Autobiography – Page 13 – education and deconstruction.com

Wait Till Next Year

The Book of the Week is “Wait Till Next Year” by Doris Kearns Goodwin, published in 1997. This is the first portion of an autobiography of a New York female baseball fan who grew up in the suburb of Rockville Centre, Long Island in the 1940’s and ’50’s.

During the author’s childhood, there were three baseball teams in New York: the Brooklyn Dodgers, New York Giants and New York Yankees. Between 1949 and 1957 inclusive, one or another of these teams played in the World Series. The author’s father inspired in her a diehard Dodgers fandom. She was taught to keep score, and did so for every regular season game for years and years, starting in the late 1940’s. It was a time in history in which men played for their love of the game. The greats at that time included Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, Peewee Reese, Gil Hodges, Enos Slaughter, Robin Roberts, Richie Ashburn, Allie Reynolds, Phil Rizzuto and many others.

Kearns Goodwin was raised as a Catholic, but attended public school. Nevertheless, the nuns struck fear in her heart in many ways, one of which was pressuring parishioners to refrain from entering any house of worship other than a Catholic one. So when Campanella was coming to her area to speak at a non-Catholic church, she faced a moral dilemma. The priest reassured her that she would not be going to hell, because the event was not a religious service.

Baseball was so popular in the author’s community that in 1955, a radio broadcast of the seventh game of the Dodgers-Yankees World Series was piped through the public address system of her high school. The kids were willing to stay after school to hear it. Back in the day, World Series games were played in the afternoon. When the Dodgers won, thousands of people danced in the streets. The baseball players came back to a Brooklyn restaurant that evening for their victory dinner, interacting personally with fans without any security at all.

For the first twelve years of her life (before the neighborhood changed), Kearns Goodwin’s family was quite close with all of the different (white) families (of different religions) in her community. Their homes were as open to her as her own home.

Read the book to learn more about the author’s coming of age in a bygone era of baseball and Postwar suburbia.

Koop

The Book of the Week is “Koop, The Memoirs of America’s Family Doctor” by C. Everett Koop, M.D., published in 1991.

Koop grew up in Brooklyn, New York. In the late 1920’s, when he was in his teens, the operating rooms at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital had no security, so he pretended to be a medical student in order to watch surgeries. He snuck in, thanks to his next door neighbor, who worked there. In the late 1930’s, he began to realize that he was attending the medical school that had the right environment for him– the friendly and cooperative Cornell, rather than the arrogant and competitive Columbia.

Koop’s medical training was abbreviated due to a shortage of personnel during WWII, so that he was performing advanced procedures before he was truly ready to do so. Nevertheless, he had a tough, take-charge personality which stood him in good stead in the face of medical generalists who resented being crowded out when medicine underwent more and more specialization.

For decades, Koop was a pediatric surgeon at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. In 1980, newly-elected President Reagan tapped him to be Surgeon General of the United States. The nomination and confirmation processes were rigorous, as Koop’s personal life-and-death beliefs were clearly favored by conservative Republicans but opposed by liberal Democrats.

Nevertheless, Koop became famous for his anti-smoking crusade. As might be recalled, he educated the American public on the dangers of, and influenced legislation on, smoking. He explicitly wrote: “Smoking is not only dangerous for the smoker, but also dangerous for the nonsmoker who inhales environmental tobacco smoke… [Such] passive smoking causes many diseases, including cancer.” He reported that more than 50% of adults in the United States smoked in 1964; in 1981, 33%. When he resigned as Surgeon General in 1989, that figure was just over 26%.

Read the book to learn of Koop’s adventures in college, in medicine, and as a political appointee.

My Life So Far

The Book of the Week is “My Life So Far” by Jane Fonda, published in 2005. This insightful autobiography describes an actress, activist and exercise instructor whose childhood family life was psychologically challenged. Throughout her life, she has been continually working through various emotional, moral and gender issues.

Born in the Santa Monica Mountains in December 1937, Fonda was lavishly raised alternately by a nanny and her parents, who were absent on and off. Her father was a famous actor on Broadway and in movies; her mother, until she suicided, was in and out of mental hospitals. Fonda was close with her younger brother, Peter. She became a bulimic and developed an “appeaser” personality.

Although Fonda had a leg up in her career due to her famous father, she chose to engage in activities that she felt were societally beneficial. The media and the U.S. government, however, treated her like a criminal. She was put under surveillance by the FBI, CIA, State Department, IRS and Treasury Department, which created dossiers of thousands upon thousands of pages just about her. In 1979, she settled a lawsuit against them in which the government admitted its guilt.

In 1972, Fonda visited Hanoi to gather information and inform the American people about Nixon’s evil Vietnam-War schemes, a few of which were already in progress. Later that same year at the Academy Awards ceremony when she won a Best Actress Oscar for “Klute,” she maturely did NOT make a political statement, having been told it was the inappropriate place for doing so.

Fonda believed that presidents made war due to their feeling pressure from society to prove their masculinity. She herself was a product of this same environment, judging from her taste in men. Her third husband– media billionaire Ted Turner– “…was unable to experience intimacy because there just wasn’t room in his brain for words other than his own.” He was an emotionally needy narcissist.

Read the book to learn how Jane overcame her eating disorder, achieved success in acting, exercise-business enterprises and political activism, and how she improved her relationships with family and friends.

Deadline

The Book of the Week is “Deadline” by James Reston, published in 1991. This is the career memoir of James “Scotty” Reston. Originally from Scotland, he became a highly respected employee at the New York Times for many years.

In 1928, the author began to attend the University of Illinois’ school of journalism, whose tuition was $28 per semester. In his senior year, the bank from which he wrote the check to pay such tuition, failed due to the Great Depression. Fortunately, the governor of Ohio, a friend of his, lent him the money to continue at the school.

When Reston was 25, the Associated Press hired him to be an urban columnist six days a week. Perks of the job included free restaurant meals, theater shows, opera, etc. with the understanding that there would be favorable coverage of the providing entities.

In the mid 1930’s, the New York Times was one of several newspapers in New York. It competed by sending seventy (!) reporters compared to the others’ twenty, to cover an important story.

Reston wrote about many of the twentieth century’s important political and economic issues– the scandals, wars and international incidents. He lamented over the fact that “The government accuses the press of threatening the national security by printing the truth but sees no such threat when the government itself tells lies.”

A large portion of the book was dedicated to Reston’s opinions on America’s foreign policy through the decades. He believed that the country remained dominant, rich and strong after World War II despite its political scandals and periods of disarray, because its democracy, although imperfect, was still way superior to the kinds fascism, socialism and communism practiced by other nations.

Read the book to learn the details.

The Amorous Busboy of Decatur Avenue

The Book of the Week is “The Amorous Busboy of Decatur Avenue” by Robert Klein, published in 1991. This is a compilation of the moments most memorable to the author during the first 25 years of his existence.

The author grew up in the Bronx in the 1940’s and 50’s. He attended P.S. 94 and DeWitt Clinton High School. His first college year was spent trying to fulfill his parents’ dream of having a doctor for a son. However, he possessed much greater talent in the performing arts.

In 1967, after he had been “discovered,” Klein, doing standup comedy, was mentored by Rodney Dangerfield at the Improvisation Club in Manhattan.

Read the book to learn of the author’s career success, of his many sexual encounters, and one during which “She wanted it from every conceivable position, and with such passion and ferocity that I feared the occupants of the adjacent room would call the police or an ambulance.”

Living History

The Book of the Week is “Living History” by Chaim Herzog, published in 1996. This autobiography describes the life of a Jew who participated in Palestine’s military and political life before, during and after its birth as the state of Israel.

Herzog’s father was named chief rabbi of Ireland in mid-1919. As a teenager, the author chose to leave Ireland to attend school in Palestine. At that time, there were three competing, underground intelligence services in Palestine: the Haganah, Irgun and the Stern Group. The author joined the Haganah. His father was named chief rabbi of Palestine in 1937.

In 1938, the author started his undergraduate years in London, then studied law at Cambridge University. Upon graduating in 1941, he immediately volunteered for the British Army. As an intelligence officer, he interrogated German prisoners of war.

After the war, Herzog’s father helped orphaned children who had previously had a Jewish identity to move to Palestine, fighting against their conversions by the Catholic Church, which had hidden and taken care of them during the war. Herzog himself helped promote the settling of Jews in Palestine.

The author married Aura Eban, daughter of Abba. Originally from Egypt, she completed a special program that enabled her to join the Israeli diplomatic corps, then in its infancy. Herzog and his wife worked in the most dangerous areas of Jerusalem. During Israel’s war for independence, the enemies’ (Arabs’) terrorist car bombs were all the rage.

In 1949, truces were signed with Israel and its neighbors– Egypt, Lebanon, Transjordan and Syria. The rise of the Palestine Liberation Organization meant that “Any Arab politician who was visibly friendly toward Israel faced serious, often fatal, repercussions” from retaliatory terrorist attacks.

David Ben Gurion watched television in Oxford and “…decided it was the ruin of mankind.” That was why Israel’s people were unable to have a television in their homes until 1968.

In autumn 1984, after a new government was formed in the country, (according to the author) Prime Minister Shimon Peres performed an economic miracle. He had reduced the inflation rate from 450% in July to 20% in October, via an agreement among the government, the trade unions and industrialists. The resulting 30% compensation decrease of the unions curbed unemployment and saved the economy. However, he still failed to achieve world peace. And cure cancer.

Read the book to learn of what transpired when the French were looking to withdraw troops from Algeria, of the Israeli government’s internal power struggles in the 1980’s and early 1990’s, of the political positions held by the author, and what he accomplished in each of them through the decades.

The Times of My Life

The Book of the Week is “The Times of My Life” by Max Frankel, published in 1999. This autobiography describes a journalist originally from Germany who came of age during WWII.

The author’s Jewish parents were citizens of alternately Polish or German territory, but their passports were Polish. So in October 1938, Hitler deported them and the author, then about ten years old, to Poland. But for the incredible survival skills of his parents, that led them to eventually flee to the United States after many hardships, the family would surely have perished during the war.

When he wrote of the their final destination, Frankel recounted two curious perceptions held by Europeans at that time: Three major New York institutions included Franklin Roosevelt, Fiorello LaGuardia and Columbia University, and “…millions of Jews live in New York and were unafraid to speak Yiddish, not just in the streets, but on the radio!”

Frankel caught the journalism bug in high school, thanks to an inspirational English teacher. In the early 1950’s, as a sophomore at Columbia University, he was afforded a unique opportunity to work as a journalist for the New York Times, covering campus news. His pay was almost double the school’s tuition. Newspapering was time-consuming and labor-intensive then, what with penciled-in headlines, carbon copies and pneumatic tubes to transport articles on paper to typesetters.

The author stayed with the New York Times for decades. The 1950’s found him reporting on the U.S. government. The McCarthy Era was Hitlerian for him. Senator Joe McCarthy and his partner in crime, Roy Cohn acquired presidential power when they were granted access to personnel records of government employees to spy on them– the kind of abuse of power that smacked of Germany’s dictatorship. News gatherers in those days merely conveyed information, practicing neither introspection nor analysis. However, Frankel described all journalists in history: “We enjoy disaster, murder, riot, revolution.”

The author covered Moscow in the late 1950’s, Cuba in the early 1960’s, and Washington again in the mid-1960’s. He wrote brilliant legal arguments for his employer’s case when it printed the Pentagon Papers. He recounted a 1980 political joke, whose concept will remain relevant for decades: In an alley, a voter is accosted at gunpoint by a pollster and asked, “Carter or Reagan?” After a momentary pause, the voter says, “Shoot.”

In the late 1980’s, the author achieved the position of executive editor. He spent a chapter on how he changed the hiring practices of the paper with affirmative-action type initiatives. A separate, longer chapter was spent on homosexuals. He lamented over the constant conflict all news organizations encounter between staying profitable and maintaining neutrality when conveying information about their financial supporters– advertisers, readers/viewers/listeners who purchase such information– and stockholders.

Read the book to learn the details of Frankel’s extreme and diverse experiences.

Act One

The Book of the Week is “Act One” by Moss Hart, published in 1959.

In his teen years in the 1920’s, the author had a passionate desire to work in the theater on Broadway in some capacity. However, his childhood of dire poverty, limited formal education and dysfunctional family were hardships he had to overcome to achieve his dream.

It was a major triumph for him to snag the position of office boy for a booking agent by a random twist of fate. However, he tempted fate too early. He then tried his hand at acting. He was an eighteen-year-old playing the role of a sixty-year-old man. When that gig ended, another chance occurrence with an acquaintance led him to directing plays in the evenings, and slaving away as a social director at various summer camps for several years, while plugging away at the part of aspiring playwright.

Read the book to learn all the sordid tribulations Hart endured in order to find fortune and fame, as well as the secret to how he fixed the third act of his first Broadway play, and how he came to be assisted by one of the great playwrights of his generation.

A Good Life

The Book of the Week is “A Good Life, Newspapering and Other Adventures” by Ben Bradlee, published in 1995.

The author was a descendant of a prominent Boston Brahmin family. Unsurprisingly, his older brother and he both graduated from Harvard; never mind their grades. Then, in the middle of WWII, he was stationed on a Navy destroyer in the Pacific.

After surviving the war, Bradlee and the first of his three wives moved to New Hampshire. He was an integral part of a small, regional Sunday-only newspaper until its demise. Subsequent to that, the Washington Post hired him the first of two times at the tail end of 1948.

Bradlee was at Newsweek when John Kennedy was elected president. Kennedy got along with the press famously, like an old, dear friend. In August 1965, Bradleee became managing editor of the Washington Post. “The newsroom was racist… the mind-set of the Post made the editors ask how much an assignment cost, instead of how much the paper needed the story.” Case in point: The Post was (inexcusably) nearly a week late in reporting on the Watts riots.

Newspapermen at that time had five deadlines a day– in determining which stories would be printed in the morning and evening editions, which story would be on page one, etc. Needless to say, Bradlee’s never-ending work meant he never saw his family. Especially after the Washington Post continued publishing installments of the Pentagon Papers in the summer of 1971, after the New York Times was legally banned from doing so. Not that the Post wasn’t banned, but it was willing to go to the mat for the principle of a free press.

Political turmoil was next on the agenda, with the Watergate break-in, on which the inimitable pair Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein did a thorough investigation and engaged in bold, ongoing disclosure. Bradlee wrote, “The denials exploded all around us all day like incoming artillery shells.” Bob Dole accused the Democrat, liberal-leaning Post of knowingly helping George McGovern’s campaign by alleging that Nixon committed crimes as part of his reelection campaign. The president was a bit resentful of the intrusion on his activities. Just a bit. Bradlee thought it likely that personally and professionally, his own phones were being tapped and he would be subjected to a rigorous IRS audit.

In May 1973, not to be outdone in pettiness, vengefulness and meanness of spirit, Nixon insinuated to the author and others that their lives were in the balance for turning the screws on him. “All of these lies were on-the-record lies, before television cameras, before reporters, on the telephone, before large audiences, in a generation of Washington reporters generally considered by every generation of editors to be the finest reporters in the land.” People complained that the Post would never have investigated JFK the same way it did Nixon, because the liberal media always went after Republicans only, never Democrats. In recent decades, that changed, but the lying has increased, too.

Read the book to learn more about Bradlee’s families, of a dishonest Post employee, and other challenges the author faced. In sum, “…there is really no protection against a skillful liar, who has earned the trust of his or her editors. That is equally true of business, law, medicine, all professions.”

Curfewed Night

The Book of the Week is “Curfewed Night” by Basharat Peer, published in 2010. This is a personal account of someone who grew up in the 1980’s in Kashmir– a region that is partly in India and partly in Pakistan. The author’s village was in the Indian portion. The people grew rice, mustard and apples. His grandfather was the headmaster of the local school.

The author’s family was Muslim but espoused some modern, Western values. His grandfather allowed him to read American comic books of superheroes. He also read Urdu and Farsi poetry, and played cricket with other boys.

In early 1990, militants killed hundreds of pro-Indian Muslims and Pandits in Kashmir. The militants were teen boys agitating for Kashmir independence. At fourteen years old, the author got caught up in the excitement of fighting for the cause. His family convinced him not to join in. They wanted him to be a civil servant. He kept his impulsiveness in check, but knew some young men who did not– who died or returned alive from the war, but ran into some serious problems.

The men who were eager to fight had to go to Pakistan for training in small arms, land mines and rocket-propelled grenades for a year or two. They learned to use an assault rifle– an AK-47 (aka Kalashnikov) and throw a hand grenade. By 1992, wealthy families were sending their kids to other continents to get them out of the war zone. Although the author’s family couldn’t afford to do that, it did send him to boarding school in Delhi.

Read the book to learn what happened to Peer, about religious conflicts in Kashmir, and the violence of the separatist movement, which continued for more than a decade.