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Breaking the Slump

I was reading Newsweek (on my Kindle, for a $1.49/month) and there was an article about this book. It looked cool, so I bought it (also on my Kindle, for $9.99). All this, in a 4 minute span while sharing a cup of coffee at a local coffee shop (Sip) with Gail. Like I said, the Kindle is transformational. It was my aha moment, as Steven Johnson discussed in the WSJ.

At times, I’ve voiced displeasure with the reporting of Jimmy Roberts. So it may come as a surprise that I purchased a book written by him. But hey, it’s about golf, and this topic of the slump really, really interests me. Actually, the whole synchronized interaction of physical, intellectual, and emotional that golf requires is what interests me. Johnny Miller puts it best:

“There’s no game that’s ever been invented that exposes someone’s choke point like golf,” says Miller. “It highlights all your weaknesses, mental and physical, and choking can really be part of a slump. It’s the most interesting thing about the game.”

I agree strongly, especially after watching Kenny Perry break down just a few weeks ago at Augusta. A buddy of mine was discussing this the other day and says (I’m paraphrasing) “any competent professional could go par-par or par-bogey and just win it.” He said it with disdain, as if Kenny Perry was some big loser not worthy of my buddy’s sporting attention, as if golf were not worthy of his sporting attention.

This is a common perception of the casual fan and reflects a fundamental lack of understanding of the game. Here’s the deal: it does not matter how proficient your golf skills are, you are NOT in control of how your body and soul react on the golf course when the pressure is on. You can’t control it, you can only hope to contain it! Kenny couldn’t contain it this year at Augusta, Phil couldn’t contain it a few years ago at Winged Foot; and countless others have had Van de Veldeian breakdowns with apparently no explanation other than “they choked.”

And Jimmy Roberts helped me understand this a little better. For that, I’m grateful. So I’m a fan of Jimmy now. In this book he talks to 18 people about their slumps; each one has a chapter devoted to them. Fifteen are current or former PGA Tour professionals, one is an Olympic figure skater (Dan Jansen), one is a former POTUS (George H.W. Bush), and one is a former LPGA player (Dottie Pepper). Each chapter was enlightening to varying degrees.

The Norman chapter was great. In 1991 he had gone two years without winning after dominating the world stage for most of the 1980’s. He pulled his car to side of the road near his home in Florida and had a long talk with himself:

“And I said to myself, ‘What the f&%# am I going to the course for?’ I said, ‘What are your intentions? What do you want to do? Do you want to get better? Do you want to get out of this thing? What’s your attitude?’” Norman says he sat there for perhaps forty minutes just staring at the clouds and talking to himself. “I swear I could take you to that spot today. It was on Hood Road.” Then he put the seat up, continued on to Old Marsh, and, for the first time in a long time, practiced with “a free mind.” It was an epiphany.

He went to win a bunch more in the mid 1990’s, but it was a cursed career, which Norman has come to terms with:

“I always address my career not on my successes, but on my failures,” he says. “I’ve got this little thing written on my desk, and I can’t remember who the quote came from, but it says, ‘Show me a path with no obstacles, and that path will lead you nowhere.’” This is classic Norman, who has always been Don Quixote—occasionally tilting at windmills—on an endless trek to find answers, and not just about golf. “If I had a different thought than somebody else,” he says, “I always wanted to know why I was right or wrong.”

This tortured career was nothing compared to that of David Duval. By golly, did he drop off the face of the earth or what? It seems like neither Duval or Norman really stood guard over their confidence. Here is what Duval says:

“The thing I feel like I learned the most through anything,” he says, “is that the most precious commodity in golf that needs to be guarded is your confidence. By far, you’ve got to protect it at all costs. Losing friends, losing whatever—you’ve got to protect your confidence.”

You just can’t let negative thoughts creep in. It means the end of your golf career basically.

The Dan Jansen chapter was the best of them all. He choked horribly in two Olympic Games, but finally won gold in his final race. He did so by convincing himself that he “liked the 1,000 meters.” He had always had all the talent, so he basically talked himself into the confidence he needed for the victory. Now he is a golf junkie and he relates his experiences back to golf. Enlightening and interesting stuff.

The Johnny Miller and Dottie Pepper chapters were solid. And Jimmy Roberts proved himself to be a pretty serious golf junkie. I’m looking forward to NBC’s golf coverage, but we really don’t get Johnny Miller and Jimmy Roberts back until The Players on May 9th and 10th and the US Open on June 20th and 21st. Oh well, I’ll sit tight.

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The Given Day

Reading huge, epic novels has always been complicated for me. The best time to read them is on vacation, but hauling a huge book through airports and rental cars, along with other reading, is cumbersome. But not anymore now that I have a Kindle. I was out of town getting some R&R and the cumbersome aspect of carrying around a large work of fiction, a sports book, Newsweek, the WSJ, and the Chicago Tribune is no more. It even makes me think I can justify the Kindle from a cash flow perspective.

This Lehane book is that “large work of fiction” I just mentioned. It’s a mighty piece of historical fiction that takes place at the end of WWI. I started it and finished it in the middle of my vacation, which was perfect. It was great reading material for a vacation; long and involved, but exciting and thought-provoking. I’m going to classify it as popular fiction, but I don’t think it’s quite as “popular” as Lehane’s crime novels like Mystic River or Gone, Baby, Gone.

Like those books, it’s set mostly in Boston. It’s the story of the Coughlins, an Irish-American family of cops and politicians, set during the years of 1917-1919, a tumultuous time in Boston and all over America. Tumultuous because of the rapidly changing landscape in the seats of power in America. The labor movement was in full swing, race relations were heated, women were on the brink of getting the right to vote, and fear of communism coupled with paranoia about radical immigrant groups was especially acute. Lehane brings them all into play.

I term this book epic because it intertwines other families and individual personalities with the Coughlins. So even though it doesn’t span a long time-period like a traditional epic, it switches back and forth between these people and places, giving it an epic feel. For example, the story of Luther Laurence, a black factory worker/domestic servant whom trouble seems to follow around, is just as involved as that of Danny Coughlin, a white cop bucking the establishment. Eventually they become intertwined forming the backbone of the story, highlighting issues of race and class that were so warped back then. Other stories involved an early-career Babe Ruth, a young J. Edgar Hoover, the Massachusetts governor Calvin Coolidge, and the Coughlin’s domestic help. It’s a wild, roaming ride through post WWI America and I was engrossed from the get-go.

I often hold off reading these long stories regardless of the convenience factor, which is why I’ve only read two (labeled as epic) in the last few years. Besides hauling it around, staring down the barrel of 700+ pages is sometimes daunting because it takes a lot of focus and locks me out of reading other fiction at the same time. But the rewards are great, so I’ve purchased another epic that I’ll read this year for sure (World Without End).

Lehane’s tone is kind of gloomy. There’s a lot of evil and heartbreak in this book, along with some solid family carnage. So I had that going for me, which is nice. Lehane’s characters spend a lot of time ruminating about their situation and his narrative style is thoughtful and descriptive. At times I found myself welcoming a section of crackling dialogue because it didn’t seem that common. I don’t have empirical evidence to support this, that’s just the way it felt. I would like to see book stats come out that measure items like this. How about a ratio that compares dialogue to narration? The quant head in me would welcome that.

I’ve said it before, this is why we read. The only time I turned on the TV this vacation was to measure the screen and see how well we could see it from the back of the room. It was on for about four minutes. No need for it when you have a captivating work of fiction, a solid sports book (Breaking the Slump), and a few newspapers and periodicals handy. Gail read three books and mentioned that it was the most relaxing vacation we’ve ever had. I agree.

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Guerilla Marketing

This is the 4th Edition, published in 2007, so it’s pretty up to date. It’s a treatise on marketing for small businesses and individuals, the breadth of which is kind of astonishing. It’s been around for a long time and Levinson has since built a whole infrastructure of co-authored books on more specialized marketing topics. But this is the one that started it all, the one that forms the basis for all of those other ones, and, I’m betting, the one that mentions his other books the most. It’s clear that he has applied most of what he espouses to a high degree of success.

I needed this book. I’m at a point in my business where I need to have my marketing strategy in the front of my mind at every moment. It needs to roll off my tongue like a downhill putt at Augusta, if you know what I mean. Levinson gets the business owner pretty far down the road on this pursuit, but he doesn’t stop there. He spends a little more time on saving money and doing market research, then launches into a detailed discussion of all of the different types of marketing and advertising know to humankind. He groups them as (1) Minimedia (like business cards), (2) Maximedia (like TV), and (3) New Media (like e-mail and blogs).

It’s pretty comprehensive and he goes into a fair amount of minutia on each. He had an interesting digression on classified advertising and talked fondly about the $500/month he earned for about a dozen years selling his self-published book Secrets of Successful Free-Lancing (pg 137). He sold it only via classified ads and uses it to illustrate how lethal and simple classified advertising can be if you monitor your response rates.

He spends a fair amount of time on direct mail (that’s maximedia), going into detail on the style of the envelope, the color of the paper used, and the content of the mailer. He goes through it all man, I’m telling you.

I got a lot out of these three segments, but I also blew through a lot of it very quickly. Radio and TV advertising are not in the cards for me so I couldn’t stay focused on topics like these.

He finishes up the book with three chapters on the “nature of the guerrilla.” In this section he goes into the attributes and attitudes of the marketing guerrilla. It is motivating and some good stuff, but I think the Gitomer books cover a lot of this stuff and I like reading them a lot better. I’ve slapped together some notes on Guerilla Marketing that I’ll use them a lot as I hammer through my marketing strategy over the next 60 days, but I have a feeling that I’m going to be spending more of my time in the Gitomer books than in Guerilla Marketing.

This was a good read and brought a lot of stuff to mind, it’s going in the stack of books at my office that I’m going to be referring to in the near future.

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Black Cherry Blues

I’m starting to get it. I didn’t get it at first when I read The Neon Rain about two years ago. I said, “It’s quite dramatic and over the top. A little too much so, that’s why I say the jury is still out on this series.” But now I’m hooked on Burke and the jury is in; I will continue to hammer through Burke’s crime series and I’m becoming a big fan of the main character, Dave Robicheaux.

I wonder where Burke gets all the character traits for the dark and tormented Robicheaux. According to his bio, Burke lives in Missoula, MT and New Iberia, LA, which are the very locations that this novel takes place. So I’m guessing that he has melded together some local characters and himself. Grafton does this I think, but her style and main character are a lot different (but there are similarities). I like reading the the author biographies and sorting through these things. I just found out that Burke has a daughter named Alafair, which is the name of the child Robicheaux adopted in his second book. This, coupled with the setting, means that there’s a lot of Burke in Robicheaux.

That’s cool. Things like that bring me closer to the characters, the books, and the authors, making it an extended reading experience, so to speak. It just makes the pursuit more fun.

Burke’s novels throw some variety into my crime reading. So many crime novels have a single, childless, independent, often smart-alecky protagonist (at least the ones I read do). Robicheaux kind of conforms to this caricature. He’s a widower now and his daughter is adopted. But he’s not a smart alec. And he’s not very independent; leaning mostly on his therapist, AA group, housekeeper, bait shop employee, and adopted daughter for support. But in return, he helps these people out a lot and shows them much kindness. They are often the reason why he has to unleash some brutal attacks on the bad guys of the world.

This good and evil in the extreme is very interesting. It’s almost unnerving because the people he loves are often in harm’s way. Especially his daughter. In this book she needs constant protection because he hauls her along while he is tracking the bad guys. But he needs to do so because she’s a target. The tension is always there.

** SPOILER ALERT **

Luckily his daughter doesn’t get killed like his wife did in the last book (she was a one-book wife). This is only book three so I’m really anxious to watch the development of these two. It just seems that he has a lot of crimes to solve with kid in tow. It would be overly formulaic if she was threatened in book after book. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I have the next one in paperback queued up, but I probably won’t get to it until later this year.

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The Paperboy

I’m not sure how I came about this book. I think my wife, Gail, picked it up at a library book sale knowing that I had already enjoyed Train. She may have remembered that Dexter was famous for his book Paris Trout. Or maybe she just knows me. I don’t think she’s read any books by Pete Dexter and I don’t think I’ll be able to convince her to do so.

Why? Well, I just don’t think Gail has the same fascination that I do with family carnage. I use the term carnage loosely. I don’t mean that I enjoy stories about killing families. I use the term to describe stories about breakdowns in familial relationships that are often more painful than death because they are so insidious.

For some reason, in my estimation, this makes for a good story. I can’t explain it. What’s enjoyable about a family breaking down? I don’t know. Maybe it isn’t enjoyable. This could be the wrong word to use. Maybe engrossing is a better word to describe my involvement with books like this. Or maybe I should say I’m engaged; that may better describe it.

I remember it starting in college when I read Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf in a lit class. I was amazed by it. Then I saw the play about a decade ago and I was blown away. The acidity and enmity of these two people towards each other was mesmerizing. So now, a few times a year, I engage in some carnage. The Paperboy was certainly along these same lines, although a little less so and therefore much more readable then the other books I’ve labeled as such.

The word paperboy in this book, I think, could refer either collectively to the four male protagonists or individually to the narrator, Jack James. Jack is the youngest son of a local newspaper scion in a rural Florida town. Jack is kind of a screw-up, but a good kid; he drives one of the delivery trucks for his dad. Contrast this to Jack’s brother Ward, who is one half of a famous investigative reporting duo for the Miami Times, the other half being a gentlemen named Yardley Acheman.

Bothers Jack and Ward are brought together when Ward and Yardley make a visit to the small town where Jack lives with his dad. They are there to investigate the murder of the local sheriff and the subsequent conviction of the perpetrator. Jack is hired as their driver and errand boy. The dysfunction occurs within the Ward family, between the distant dad and the two son’s. Therein lies the soul of this story, but there’s a lot more that makes this story great.

** SPOILER ALERT **

As the relationship with their father grows more distant and the complications in the investigation become greater, the brother’s relationship solidifies and grows. It’s a beautiful thing to see and provides a hopeful backdrop.

If this family relationship is the soul of the story, then the heart of the story is the daily recounting of the paperboy’s search for the facts in the murder of the local sheriff. To me, it’s even more timely and interesting because it’s a discussion of the morality, ethics, and value of investigative journalism, a pursuit that is under fire now more than ever as the newspaper industry continues its decline. I come across articles daily, asking where we, as a society, are going to get this style of reporting if all of the newspapers go bankrupt.

Dexter takes this topic to its endgame. The paperboy’s investigation leads to a story, the story leads to a Pulitzer for Ward and Yardley, then the Pulitzer leads to an investigation of the original story by a rival Miami paper. Ironic, because the investigative reporter for the rival paper once worked for the Miami Times. In fact, she idolized Yardley before he made a mockery of her by pushing her into a pool in front of all the bigwigs at the newspaper’s celebration of the Pulitzer. It’s a great twist.

And I don’t use the word twist loosely. Dexter’s writing contains a host of twisted characters who do some twisted things in some damn twisted scenes, usually involving violence and sex. It’s dark, so you have to like a little darkness to embrace Dexter. But it’s that darkness that makes the relationship between the brothers that much brighter.

Great book, which I’m classifying as lit because I want to. I don’t think it fits into popular fiction.

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Q is for Quarry

Grafton has made her main character so rich and enthralling that it’s like having an imaginary friend. Strange you say? Yeah, I can’t argue with you, I may very well have some issues. I read through Kinsey’s bio on Wikipedia like it’s for real. I think it’s a testament to just how crafty Grafton is. The woman can write some fun stuff.

In this iteration of the adventures of private detective Kinsey Millhone, Grafton throws in a few new things and a fresher take on one of her favorite topics.

For the first time that I can recall she bases the mystery on a real-life case. She talks about it in an extended author’s notes section (I don’t recall her doing that before either). She gives the reader insights into her methods and goes into some detail on the journal she keeps during the writing of each book. Do you ever think that the next generation will study these journals posthumously like we study Van Gogh’s sketches? Hey, pop culture often ends up being termed classic after a period of time. Don’t rule it out.

Additionally, she really pushes the envelope on Kinsey’s fast food fetish. The reader gets a detailed description of a McDonald’s meal no less than three times. Kinsey even gets a colleague addicted to fast food. At one point, Kinsey heads out to grab some McDonald’s shortly after her colleague had just finished dining at Burger King. Her colleague says:

Oh, I’ll be eating again. The Whopper was good, but it didn’t fill me up. I’ve been thinking we should do a study – purely scientific – a side-by-side tasting, a Whopper and a Big Mac, to see which we prefer. Or go vertical – McDonald’s hamburger, cheeseburger, a QP with cheese, and a Big Mac. What do you think?

That vertical tasting idea is pretty funny. Grafton, I think, is rebelling against the healthful, agricultural, Santa Barbara lifestyle. Kinsey runs and lifts weights, but loves fast food. So she’s healthy, but unapologetically cheats a lot. I’m guessing that she’s flaunting this in the face of the granola eaters in California.

I may just blast through R, S, T, and U this year so I can catch up.

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A Whole New Mind

The subtitle is Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future, which is not an accurate portrayal of his main point. More on that in a few. He starts by explaining that your right brain handles all those artistic and creative things while your left brain takes care of the analytical and factual side of things. This country was built by strong L-Directed thinkers, he says, who brought us into the Industrial Age and carried us through the Information Age. But now, in this age of “abundance, Asia, and automation,” (the Conceptual Age as he calls it) being L-Directed may put one at a disadvantage to those with R-Directed abilities.

Continue reading “A Whole New Mind”
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Manhunt

The subtitle is The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer, and that describes it very well. There is a little background early on, but for the most part this book starts the morning of April 14, 1865 and ends with Booth’s capture and death 12 days later.  It contains the kind of detail you don’t get in history class. The minutia that Swanson dives into probably wouldn’t serve a history major well, but it’s truly fascinating and does a great job of transporting you to the time and place of one of this country’s most harrowing moments.

What I never realized was how perfectly Booth executed his portion of plan. He entered the box during the play and took one shot and killed the President. He was able to jump out of the box onto the stage and proclaim his assassination with gun and dagger raised. After that he scooted out the back and was miles outside of D.C. before anyone could start the chase. Pretty unbelievable when you consider it.

You learn how meticulously he planned this thing; how he traveled to Montreal, Quebec to meet fellow Southern sympathizers, how he scoured the countryside to plan his escape route, and how he situated his fellow conspirators for maximum effect. The amount of hatred and guile within Boothe was pretty chilling. And had he not basically broken his leg, he may have been able to make it to the Deep South and escape. But as it went, he ended up locked in a tobacco barn in Northern Virginia surrounded by 25 Union cavalrymen. In the end he was gunned down by an especially eccentric cavalry member named Boston Corbett.

His plan was much grander than just the assassination of Lincoln. Booth organized co-conspirators to kill Secretary of State William Seward and Vice President Andrew Johnson on the same night. Both of those other attacks failed; the former because of gallant efforts by bodyguards and family members and the latter because of the cowardice of the perpetrator.

This isn’t the type of history book you read to understand Lincoln. And you don’t read it to gain some insight the people and policies that were integral to changing the course of this country. But it does help you understand just how divided this country was. Just how mainstream it was at the time to have outright hatred for the President and how many people were available  to hide Booth from Union soldiers.

Most every one was caught and brought to justice. His main four co-conspirators were hanged in Washington a few months after Booth’s death.

Andrew Johnson ended up being a poor successor to Lincoln and he was succeeded by Grant, who wasn’t much of an upgrade. Edwin Stanton, the Secretary of War who was integral in the manhunt, was fired by Johnson and died an early death. William Seward recovered but his family was never the same and his wife and daughter died shortly thereafter. I’m not sure which of these players were in the “team of rivals” that Doris Kearns Goodwin’s wrote about, but I’ll eventually read her book.

This was a fine book.

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A Spectacle of Corruption

This is the sequel to A Conspiracy of Paper, which I read a few years ago. I said then, and I’ll say it again, I will continue reading Liss. But I didn’t think it would be three years. This book continues the adventures of Benjamin Weaver, a private detective in 18th Century London. Ahh, I do like historical fiction and I’m starting to love period pieces.

This book is set in 1720’s London, about 30 years after King James II was dethroned. I did a little rooting around in Wikipedia and came up with a few things. King James II was the last Catholic to be king (1688). There was much “upheaval” in England at this time. Protestants and Catholics didn’t trust each other. France and England didn’t trust each other. Whigs and Tories didn’t trust each other. And underlying all of this was the chance that the Pretender (the son of King James II), was trying to plot the overthrow of the government from his base in France.

To put this in perspective, the time frame was about 100 years after the Golden Age of Queen Elizabeth. King James II was part of the Stuart line of royalty. The Stuart line included Mary, Queen of Scots, who was executed for trying to kill Queen Elizabeth, her father’s first cousin. Be sure not to confuse Mary, Queen of Scots, with Mary I of England (“Bloody Mary”), who re-established Catholicism in England, which was eventually reversed by her half sister, Queen Elizabeth. Thanks Wikipedia for taking this full cycle. Where would I be without you. So yeah, there was a lot of intrigue and treachery happening, which provides a great backdrop for some solid historical fiction.

Benjamin Weaver is a great character and I’m looking forward to the next book in the series. Supposedly it’s due out later this year. This according to the bio at David Liss’ official website. Who, upon further reading of his website, appears to have a particularly, and admitted, liberal view when it comes to “unregulated and overly-exuberant markets.” In fact, he engaged in a little war of words with the NYT over the facts in his latest novel, The Whiskey Rebels, released in late 2008. This is interesting to me because Alexander Hamilton factors into this novel and I really need to learn more about Hamilton, especially since I just finished John Adams, an arch rival of Hamilton’s. I think I need to read Ron Chernow’s biography of Hamilton.

Wow, I’m glad I did this rooting around. It really opened my mind to a few other books that I can’t wait to read.

So yeah, this is a great book. Weaver is wrongly accused of murder so he sets out to clear his name. During that process, he masquerades as a wealthy tobacco trader from Jamaica and runs in social and political circles that a Jewish private detective wouldn’t normally be accepted in. Throw in a murderous villain and a crooked politician who Weaver has to team with, then mix in a few love interests, and you have a ton of good fun.

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John Adams

This is a long audio book, abridged it’s still close to 10 hours. But it’s certainly a great listen and it’s a small amount of time to spend when you consider the impact this man had on the United States of America. He was one of the chief architects of the Declaration of Independence and was integral in obtaining its passage by the Continental Congress. He became a foreign policy expert after the Revolutionary War and built advantageous relationships with France and Great Britain. He was elected our second president (after serving as Washington’s veep) and used some textbook diplomacy to avert a war with France when the relationship turned sour near the turn of the century.

I’ve consumed a few books about the birth of our nation. I listened to 1776 in 2006 and read a Ben Franklin book in 2007. They dwell on the same time period and I think it’s useful to consume them all for the differing perspectives. To round things out I think I need to read a Jefferson book and an Alexander Hamilton book. Those are a couple of key figures who clashed with Adams and I feel the need for their perspective. But first, I’m watching the John Adams miniseries because Gail got it for me as a Valentine’s Day gift.

However, the interesting facts about this time period are only a portion of why this book is so interesting. What makes it shine are two things; (1) the descriptions of Adam’s personal relationships and (2) the exploration of his personality and character.

The most important relationship he had was with his wife. We’ve heard the stories about how important Abigail was in his life and the book bears this out. McCullough quotes many of their letters and leaves little doubt as to this fact. You cannot tell the story of John Adams without telling Abigail’s story also. They spent years and years apart but their relationship was strong throughout. And despite being apart, Adam’s relied on Abigail for input into all aspects of his life and work.

The consistency of Adam’s relationship with Abigail was in stark contrast to Adams’ relationship with Jefferson. To call it a roller coaster would be an understatement. They went from being amicable partners in writing and passing the Declaration of Independence, to agreeing to disagree on slavery, to best friends during their foreign service in France, and to bitter enemies during Adams’ presidency. But finally, after they had left public service, the made amends and started a long and fruitful relationship, mostly in the form of letters to each other.

This relationship lasted until the day they died, which was on the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Is that unbelievable or what? They both died on the same day, within hours of each other, on the 4th of July, fifty years after the Declaration of Independence was signed. They were meant to see the day, I guess. Justice, since they were both so integral to its content.

Besides Jefferson, Adams clashed with many during his presidency. I don’t completely understand the parties at that point and I think a reading of a Jefferson book and Hamilton book will be enlightening. Adams was a Federalist but he clashed with Alexander Hamilton, so I think they basically broke up the party. McCullough identifies the other party as Republicans (Jefferson), but these weren’t today’s Republicans. I think the unabridged version may have had more on this. I need to do some more research.

In the end, McCullough paints a picture of an honorable man.

Adams decried slavery just about until the day he died. He would often try and engage Jefferson on this issue but Jefferson would have none of it. Abigail was also outspoken against slavery and racism of any sort. Abigail had run-ins with the local school about this very issue and persevered.

Adams loved books. He had a huge library, a massive library. He added comments in all of the margins. McCullough says, and I’m paraphrasing so this is not a direct quote, “that he sometimes wrote as much in the margins as was written by the author.” I know how he felt, I can relate. Books are so great that you want do more than just read them. You want to interact with them. You want to be closer to them. What do you do? You talk about them, write about them, notate them, live them. Which brings me to a point about audiobooks. I wish I could just page back and reread this passage, but I can’t, it’s too much of a hassle even with iTunes. Now with the Kindle I could, that would be cool.

I like Adams a lot. He wrote, read, ate, partied, visited, and rode horses into his later years and lived to be 90. He did not die a rich man, but neither a poor man. He seemed to be the type of caring, conscientious, and principled, independent thinker that this country needed to get off on the right foot back in those tumultuous times.