Books

The part I quote to others.. Still, Steve was doted upon. His grandmother marked him as the brightest of the eight siblings and referred to him as the “sharpest pencil in the box,” which made him glow with pride. He got good grades without spending a lot of time studying. Cohen’s older brother Gary remembers their mother fixing steak for Steve while the rest of the kids got hot dogs. “I used to complain,” he recalled, “and my mother said, ‘ Your brother Steve is going to support us someday '”

The availability bias obviously hurts, but.. Mine is "Spies, Lies and Algorithms" by Amy Zegart. What a phenomenal waste of time! Did lead me to Jacob Bogle though - credit due - the most detailed maps of a North Korea from a civilian. Another one for the scrap heap of poorly executed books : The Leadership Moment by Michael Useem. Sorry to say it, but Be Useful - Seven Tools for Life by the Arnold was a yawn - always a red flag when you start off with the waiting list saying seven months and you then find it's available a few weeks later. Well, I didn't finish it and did turn it in early. Piece of you k w. Also to be consigned to the list of time wasters : Annie Jacobsen - the Pentagon's Brain (DARPA). Shameful time waster. Why not call it Secrets of the Vietcong War instead? Sorry.. God - can't believe I wasted 20 hours of my life listening to "Barbarians at the Gate" (fall of RJR Nabisco). Fortunately, mostly while running errands and commuting. ...

From the back cover : I had heard of the underground prisons of Beirut: The Lebanese Gulag as Terry Anderson described them. There were stories of prisoners being incarcerated for years in such places. I sat down again and began to prepare myself for an ordeal. First, I would strengthen my will by fasting; I would refuse all food for at least a week. Secondly, I would make three resolutions to support me through whatever was to come: no regrets, no false sentimentality, no self-pity . Then I did what generations of prisoners have done before me. I stood up and, bending my head, I began walking round and round and round and round. From the inside cover :   Above all, it was his recollection of times past, of his life from childhood onward, which gave him the will to keep going. He relives in his memory his humble upbringing as the son of the village policeman in Styal, Cheshire, his early career in the Church Army, his years in the dangerous role of advisor to the first...