Autobio – Originally From Western Europe – Page 2

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.

Home

The Book of the Week is “Home” by Julie Andrews, published in 2008. This memoir tells of Andrews’ life until just after she turned 27 years old.

The author found her talent and passion as a singer with her parents when she was ten. They traveled around England performing, and even got to sing for the royal family. It was not all fun and games, however, as her parents split, and found new lovers. Her stepfather and mother devolved into alcoholism. As a teenager, she was under pressure to financially support them, plus care for her younger half-siblings. Her education fell by the wayside as a consequence.

Read the book to learn the series of events that led to Andrews’ starring in various hit shows through the decades, and about her experiences in show business.

American On Purpose

The Book of the Week is “American on Purpose” by Craig Ferguson. This ebook is the autobiography of the Scottish-American comedian, actor and late-night TV show host, published in 2009.

Ferguson was born in 1962. As a young adult, he started doing stand-up comedy, creating a character called “Bing Hitler.” When he performed at the Edinburgh International Festival in 1986, the Scotsman and Edinburgh Evening News newspapers gave him glowing reviews. This gave him a super career boost in show business.

The author wrote about having to deal with “the network” when he was cast for a TV show, and how “…you get executives who start out with a radical notion, but as the moment of truth approaches, they lose their nerve and go back to what they are familiar with.” He had his share of failures; much of it due to his alcoholism. Even later, though, he spent a lot of time writing comic screen plays on spec with his friends and earning nothing.

Ferguson received good vibes about the United States in his childhood. When he told his mother he had gotten the job as host of The Late Late Show, she thought he “…had become a newsreader in America.”

Read the book to learn how Ferguson eventually became famous, despite his checkered life history. He attributes it to the image projected by America– the country where people can achieve success notwithstanding numerous past failures.

So Anyway… – Bonus Post

This blogger read “So, Anyway…” by John Cleese. The author initially thought he was going to be an attorney, actually acquiring a legal education. But he changed his mind and became a comedy writer.

Cleese is a rare bird, in that he possesses capacity for analytical thinking and comedic absurdity in equal measure– the former has kept him sane, and the latter has made him funny.

The author had the luck of entering the field of British television comedy around 1960 when it was in its infancy. He worked with David Frost– a TV executive who undeservedly grabbed writing credits by listing his name first in large letters on his own show, while there were tens of other writers, contributors of original material, whose names appeared in small type thereafter. Cleese comments that people harbored little or no jealousy over this because Frost had a hands-off management style, never said a mean word about anyone, ignored his immature critics, and sincerely believed people were cheering for him rather than trying to cut him down.

The author, a major contributor to the BBC TV show “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” and some funny movies, also writes, “I regarded swearing as a form of cheating, a lazy way of getting a laugh out of material that wasn’t intrinsically funny enough.”

Read the book to see Cleese’s other words of wisdom on comedy writing, and how he has been able to continuously contribute creative content to various shows through the decades– a major feat for someone with a career such as his.

A Political Education – Bonus Post

This blogger skimmed the book, “A Political Education” by Andre Schiffrin, published in 2007. The author, born in 1935 in France, discussed how his family survived WWII, and his career in American publishing.

Schiffrin followed his father, a prominent figure, into the industry. In the late 1940’s, “… there were 350 bookstores in New York City, ten times the number there are today.” The author received an American elitist Northeastern education, despite the religion he was perceived to be, and with which he himself identified (Jewish). In the early 1950’s, he was politically active in school– leading various organizations that spread their opinions and lodged protests in cooperation with other student groups internationally. Schiffrin opposed France’s colonialism in Algeria and Vietnam, and Soviet repression in Hungary.

The last third of the book contains the author’s lament over how, “In America, we gradually built a system of welfare for the large corporations…” Up until the 1970’s, in the industrialized nations of the world, the publishing business was used to making an annual profit of 3%. The philosophy of publishers was “…that the successful books should subsidize those that made less money”– like, ironically, with venture capitalism nowadays– because there will never be maximum profitability for every entity funded. Yes, the ultimate goal is to make money. Humans have a history of spawning unexpectedly wildly successful books and start-ups. But society benefits more than otherwise from a diversity of intellectual, experimental endeavors, even if they fail.

The atmosphere changed when corporate America got even more greedy. It was the usual story: When avaricious bean-counters take over a creative and/or intellectual realm, everything goes south. “Wall Street was looking for profits of 10 to 20 percent.” As can be surmised, it didn’t get them. This blogger thinks the author was naive in saying, “For the first time in history, ideas were judged not by their importance but by their profit potential.” Even in the 1970’s, there was nothing new under the sun.

Read the book to learn how the last three decades of Schiffrin’s working life saw radical political and cultural changes that adversely affected the book business in the United States. For instance, the major publishing companies practiced censorship due to American politics from the mid-twentieth century into the first years of the twenty-first. Schiffrin wrote that the Right wing felt entitled to control the Middle East. Communists and Islamists were interlopers; “… if things weren’t working out [with regard to America’s takeover], it had to be due to traitors and subversives at home.”

As an aside, this blogger was reminded of two books Mr. Schiffrin would have enjoyed: “Wasn’t That a Time?” by Robert Schrank and “Confessions of an Economic Hitman” by John Perkins.

Wait for Me! – Bonus Post

This blogger skimmed the tome, “Wait for Me! Deborah Mitford, Duchess of Devonshire” by Deborah Mitford, published in 2010.

The author described her life between the 1920’s and the single-digit 2000’s as the youngest of seven siblings in a royal family in the United Kingdom; the oldest was fourteen years older. She described her generation of females thusly: “Marriage was the career we all aspired to– we were not trained to do a paid job.” The children “regularly signed the [church] visitors’ book ‘Greta Garbo’ and ‘Maurice Chevalier” as a prank. The author’s father taught her to drive a car when she was nine.

Mitford wrote about various other aspects of her times: “Nearly all my contemporaries smoked, which was not only acceptable, it was usual.” and in 1937, “The idea of answering a dinner invitation with a note of what you could or could not eat would have been preposterous and did not happen.” In June of that year, the author got to have tea with her mother, sister and Hitler.

Through the 1940’s and 1950’s, the author got pregnant seven times, but only three of the babies survived to adulthood; the others died in miscarriages or shortly after birth. She tried not to dwell on her own sorrow as she knew that her situation was still much better than other people’s during WWII. “There were already terrible sufferings of rationings, the indiscriminate bombings and the daily deaths of young servicemen.”

In the ensuing decades, the author found herself responsible for the management of seven households in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Her title became, “Her Grace Deborah Vivian Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire.”

In the 1980’s, the author was speaking to ten influential journalists in New York City who wrote about tourism. She had just visited Graceland (Elvis Presley’s estate) but none of them ever had. Nowadays, the number of tourists who go see that residence is second only to those who go see the White House.

In April 1991, the Cavendishes celebrated their golden wedding anniversary with 3,700 strangers because the author’s husband placed an ad in the Derbyshire Times inviting everyone in the county who was also having their golden anniversary that year. A jolly good time was had by all.

My Paper Chase

The Book of the Week is “My Paper Chase, The Stories of Vanished Times” by Harold Evans, published in 2009. This is a recounting of Evans’ life and career in one volume.

Evans’ desire for obtaining a university degree was unusual for British journalists of his generation because it was not necessary. Fortunately, he was able to complete his degree in three years without having to study Latin.

Over the course of his decades-long rise through newspaper management, he covered wars, disasters, scandals, and also authorized the publishing of a number of controversial stories that defied British law. He believes that the job of a newspaper is to inform citizens of goings-on that affect them, even if the government does not want them to know.

Evans writes, “Violence is always sure of space on television and in the press. Political change, being more subtle and dull, is frequently neglected until it explodes into ‘inexplicable’ violence.”

Try to Tell the Story – Bonus Post

Some people scoff at the endurance of Great Britain’s aristocracy.

The following passage from the book “Try to Tell the Story” by David Thomson, published in 2009, explains why there is still a royal family:

“What is the royal family for? So that shaggy-dog stories may be told about their absurd status. What does that do? It makes them human and trivial. With what result? We knock along with them. Yet somehow the silliness of royalty excuses us from final realities– we can’t cut off their heads again because… well, they’d be offended, wouldn’t they. The way they are if you talk to them first. It’s a fatuous rigmarole, but it helps explain why an allegedly grown-up nation still drags along with these poor idiots.”

Another interesting concept raised by Thomson’s autobiography involves an education experiment. Post-WWII, the English government enacted an Education Act. The Act provided financial assistance to bright boys from lower socio-economic classes, affording them the opportunity to attend an English “public school” (actually what Americans would call a private school, reputed to have high standards). Thomson was one of the lucky few who participated. He attended Dulwich College (high school, in America), and did sufficiently well to gain acceptance to a college at Oxford University. However, his apprehension about his family’s ability to pay tuition there, prompted him to attend film school instead. Due to cases such as Thomson’s, the government’s education experiment was discontinued.

An Irish Country Childhood

The Book of the Week is “An Irish Country Childhood” by Marrie Walsh, published in 1995. This is the kind of book on which a movie or TV show (such as Meet Me in St. Louis or Little House on the Prairie) might be based. It describes the spirit of the times of a particular culture in a certain era; in this case, an agricultural community in County Mayo, Ireland in the 1930’s and 1940’s.

Walsh was born in 1929. She attended public school where “The teachers were not local and they never mixed socially. Teaching was a very prestigious job in those days…” Her maternal grandmother and great aunt attended a Hedgerow School, which evolved during the enforcement of the Penal Laws (1695-1829), a time of oppression of Catholics by Great Britain. Classes in Irish, Latin and English were held outdoors. Tuition was in the form of corn or turf.

“Brought up on a daily diet of legends, myths and ghost stories,” Walsh and her many siblings were fascinated by the paranormal. Various places mentioned in her anecdotes were haunted. The author’s ancestors thought weasels were actually witches and were therefore scared of them.

The kids performed labor on farms in the community, and received compensation in the form of being taught a song or story, and perhaps some food. They loved drinking buttermilk, and participated in daring episodes of pinching fruit from the neighbors’ orchards until they got caught. Read the book to learn more about this and Walsh’s other adventures.