The Life and Legend of E. H. Harriman

Book Description

To Americans living in the early twentieth century, E. H. Harriman was as familiar a name as J. P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, and Andrew Carnegie. Like his fellow businessmen, Harriman (1847-1909) had become the symbol for an entire industry: Morgan stood for banking, Rockefeller for oil, Carnegie for iron and steel, and Harriman for railroads. Here, Maury Klein offers the first in-depth biography in more than seventy-five years of this influential yet surprisingly understudied figure.

A Wall Street banker until age fifty, Harriman catapulted into the railroad arena in 1897, gaining control of the Union Pacific Railroad as it emerged from bankruptcy and successfully modernizing every aspect of its operation. He went on to expand his empire by acquiring large stakes in other railroads, including the Southern Pacific and the Baltimore and Ohio, in the process clashing with such foes as James J. Hill, J. P. Morgan, and Theodore Roosevelt.

With its new insights into the myths and controversies that surround Harriman's career, this book reasserts his legacy as one of the great turn-of-the-century business titans.

Customer Reviews:

Great bio of a very complex person.......2000-04-01

Mr Klien has done it again. I read Mr. Klein's The Life And Legend of Jay Gould with much anticipation and found it to be very engaging. That is exactly how i felt about his latest endeavor, The Life and Legend of E.H. Harriman. Mr. Klien handles a complex person with much skill and depth. He brings to life a monumental person who was both very complex and yet very human. His use of the social and cultural aspects of the era help to put his subject in context without detracting from the person. Many biographies fail either because the subject is dimmed by the amount of background information on the social and cultural aspects of the era or just the opposite, the subject is not brought to life by too little backgroung of the forces that helped shapped his/her life. Mr. Klein succeeds in reaching a great balance. The book is a great read.

Average customer rating:

Life & Legend of E.H. Harriman.
MAURY KLEIN
Manufacturer: See notes
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000RQQ8SA

Book Description

Bill Garrett was the Jackie Robinson of college basketball. In 1947, the same year Robinson broke the color line in major league baseball, Garrett integrated big-time college basketball. By joining the basketball program at Indiana University, he broke the gentleman's agreement that had barred black players from the Big Ten, college basketball's most important conference. While enduring taunts from opponents and pervasive segregation at home and on the road, Garrett became the best player Indiana had ever had, an all-American, and, in 1951, the third African American drafted in the NBA. In basketball, as Indiana went so went the country. Within a year of his graduation from IU, there were six African American basketball players on Big Ten teams. Soon tens, then hundreds, and finally thousands walked through the door Garrett opened to create modern college and professional basketball. Unlike Robinson, however, Garrett is unknown today.

Getting Open is more than "just" a basketball book. In the years immediately following World War II, sports were at the heart of America's common culture. And in the fledgling civil rights efforts of African Americans across the country, which would coalesce two decades later into the Movement, the playing field was where progress occurred publicly and symbolically.

Indiana was an unlikely place for a civil rights breakthrough. It was stone-cold isolationist, widely segregated, and hostile to change. But in the late 1940s, Indiana had a leader of the largest black YMCA in the world, who viewed sports as a wedge for broader integration; a visionary university president, who believed his institution belonged to all citizens of the state; a passion for high school and college basketball; and a teenager who was, as nearly as any civil rights pioneer has ever been, the perfect person for his time and role. This is the story of how they came together to move the country toward getting open.

Father-daughter authors Tom Graham and Rachel Graham Cody spent seven years reconstructing a full portrait of how these elements came together; interviewing Garrett's family, friends, teammates, and coaches, and digging through archives and dusty closets to tell this compelling, long-forgotten story.

Customer Reviews:

The real "Hoosiers" story.......2007-04-17

This well-written book took me back to Shelbyville IN in the 1950s, when every barber shop displayed a picture of the 1947 championship team and every patron knew all their names. No one would question the effect Bill Garrett had on his home town, but few could have predicted the impact he would have on collegiate sports for years to come.

The little town of Milan provided great sports drama for the movie "Hoosiers," but the life of Bill Garrett is more than a sports story. He did for NCAA athletics what Jackie Robinson did for Major League Baseball. Young people of today would be shocked to learn what he endured just a couple of generations ago.

Thanks to Tom and Rachel Graham Cody for this great read. As a Purdue grad, it pains me to praise a book that casts such a positive glow on Indiana University!

So...who was Bill Garrett?.......2006-12-29

This is a good book and a good read. If you're from small-town Indiana (like me) and old enough to understand what single-class "Hoosier Hysteria" really meant, then you'll like this book.

However I respectfully offer that it's not a 5-star book. It may be a 5-star story in search of a 5-star telling.

I just finished the book yesterday, and I find myself wishing the authors had been less dispassionate. Or more passionate? Whatever.

So who was Bill Garrett? The book talks a lot about his life and times, and provides some ancedotes, but always left me wanting more about Bill. Sadly, Bill wasn't available to be interviewed, but his teammates, friends and wife were all sources for the book.

Here are some examples:

We learn a lot about how Bill came to enroll at IU, but we don't learn about the man himself. Bill left Tennessee State after enrolling, and took a bus to IU. No one was available to meet him there! How did he feel about this?

Bill was on the road and separated from his wife for several years while he knocked around the fringes of professional basketball. How was their relationship affected? We don't know.

Finally - the authors talk about the changes in college basketball in the 1950's (pp 169-175), Branch McCracken's sporadic recruitment of black players, yet fail to mention that IU WON the NCAA championship in 1953!

Sorry 5-star raters...it's a good book and a story worth telling, but could be a lot better. Probably a better movie than a book.

Blown away!.......2006-12-28

Seldom have I been so touched, entertained, and educated by a book as I was by Getting Open, which I read in two days. It is truly a masterpiece and something I will keep on my bookshelf for the rest of my life.

Although born and raised in Indiana, I didn't know much if anything about Bill Garrett before reading this book, but I was just blown away by his story. Not knowing the story, it was almost like reading a well-crafted novel and I hung on every new development the authors revealed. I also didn't know much about the racial intolerance of the times. My neighborhood and high school were all white, so I really had little if any contact with blacks before I went to Indiana University as a freshman in 1963. It hardly seems possible that such racial intolerance existed in the Midwest so recently before then.

This book exceeded all my expectations and I highly recommend it to anyone, whether you're a basketball fan or not. If you have any ties to the Hoosier State or to Indiana University, you will love it all the more.

A Story That Needed To Be Told.......2006-12-15

At the pinnacle of his high school career - leading Shelbyville High to the Indiana state championship; a team that had three black starters - not one college scout in the arena attended the game to recruit Bill Garrett or his two teammates due to the color of their skin.

At the pinnacle of his collegiate career - leaving the court to a standing ovation that lasted several minutes - Bill Garrett was refused service in a restaurant days later; one that had on its marquee that it welcomed fans of Indiana Unniversity basketball.

And when Bill Garrett was ready to launch his pro career, the team in his home state did not draft him.

But Bill Garrett was stronger than those who attempted to keep those doors closed. And we are better because of him.

For author Tom Graham - with his co-author/daughter Rachel Graham Cody - the book took seven years of reseach, and certainly a lifetime of not denying the facts from the past and understanding the urgency in the present to set the record straight.

Getting Open is more than a biography on Garrett and how he integrated Big Ten basketball by playing and starring for IU. It is a history of institutionalized racial hatred in the State of Indiana - at one point in the 20th Century, the KKK essentially controlled all essential government offices - and the tireless work of person's from different sides of the tracks to fight the good fight.

Graham is a Shelbyville native who was old enough to vividly recall the times, which certainly helped as he meticulously did his research to cut through the fiction that builds from facts as the years tumble on.

It is a book from the heart that will make you realize how we must celebrate those who had the courage then by continuing to challenge those who want to forget - or rewrite - the past.

Great civil rights story reads like a novel.......2006-08-07

This book is an incredibly well written and well documented story that should be more widely read. It is an important history that many sports fans, and non-sports fans, will enjoy tremendously. It is an inspiration to us all, and offers many lessons and insights about overcoming racism. Thank you to the father-daughter authors for getting out this story!

Getting Open: The Unknown Story of Bill Garrett And the Integration of College Basketball

Average customer rating:

Getting Open: The Unknown Story of Bill Garrett And the Integration of College Basketball
Tom Graham , and Rachael Graham Cody
Manufacturer: ATRIA BOOKS
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000Q19RF2

Book Description

This study looks at the preservation process: newsreel, television, and color preservation; the often controversial issue of colorization; and commercial film archives. It provides detailed histories of the major players in the preservation battle including the International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House, the American Film Institute, the Museum of Modern Art, the UCLA Film and Television Archive, and the Library of Congress.

This first historical overview of film preservation in the United States is also highly controversial in its exposure and criticism of the politicization of film preservation in recent years, and the rising bureaucracy which has often lost sight of preservation and restoration as the ultimate purpose of film archives.

Customer Reviews:

The Mis-adventures of film preservation.......2002-07-09

Anthony Slide writes a fascinating history of the film preservation movement in the United States. After covering the dangers of nitrate film and the wholesale junking of film prints during the silent era, he documents the beginning of the archive movement in the 1930s and 1940s. You would think that the book would be filled with stories of heroic efforts to save films, but there are just as many stories of incompetent and egotistical administrators who did more damage than good. The American Film Institute did a good job for a few years helping archives to preserve and restore films, but it quickly became a political organization and mostly claimed credit for projects that it had nothing to do with. The book goes into detail into the "colorization" controversy, a process which thankfully has pretty much disappeared since this book was published in 1992. There is also a section on how Scandinavian archives have done a much better job of preserving their countries' film heritage. If you are a serious lover of silent films or the golden age of sound films, you will definitely want to read this book!

Book Description

Challenges the conventional wisdom that media creates a toxic environment for America's youth, diverting us from the real origins of problems affecting children today.

Are school shootings the result of violent video games? Do sex-laden movies lead to promiscuity? Can Goth music create alienation? Repeatedly we are told the answer to these and similar questions is a resounding yes. But is this the right answer? It's Not the Media considers why media culture is a perennial target of both fascination and concern, and why we are so often encouraged to believe it is the root of many social problems. A look beyond the attention-grabbing headlines and political stumping reveals that fearing media feels right because media represents what we fear. And changes in media culture are easier to see than the complex economic, social, and political changes we have experienced over the past few decades. Digging deeper into the historical and societal trends of the past century and drawing from the most current social science research on the effects of media on children, Sternheimer presents a compelling argument that fear of social change, and what it means to be a kid in a today's media-saturated climate, lies at the heart of our media-bashing culture.

Customer Reviews:

Take the conversation outside of the psych lab.......2005-05-12

Insightful and well written. The author puts media into a social and historical context. This topic is typically discussed in sound bites on the evening news and in blaring headlines looking to exploit concerned parents. The concern is exploited by pscyhologists using sloppy experimental design in order to win favor of granting agencies. This book encourages parents to stop being afraid of kids, think critically about what their children are watching and doing, and have a reality check: childhood is not the sanitized version of innocence we think it is, but it is a fantastic time to learn and grow. Parents need to be willing to learn and grow as well. It is a great read and a refreshing perspective.

Part Social Criticism, Part Pop Culture Memoir.......2003-10-16

A really fun read - this book is part social criticism, part pop culture memoir. The author writes about what's wrong with some of the media effects research in a way that is actually entertaining. I wish I could have read a book like this when I was in college. It really gets you thinking.

Book Description

In this follow-up to his highly successful book, "Secrets of Rook Endings" John Nunn turns his attention to endgames without pawns. These occur surprisingly often in practice and are extremely tactical in nature. This book unites man and machine in the searh for ultimate answers. The computer databases created by Ken Thompson, formerly of Bell Laboratories, can state with certainty the correct result of any position with five pieces or fewer. John Nunn has extracted the most important information from these databases and presented it in the form of guidelines and specific key positions, which can be more readily digested by the human mind. With most competitive games nowadays being played to a finish in a single session, this knowledge may prove invaluable over the board. Since the first edition of this book was published, the databases for many six-man endings have been created, resulting in some surprising and paradoxical discoveries. The coverage has therefore been expanded to include the most interesting features of these endings.

Customer Reviews:

Endgame Student.......2006-01-11

I would strongly recommend this book. Most of the more serious chess books discussing the endgame make for difficult reading and this is no exception. That's not meant as a criticism, just an observation. Having said that, I have made it a personal mission to solve the Q v. R endgame on Chessmaster and this book has the most detailed discussion of that particular endgame I could find. (It also contains R v. N, which is also in Chessmaster.) Indeed, whereas other books like Fundamental Chess Endings by Muller and Lamprecht or Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual might devote a page or two to that ending, Nunn devotes 30 pages. The book covers only 12 main endgames, but it covers them exceptionally well. For those endgames, I'd recommend this book over any other book I've seen. It has two additional chapters entitled "Other Five-Man Endings" and "Six-Man Endings" but these are nowhere near as thorough as the first twelve chapters.

Square-dance of 4 and/or 5 pieces. (Not pawn.).......2005-10-14

This is the second book or 3-volumn set that Dr. John Nunn annotates from Dr. Ken Thompson's 4- and 5-piece endgame database. As the title suggests there is no pawn in this study. This book is the most interesting one among all three. There are lots of piece permutations.
Unlike the Rook ending book, this one does not have the practical tips at the end of every sections. The reason is most of the presented positions are practical ones that could happen in real games, while the R ending contains many test and study positions. Nonetheless, after giving a short generalization of a position is "mostly" win or draw, Nunn provides us many standard set-ups to look for when we are the offensive or defensive ends. For examples: in the R vs. B ending, he categorizes the defending King position as: a) in the center, b) in good corner, c) in bad corner and d) on the edge of the board.
The first 3 sections cover the 4-piece endings, a major piece versus the lesser piece. (R vs. B, R vs. N, and Q vs. R.) The two simple set-ups, Q vs. B and Q vs. N, are not presented because they are "simple", straightforward and covered in other books. Curiously, against an expert player about 2 years ago, I got a Q vs. her N; I could not force the win! I did not know how to position the K and Q; her N-fork was always a threat.
The next 4 sections are the battles between the correspondent major pieces, where the strong side has the assistance of one minor piece. (Q vs. Q + B, Q vs. Q + N, R vs. R + B, and, R vs. R + N.)
The next 5 sections are where the Q tries to outshine the combinations of 2 less pieces. (Q vs. R + B, Q vs. R + N, Q vs. B + N, Q vs. 2B, and Q vs. 2N.) The first two are generally drawn unless the Q can force checkmate or win unprotected pieces early. In the last three, normally the Q can win rather easily unless the defending side can force some tempi and build a fortress immediately. It's good to memorize these set-ups in case of emergency.
The last thinly section covers two interesting endings. First is Q vs. 2 major pieces (Q vs. 2R, Q vs. Q + R, and Q vs. 2 Q.) The first type is usually drawn. In the last two, the weaker side could force stalemate if the stronger side is not careful. The next endgame type is the R vs. two pieces. (R vs. 2R, R vs. B + N, and R vs. 2B.) The 2R usually wins. The B + N combination sometimes could hold back the Q by building a fortress; therefore the R can win in only a very special case. On the defensive end, the R can always gives himself up for a minor piece to avoid any later regret. To end the book, Dr. Nunn gives a humorous position where both on the B's are on the same color, mutually protect each other. Usually, it means that the R can't take any B, but in this special case the R wins.

Average customer rating:

Nice Guidance for work on Group Dynamics

This is a great reference

Consider This an Important Addendum...

Terrible

I love books!

Group Improvisation: The Manual of Ensemble Improv Games
Peter Gwinn , and Charna Halpern
Manufacturer: Meriwether Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Acting & Auditioning | Theater | Performing Arts | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books
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Art by Committee: A Guide to Advanced Improvisation

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Acting on Impulse: The Art of Making Improv Theater

ASIN: 156608086X

Customer Reviews:

Nice Guidance for work on Group Dynamics.......2004-04-25

Great, thorough descriptions of lots of great group warm-ups and scene exercises. It's not a vast new continent of never-before-seen improv, but it's the clearest map I've ever seen of the very tricky terrain of group dynamics, which can make or break a performance group (or any group, for that matter). Peter Gwinn writes in a fun and playful conversational tone and the accompanying retro-tastic photos of improvisers at play are, frankly, adorable. I have met folks who trained with Gwinn, and now I join them in their wish to hug him for this contribution to the craft. Gracias!

This is a great reference.......2004-03-24

For anyone coaching/directing or if you're playing on a team where you need to break into new territories and develop new forms, these games are a perfect start. This book explains what the important parts of each game are so that you bring the actual lessons to stagework, not just horse around and forget. I highly recommend the book.

Consider This an Important Addendum..........2004-02-01

...to Charna Halpern's "Truth and Comedy." Gwinn takes an actor-centric approach to long-form improvisation, developing characters the way Del Close intended them to be. He grounds his games in terminology befitting any advanced acting technique, exploring emotion and motivation over the tricks and gimmicks synonymous with shows like "Whose Line is it Anyway?"

Gwinn has been performing and teaching at Chicago's Improv Olympic for nearly a decade, so he knows his stuff. That being said, as articulate as this book is, it should serve as a supplement, not a substitute, for first-hand experience or training in long- or short-form comedy improvisation.

Terrible.......2003-12-23

I really wanted it to be 0 stars. but that is not an option.

I thought this book was really bad. I wanted to learn more about improv, and this didn't tell me anything new, and it's pretty basic stuff. There are better books out there....I also do not reccomend Truth in Comedy by C Halpern.

Improv is more about feeling and being in the moment, and not going by the "book."

Both of these books must have been written by people who did a lot of watching, and not a lot of doing.

I love books!.......2003-06-17

Man, this book is awesome! P.C. Gwinn has done it again! (itýs also nice to Charna Halpern putting pen to paper once again, even if it is only one chapter) I like the chapter about the clapping. Everyone, everywhere, regardless of improv skill or interest, should read this book! I took it into my office and one guy was like, "What's that? Some kind of book?" I said ýYes sir! Itýs some kind of book!ý Do yourself a favor and order it now!

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