Howard Hughes: The Untold Story (4)

Howard Hughes: The Untold Story
By: Peter Harry Brown and Pat H. Broeske
Read 2/8/09

An interesting look at Howard Hughes from the begining of his life all the way to the end. He stated his life with an over-protective mother how instilled in him a fear of germs that stayed through his whole life. Known as the worlds richest man, and aviator, movie producer, womanizer and eccentric recluse. All are true, but there is more to each of the stories. He was a brilliant engineer and was involved in the process of both is fathers company as well as his own aerospace company. He often said he would be happy just to do that. But he did much more, his wealth meant little to him except to provide a means to do whatever he wanted. Which often meant perusing woman, then offering to help them with movie careers which may or may not happen. Many men collect things, Hughes collected women, he had scores of them kept in apartments, with handlers, and trainers, the cost must have been staggering.
Thought it all he had what we now recognize as treatable OCD, but at the time it was unknown and he often wondered if he was going insane. This combined with many plane and auto accidents plus lingering effects of syphilis turned him into a paranoid person who may have been his own worst enemy. However in his final 10 years of life he was virtually a prisoner kept by his core group of people who kept him well medicated on codeine and Valium while they took control of his billion dollar empire.
An excellent book, well written and interesting. It looks mostly at his personal life with the business in the background. It is an amazing story and any one chapter might be an amazing life, but when you put all the parts of his life together it was incredible, and above all very sad.

How To Tame A Wild Bore (3)

How to Tame a Wild Bore and Other Facts of Life with Lewis (Hardcover)
by Kathy Grizzard Schmook

I read a Gizzard book last year and it was ok, but in it he talks about his weddings.. there were many. And it also mentioned that one of his ex-wives wrote a book about him.
It was mildly amusing... sort of folksy in a stereotypical way. He is a guy... a slob, interested only in tennis, and unfamiliar in the ways of the world.. somehow he marries a southern lady in the old style and they clash. The book isn't vindictive, if you like Gizzard it might be of interest to you, otherwise you can probably pass on this one.

The 25th Man (1)

The 25th Man
Ed Morrell

I read an except from this book when I was in Jr. High and never forgot it. It was about an inmate in St Quentin that had out of body experiences after being tortured. Recently it crossed my mind again and I was able to track it down at a library.
The book was different than I thought. The story starts back in the late 1800's and a lot of the story is about how he got in trouble and arrested, his time in jail etc. This is a true story and Ed Morrell went on to champion prison reform, so a lot of this book is about the conditions and experiences he had.... all of which were horrific. Toward the end of the book we finally get to the part that I recalled. A new warden would strap him into a straight jacket and leave him for days, during this time we could have out of body experiences, and later went on to complete some of the visions he had.
Over all I really can't recommend it, I read it because it was something I remembered, and while parts of it were quite interesting from a historical perspective, overall the book got bogged down in the story of his capture. As a side note, Jack London wrote a fictional account based on Ed's story called Star Rover, perhaps that would be more entertaining.