big-screen icon. And, though Newman is admired for his half-century marriage to the gifted actress Joanne Woodward, he divorced his first wife, Jackie, the mother of three of his six children. The reason? He fell in love with Woodward while the two were acting together on the Broadway stage. Later in his enduring wedlock with Woodward, Newman would stray again, briefly, from nuptial fidelity.

Levy also makes it sorrowfully clear that Newman suffered greatly from the death of his 28 year-old son, Scott, from a drug overdose. This 1978 family tragedy motivated Paul Newman to donate $1.2 million to the University of Southern California for the creation of the Scott Newman Chair in Pharmacy and the Scott Newman Center for Drug Abuse Prevention and Health Communications.

Levy’s story of Newman’s life is calculated in such a way as to capture the arc of Newman’s 83 years on earth while also offering us a taste of his personality and mischievous sense of humor. Newman was born to loving but distant parents in Shaker Heights, Ohio. Newman’s mother, Theresa, was an eastern European immigrant whose first language was not English. Newman, like his successful merchant father, Art Newman Sr., was a surprisingly “quiet and taciturn” individual. Who’d think that the budding actor would be an introverted personality? Furthermore, while Newman recalled his mother as being “supportive” of his interest in the theater, his father considered it as “nothing more than star-gazing.” Sadly, the senior Newman didn’t live to experience his son’s extraordinary success on stage and in the movies.

Newman’s strategy for success—whether in acting, auto-racing, or philanthropy—was studied and deliberate. He was an observer and he was intelligent. But what distinguished Newman from most of his contemporaries—besides his singular good looks—was his sheer doggedness. It seems that once Paul Newman put his high-beam focus on a goal, he would accomplish it, regardless that the odds were stacked overwhelmingly in failure’s favor. When Newman was 70 years and 8 days old, he won the 24-Hours of Daytona sports car endurance race, by far the oldest person to ever do so in this grueling event.

Newman’s pranks, practical jokes, and comedic gestures have become the stuff of Hollywood lore. Levy recounts a 1993 episode that occurred in a 1993 taping of The David Letterman Show. “Hiding in the audience,” Levy writes, “[Newman} stood up during Letterman’s…monologue and growled…, ‘Where the hell are the cats?’ He pulled tickets out of his jacket, announced that he was in the wrong theater, and walked out…while Letterman gazed on…taken by surprise.”

The glee in reading Levy’s page-turner lies not just in his easy explanation of Newman as a dimensional and multitalented human being; there’s also an authenticity about the author’s words that lends an earthy credibility to this portrait of Paul Newman. Newman uttered his “last recorded words” to his daughters, saying, “It’s been a privilege to be here.” Read Levy’s fine treatise on Paul Newman and you’ll be entertainingly convinced that the privilege was ours.

What does it take to become a successful entrepreneur? Brothers Matthew and Adam Toren, co-publishers of North Valley Magazine, have persevered and triumphed through a number of business ventures. They’ve taken many steps and paths in their successful careers, but it is their beginnings that have inspired their latest project: a book on entrepreneurship written specifically for children! The Toren brothers bring a fresh and enlightening perspective to business in the straightforward, easy-to-read original work, Kidpreneurs.

You don’t have to be a grownup to catch the entrepreneurial spirit, and you certainly don’t need to wait until adulthood to learn—or practice—the basic principles of business. It’s never too early! Matthew and Adam credit their families for encouraging their business ideas from a young age, and they wish to provide the world’s youth—the future generation of entrepreneurs—with not only encouragement but also the practical knowledge to begin, grow, and groom their business visions.

The brothers have spent years dedicated to researching the best practices in modern business and then teaching the techniques to others while establishing and maintaining their own steady stream of successful businesses. One of their passions has been to help ailing businesses by passing along their accumulated know-how. This entrepreneurial instinct, blended with an even measure of their altruistic natures, led the Torens to found YoungEntrepreneur.com, the largest and fastest growing social networking forum for young entrepreneurs.

When Matthew and Adam set out to pass on their business savvy to their own children, Kidpreneurs was born. The book stokes a child’s desire to get involved in business early by fueling their curiosity in simple, engaging, creative, and safe ways. It defines entrepreneur and other key business terms; breaks down the complex concepts to the practical, creative, and ethical sides of the business world; and articulates the important facts of modern business using colorful illustrations, fun facts, stimulating quizzes, and sample business plans.

The philosophy behind the book is simple: The future of our children begins with us! Children of all backgrounds have a right to financial freedom and the skills and tools by which they might obtain it.

You can begin an exciting business journey with your children with Kidpreneurs. A Web site has been set up to enrich and expand upon the book and its resources. Kidpreneurs can be purchased on the Web site.

Kidpreneurs is available at most bookstores and through kidpreneurs.org for $12.95.

(Walker & Company, 07/2008, ISBN: 0-8027-1698-9, 336 pages)

By Ben Miles

Susan Quinn, in her most recent book, Furious Improvisation: How the WPA and a Cast of Thousands Made High Art out of Desperate Times, gives us the lowdown on the Federal Theatre Project (FTP). We get the skinny on young Orson Welles’s bombastic Voodoo Macbeth, a 1936 reinterpretation of Shakespeare’s classic, now set in nineteenth-century Haiti. We learn of the political controversy sparked by the FTP production of The Cradle Will Rock. Moreover, Quinn describes in detail the concept of “Living Newspapers,” an idea developed by Flanagan and her cohorts that dramatized current events in a manner that was exploratory, experimental, and as informative as it was entertaining. Nevertheless, certain racist and rightwing factions in congress, lead by House on Un-American Activities Committee Chairman Martin Dies, accused the FTP of communist sympathies, making the project one of the initial targets and early victims of the so-called Red Scare.

Vassar drama professor Hallie Flanagan was given an enormous task during the Great Depression of the 20th century. Flanagan’s assignment, under the supervision of her old college chum Harry Hopkins, was to direct the unwieldy Federal Theatre Project. Hopkins was in 1935 President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s confidant and first choice to head the Works Projects Administration (WPA), the largest of the New Deal agencies. The WPA’s aim was to provide employment relief as well as infrastructure development across the country. It was part of FDR’s economic stimulus package, you could accurately say.

Included in this package was a provision for what was called Federal One; it was comprised of the FTP, the music project, the writer’s project, the visual artist project, and the historical records survey. Each of these Federal One divisions employed artists, scribes, auteurs, and archivists. All of the projects contributed to the cultural quilt that is America.

The Federal Theater Project, for example, hired 12,500 artists and craftspeople while producing 1,200 plays in its four-year lifespan (1935–1939). What’s more, 25 million theatergoers experienced the joy, insight, and exhilaration of what Flanagan called “free, adult, and uncensored” live stage productions.

In 336 pages, Susan Quinn has constructed a readable tome steeped in history, focused on theater, and relevant to today’s simmering economic crisis. As Quinn herself has stated, “The Federal Theatre Project dealt with everything going on, so I told the story of the Great Depression through the lens of the Theatre Project.” After all, it is through the arts that we are able to see ourselves. As President Roosevelt surely knew, that’s stimulating not only to our economy but to our humanity.

The Last Lecture
(Hyperion Books, 2008, 208 pages, ISBN: 978-1-4013-2325-7)
By Ben Miles

Carnegie Mellon University has a speakers series titled “The Last Lecture.” Many colleges offer such symposia, in which professors are invited to present a talk to students, fellow faculty members, and administrators that reflects upon education, values, and whatever the speaker considers to be the most important lesson or lessons he or she can impart, as if it were their final chance to do so.

In the case of Carnegie Mellon computer science Professor Randy Pausch, requesting his participation in “The Last Lecture” program was literal. Professor Pausch had been recently diagnosed with terminal cancer when he accepted the challenge of delivering a Last Lecture at the university. Pausch’s topic, which he called “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams,” became a YouTube sensation.

In his lecture demonstration, Pausch shows CAT scans of his tumor-ridden pancreas, does one-armed push-ups, projects slide images of his lovely family—a wife and three young children—and fills viewers with wholesome morsels of workaday wisdom, such as a prescription for apology-making. Pausch assures us that “a bad apology is worse than no apology at all,” and we also learn that a proper apology has three parts: The wrongdoer must communicate the following, in this order: What I did was wrong, I feel bad that I hurt you, and How do I make it better?

After experiencing the video of Pausch’s presentation, it’s difficult not to be won over by the professor’s mindful, albeit middlebrow, middle-class approach to living. In one memorable moment, Pausch declares, “I don’t know how not to have fun. I’m dying and I’m having fun.” In this inspiring instant, Paucsh garners our unmitigated respect and appreciation while allowing us to also consider, or reconsider, the meaning of our own lives.

Randy Pausch died on July 25, 2008, but his insight and wit are ours to keep, not only through video (see it at theLastLecture.com) but also in a best-selling book written with Jeffrey Zaslow, named, of course, The Last Lecture . The small reader is divided in to six simple sections and has embedded within it the lecture points; they are worth reading and rereading, just as the video bears watching and rewatching.

The book, in essence, is the story of Pausch’s journey through the Last Lecture process. For instance, did he want to spend his last days prepping for a talk? Or, would he rather have spent that time with his soon-to-be widowed wife and their children? That dilemma requires a thorough search of the soul. Pausch’s nuanced chronicle makes that touching spiritual choice a vivid experience for readers. The Last Lecture , we hope, won’t be your last nonfiction reading assignment, but it may be the most important one that you’ve had in some time.

By Ben Miles

Eckhart Tolle first gained acclaim as bestselling author of The Power of Now, and his current notoriety remains widespread, thanks to Oprah Winfrey. Oprah’s imprimatur on Tolle’s 2005 A New Earth—his treatise regarding life purpose—has made this guru of the here-and-now the shaman of the moment. Winfrey selected that transformational tome as her book club assignment in January 2008, accompanying it with a no-expense 10-week online seminar co-facilitated by Tolle and the talk-show queen herself.

As the meaning of Tolle’s simple words and sentence structures unfold into archetypal philosophical notions, both The Power of Now and A New Earth provide peak reading experiences that are easily comprehended and profoundly affecting. However, Tolle’s most concise work, and arguably the one with the most impact, is the 2003 reader Stillness Speaks. Constructed in ten chapters, the 129-page hardcover booklet serves up enlightenment in small, easily digested grammatical dollops.

The chapters have incisive-sounding titles such as “Beyond the Thinking Mind,” “Who You Truly Are,” and “Suffering and the End of Suffering.” These divisional captions exemplify Tolle’s talent for framing words and provoking thought. Each of the well-ordered and mystically intriguing sectionals compose roughly one-tenth of the text. But Stillness is not only literature for the linear-minded among us. Think of it as an existential and spiritual buffet of language and insight, if you will. Dig in and indulge from any spot you please. For instance, while randomly leafing through the book’s pages, we happen upon this: “The mind is…looking not only for food for thought; it is looking for its identity. This is how the ego comes into existence.” Ohm on that for a moment or two. Or, how about this, from a thumb-thrown landing on page 107: “By learning to die daily you open yourself to life.” Who said irony is dead?

In the introduction to Stillness Speaks, its author admonishes, “This is not a book to be read from cover to cover.” Instead, he advises, “Live with it, pick it up…[and] put it down frequently.” As one who has made somewhat of a practice of these suggestions, this writer attests to the enduring truths made available through Tolle’s lucid wordings. Crafted in an exquisitely straightforward yet soulful manner, Stillness Speaks speaks in an accessible and resonant voice.

Visit newworld.com for more information.

By Ben Miles

You are a genius! That’s the premise of Susanna Lange and Otto Siegel’s recent book that is titled, appropriately enough, Yes, You Are a Genius, Whether You Know It or Not. If you’ve any doubt about this declaration, or even if you don’t, it’s worth the time it takes to explore the authors’ contention.

In a taut and easy-to-read 122 pages (including a support-oriented afterward and a helpful four-page list of suggested readings), Lange and Siegel have partitioned their treatise into eleven brief but comprehensive chapters. With chapter headings such as “You Are a Natural Genius,” “Re-connect to Your Natural Genius,” and “Stop De-Genius-izing Yourself,” Yes, You Are a Genius takes a step-by-step approach to demythologizing the phenomenon we’ve come to recognize as genius.

Lange and Siegel assert that “genius isn’t just found in the Mozarts and Einsteins of the world.” They offer as their initial evidence Einstein’s oft-stated belief: “There is genius in everyone.” The claim seems, at first glance, to defy intuition. After all, we are accustomed to understanding genius as a rare state of mind. But Lange and Siegel make a strong case for their argument. They pose three questions to the reader: What is my unique set of genius abilities? Which environment brings them out? How and where can I intentionally leverage them? If you don’t know the answers to this trio of brain-tickling queries, the Genius writers suggest that “your genius is still dormant.”

In deconstructing and reframing terminology such as desire, passion, and love, Genius becomes an uplifting lesson in the how-tos of learning and living, offering a clarifying and systematic approach to self-enhancement. Lange and Siegel are also generous in the litany of proffered resources. For instance, at the Genius Web site, geniuscoaching.net, readers may download audio files on body meditation, the creative visualization process, and a “free genius training” program.

To paraphrase a wise old axiom, genius is a terrible thing to waste. Studying Yes, You Are a Genius may serve to minimize such waste. At the very least, Genius is certain to stimulate the reader’s thinking while providing rich insight and valuable guidance.

By Ben Miles

Reading former vice president Al Gore’s latest book, The Assault on Reason, is very much like scanning a textbook written by an affable and impressively informed university professor. The initial impression is a workbook with emphasis more on the work to be done than on the book to be read. But as one negotiates the 273 pages that comprise nine chapters, an introduction and conclusion, an index, and twenty-nine pages of chapter-by-chapter notes, the read becomes an absorbing one. It’s not that Reason doesn’t require discipline from its audience; the sheer vastness of topics seems, in fact, at times to defy comprehensibility.

We begin at Johannes Gutenberg’s press, which, according to Gore, facilitated the fifteenth-century Renaissance period while laying the foundation for The Enlightenment. A quantum leap takes us into Marshall McLuhan’s ideas of “hot” and “cool” media and through the psychological notions behind attachment theory. There are side trips to the Geneva Conventions, Barry Glassner’s Culture of Fear concept, and the mechanics of mass persuasion. In whittling the complex treatise to a pointed and singular focus, Gore throughout his book allows the reader to see the light at the end of this polemic tunnel.

Beside his terms as vice president, Gore is known as an author of books on ecology: Earth in the Balance (1992) and An Inconvenient Truth (2006). In Reason, Gore is concerned with our political environment. As he’s done in the past with the rain forest and the ozone layer, Gore lists and laments the dangers threatening to destroy our democracy. Among these carcinogens that attack freedom are the systematic utilization of fear and misuse of religious faith; the distracting culture of entertainment; and the concentration of power that exists within the national media and executive branch of the federal government.

In the concluding portion of Reason, Gore refers to Fredrick Douglass and reiterates what the great abolitionist “suddenly understood: the essential connection between literacy and liberty, ignorance and ‘fitness’ to be a slave.”

Some pundits have made favorable comparisons to Gore’s Reason and Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” pamphlet. Gore’s accomplishment is not only replete with common sense; it is also an admirable scholarly accomplishment.

By Ben Miles

Automobile-industry icon Lee Iacocca’s latest contribution to the annals of bestselling American nonfiction is 263 pages of the brilliant businessman’s head-of-the-herd thinking, along with his wisdom and inimitable abilities as a raconteur.

Iacocca, now in his eighties, is author of two previous chart-toppers. In his new book, the erstwhile CEO of both the Ford and Chrysler companies disassembles the construct of leadership and offers for examination its component parts—what he refers to as the Nine Cs of Leadership: Curiosity, Creativity, Communication, Character, Courage, Charisma, Conviction, Competence, and Common Sense. This simple template provides the framework for Iacocca’s written revelation of personal scenarios and memorable face-to-face encounters with other greatness. Iacocca seemed to know nearly everybody who is, or was, anybody. He maintained a friendship with Frank Sinatra until his death in 1998, and writes of how Ole Blue Eyes, after “celebrating” too much, sang at the auto honcho’s 1992 retirement party. It was the great Voice’s final public performance.

Iacocca’s relationship with Ronald Reagan was intimate enough for the mogul of the minivan to assert that Reagan was “the sunniest guy I ever met…[with not] a mean bone in his body.” Iacocca felt that Reagan’s agreeableness was the reason for his charisma. And who would’ve predicted that Iacocca would team with rapper Snoop Dogg for a nationally televised Chrysler commercial, the proceeds from which went to the Iacocca Foundation? The foundation is dedicated to curing type one diabetes, the disease that took the life of Iacocca’s first wife, Mary.

Iacocca’s critique and condemnation of George W. Bush’s leadership is piercing and unabashed, and is reportedly one of the reasons Iacocca (along with Catherine Whitney) wrote this book. Iacocca’s longwinded sobriquet for the president is “Mr.—they’ll-welcome-us-with-open-arms-as-liberators-no-child-left-behind-heck-of-a-job-Brownie-misson-accomplished—Bush.” If that doesn’t quite say it all, it certainly is a taut and to-the-point summary of Iacocca’s subzero opinion of our forty-third president.

Lee Iacocca is wealthy, still healthy, witty, and sly. Coming from that place, the author has no use for subterfuge or dishonesty. After reading Where Have All The Leaders Gone? one is likely to be convinced that Iacocca personifies and embodies the Nine Cs of Leadership, but he seems to exude one quality above all: Character.

Leadership 101: Inspirational Quotes and Insights for Leaders , John Maxwell. Thomas Nelson, Inc., 2002. 109 pages

By Ben Miles

John C. Maxwell is smart as well as practical. But don’t just take this reviewer’s word for it—certainly not when you can quickly and easily gather this in Maxwell’s own words. Dr. Maxwell, founder of the Injoy leadership group, is author of the REAL Leadership Series: four hardcover booklets, each around 100 pages long. This rather portable collection’s title is, of course, an acronym: Realistic, Equipping, Attitude, Leadership.

Maxwell’s credentials and reputation are built upon his expertise in leadership. We begin with the theme book of the series, Leadership 101 , which is also the first published of the four topics. The good news is that Maxwell’s rundown on leadership is concise, simple, accessible, and immediately applicable. For example, Maxwell informs us early on that at a minimum, each of us influences ten other people in a lifetime. The author suggests that “it’s not whether you influence someone, but how you will use your influence.” Inspirational? Yes, indeed. Axiomatic? Perhaps. Maxwell regularly utters such proclamations, but offers no bibliography and few scholarly references. Nevertheless, we can be grateful for the short-list of endnotes that he has made available. After all, how many hundred-page readers offer direction to further resources?

Maxwell’s approach may often seem trite, clichéd and, at times, like corporate propaganda, but there is often truth within his examples. The hoary and dubious account of Ray Kroc’s buyout of the McDonald brothers’ Central California hamburger stand that made him the golden child—or perhaps the Golden Arches child—of fast food comes to mind. The author’s grasp of leadership technique and models of human potential are more than one might bargain for in what amounts to an old-fashioned essay.

Full of stories and examples that embody his notions of leadership—the anecdote on Teddy Roosevelt raising himself from sickly little boy to uberoutdoorsman and then on to the American presidency is memorably mythological and super-patriotic in tone—Maxwell’s theological (he’s also a Christian minister) and USA-centric biases radiate throughout the tiny tome like light through a porous napkin. Yet, there’s no question as to Maxwell’s purpose and message: we all influence others; leadership is nothing more than the ability to influence; leadership skills can be learned, improved, and continually increased. Each chapter begins with an opening statement. Chapter 7 (out of ten) begins as follows: “The true measure of leadership is influence—nothing more, nothing less.”

For readers interested in a brief read and a sturdy lesson on leadership, Maxwell gives a taut tutorial on the perplexing subject that requires a minimum investment of time. That’s a smart and practical approach to the topic.

The Art of Teaching , Jay Parini, Oxford University Press, Inc., New York, 2004, 176 pages, $17.95

By: Ben Miles

Jay Parini has blessed pedagogues of all stripes with his most recent book The Art of Teaching . Parini, himself a professor of English at Middlebury College, in Vermont, offers a taut and elegant glimpse into the teacher’s craft.

In five chapters, distributed over a mere 160 pages, Parini’s economic and often poetic use of language provides a plethora of compact lessons for those who are teachers, or for those who aspire to that noble vocation.

In a particularly memorable passage, Parini states that successful teachers he’s known are very much aware that they have to don what he calls a mask when they present themselves as teachers. He maintains that “one must get over the foolish notion that a mask is not ‘authentic,’ that there is something shameful about ‘not being yourself….’ Authenticity is, ultimately, a construction, something invented—much as a suit of clothes will feel authentic, or inauthentic, given the context.”

Quoting poet Pablo Neruda—“myselfs are many”—and evoking Virginia Woolf, who believed that “a biographer is lucky to pin down a half-dozen selves in a good biography,” Parini asserts that a being has thousands of selves, and warns that a beginning teacher needs to try on several masks before finding one that fits.

Parini’s premise is situated in the assumption that the classroom is a type of theater and that the teacher is a performer. In fact, Parini acknowledges that teaching is “a conscious act of self-creation, [a] self-performance.”

Parini shares his thoughts about parallels between the crafts of writing and teaching. Using the example of Irish poet Seamus Heaney, Parini illustrates Heaney’s connection to the impressive poets who preceded him—“the sprung rhythms of Gerard Manley, and the compressed, visionary lyricism of William Butler Yeats.” Parini indicates that the mature voice of Heaney has swallowed up and digested these precursors, but they remain a part of him, ingredients of his own voice. It is no stretch, then, when the author writes that the same applies to teaching.

Parini is convincing in his statement that “you learn to teach by listening closely to your own teachers, by taking on their voices, self-consciously or not, by imitating them, digesting them to the point where they become part of your own voice and persona.” The Art of Teaching is more than fluid analogies and instructional metaphors, however. Though not quite a step-by-step handbook for the classroom teacher—it’s a more elegant creation than that—Parini’s work still offers plenty of practical advice for frontline instructors.

For instance, one subsection is titled, “By Their Clothes We Shall Know Them: On Academic Dress.” The contention offered by Parini is that “clothes have their own syntax and vocabularies.” Citing his acquaintance with novelist and Oxford Fellow Iris Murdoch, Parini pegs Murdoch as “the most poorly dressed academic” he ever knew. “She often had dinner at my house,” writes Parini, “and invariably look[ed] disheveled, in a heavy wool skirt and baggy pullover.” Nevertheless, Murdoch’s was an apparently accepted collegiate fashion statement; Parini states that he noticed a lot of female academics dressed quite similarly in Oxford as well as in other academic institutions.

The Art of Teaching is a subtle and moving treatise on a profession that is singularly sublime, as well as essential to the transmission of culture and knowledge. Although the book is aimed mainly at higher educators, everyone who teaches anyone will undoubtedly benefit from Parini’s pedagogical wisdom.